Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRAYSON. Mr. Chairman, the purpose of this amendment is to reverse $5.5 million in cuts for food safety and food inspection here in the United States.

Currently, the Food Safety and Inspection Service is funded at $1,005,189,000 in this bill. That is $5.5 million below the current enacted amount and $17.581 million below the Senate allocation in their agriculture appropriations bill.

This bill seeks to remove $5.5 million from a pay-for from the Farm Service Agency. The Farm Service Agency is funded at $1,205,068,000 in this bill. That is over $27 million above the current enacted amount, and it is $65.5 million above the President's request and $22.5 million above the Senate allocation.

Certainly, farm conservation and regulation is very important, and that is the function of the Farm Service Agency. However, food safety and food inspection is paramount because of all the problems that the country is facing today on this count.

According to this study by Robert Scharff that I have in my hand here from the Journal of Food Protection, dated 2012, the economic burden of health loss is due to foodborne illnesses in the United States. The cost of foodborne illnesses in the United States each year is $77.7 billion. That is $77.7 billion. Food safety and food losses and foodborne illnesses lead to 128,000 hospitalizations every year and, unfortunately, 3,000 deaths every year in the United States.

Specifically, we have a total of 3,036 deaths caused by bacteria, by parasites, and by viruses. The shame of it, Mr. Chairman, the ultimate shame, is that food poisoning is 100 percent preventable. Every single instance of death, hospitalization could be avoided if we had a properly funded and fully funded food inspection system. That is the dilemma that faces us today.

Each year, under this bill, the inspectors are required to inspect every animal before slaughter and each carcass after slaughter, in order to ensure that public health requirements are met.

In one recent year, this included 50 billion pounds of livestock carcasses, 59 billion pounds of poultry carcasses, and 4.3 billion pounds of processed egg products. At U.S. borders, they also inspected 3.3 billion pounds of imported meat and poultry products.

Increasingly, food safety is a global concern. Globalization of food production and trade increases the likelihood of international incidents involving contaminated food. Imported food products and ingredients are common in many countries, including our own.

Stronger food safety systems in export countries can reinforce local and cross border health security, but, frankly, the ultimate responsibility is ours.

Seventy-five percent of new infectious diseases affecting humans over the past 10 years were caused by bacteria, viruses, and pathogens that started in animals and in animal products. Many of these diseases are in people who are related to the handling of infected domestic and wild animals during food production, in food markets, and at slaughterhouses.

Preventing disease starts at the farm, which is where the inspections take place. Preventing animal infections at the farm level can reduce foodborne illnesses.

For example, reducing the amount of salmonella in farm chickens by 50 percent through better farm management and inspections results in 50 percent fewer incidences of people getting sick from the bacteria. Salmonella-free chicken herds are what this country needs.

It is fundamentally irresponsible for this body to be cutting the Food Safety and Inspection Service budget. God help us all if there is some widespread outbreak in this country where we don't have 3,000 deaths a year, we don't have 30,000 deaths a year, but we have 300,000 deaths a year caused by poor food inspection standards.

We must restore this money to the budget, and I ask my colleagues to support this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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