Ensuring Tax Exempt Organizations the Right to Appeal Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WICKER. I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, there are a couple of objectives this McCain amendment would accomplish. For one thing, it was in the 2008 farm bill. The current move to change the inspection from the FDA to the Department of Agriculture is in the current farm bill, and it is about to take place, so it would revisit the last two farm bills. I do not think we should be doing that in a trade promotion authority piece of legislation. Also, it is absolutely not duplicative. It can be said on the floor of the Senate 100 times, but the fact is that the USDA Catfish Inspection Program is not duplicative. It transfers inspection from the FDA to the USDA and the USDA has testified before Congress that when the program is operational, as it is about to be, the FDA program would be eliminated.

Why move it from the FDA to the USDA? Here is the reason: There are a few of us--under controlled situations--who grow most of the catfish that is produced in the United States on farms, including the State of Mississippi and the State of Arkansas.

My distinguished colleagues from Arkansas and Mississippi will speak on this issue in a few moments, I hope.

This is about food safety for Americans in 50 States who deserve to know that the fish they are eating--the product they are eating--is unadulterated.

Here are the facts: Under the current FDA program, only about 2 percent of the billions of pounds of imported catfish are inspected--only about 2 percent. The other 98 percent of this largequantity come in uninspected. Now, that gives me pause as a consumer. It should give residents of all 50 States pause that 98 percent of the catfish which comes into our country is not inspected.

Here is what we do know about the 2 percent we look at under the FDA program: An alarming volume of the catfish inspected by the FDA already failed to meet standards. They failed to meet consumer safety standards. Many overseas productions are simply not operated under the sanitary conditions that we insist upon in the United States with our farm-raised catfish.

The FDA program does not ensure that trade partners have sufficient health standards nor does it inspect any overseas agriculture operations. They don't go over to Vietnam and look at the operations there and see the safety standards that cause the health risks.

What kind of health risks are we talking about? We are talking about cancer. I have in my hand a page from a draft rule by the Department of Agriculture, dated February 10, 2009. This is a draft rule from the Food Safety and Inspection Service. It turns out--and the GAO has been mentioned here--that the GAO got OMB to ask the FSIS to rework this statement and make it a little softer so we would not go so hard on imported Vietnamese catfish.

Here is what the Department of Agriculture report, which has now been buried, says as to whether or not the Agency used random or risk-based samplings: Applying the Food Safety Inspection Service program to imported catfish yielded a reduction of approximately 175,000 lifetime cancers for Americans--I want that kind of reduction from carcinogens coming into the United States--and 0.79 percent acute toxicities. Using random sampling in the Agency's program yielded a reduction of 91.8 million exposures to antimicrobials and 23.28 million heavy metal exposures. We are talking about carcinogens, we are talking about improper antimicrobials that the USDA program would catch, and over 23 million exposures to heavy metals that we don't need in the United States. Using risk-based sampling yielded a reduction of 95.1 million exposures to antimicrobials.

We are talking about a program that is not going to be duplicative because it is going to move--according to the last two farm bills--from the FDA to the USDA. This excessive government waste we have heard about will not exist, but we will have better safety for the consumers of the United States of America. That is why we do not need to revisit this issue, and that is why the McCain amendment should be rejected. That is why we should take every precaution we can to protect the American consumer, whether in their home kitchens or restaurants.

I yield the floor. Perhaps other of my colleagues would like to address this issue.

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