[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 145 (Friday, October 24, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H9545-H9546]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         MAKING OUR FOOD SAFER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, about 90 years ago in the early 
1900's, Upton Sinclair wrote a book called ``The Jungle.'' This book 
was about the American meat processing industry. It was about worker 
conditions in Chicago in the meatpacking industry. Equally importantly, 
it was about food quality and what Americans were eating and what went 
into the food that Americans ate. Over these 90 years since the 
publication of that book, Americans have come to take for granted the 
quality of their food, that fruits and vegetables were not 
contaminated, that food products, meat products, fish and dairy 
products were inspected. We can go into grocery stores through the 
first 80, 85, 90 years of this century understanding, taking for 
granted that what we put on our tables, what we buy in these grocery 
stores, what we prepare in our kitchens, what we eat in our restaurants 
can in fact, is in fact safe and reliable and will not in any way cause 
health problems for our people.
  Unfortunately, in the last couple of years, some things have begun to 
happen that make some of us not so much take our food safety for 
granted. This past Sunday, Parade Magazine ran a cover story called 
``How To Prevent Food Poisoning.'' It cites everything from 
contaminated strawberries that were grown in Mexico, processed in San 
Diego, sold to schoolchildren and served to schoolchildren in Michigan, 
many of whom contracted hepatitis A. A handful of these children 
actually got very, very, very sick; a couple of them almost died. It 
talks about raspberries grown in Guatemala that were contaminated. It 
talks about how in this era of free trade, in this era of more and more 
food sold from one country, into another country into the United States 
that we simply are not preparing well enough at the border. We are not 
doing the right kind of inspections. One reporter called all these 
foods coming into the country passports for pathogens.

                              {time}  1430

  As more and more food products come in, inspections at the border 
generally are not very good, and Americans are more at risk and take 
less for granted than ever before, at least any time in this century, 
concerning the products we buy in grocery stores.
  About a month ago, at my own expense, I went to the Mexican border, 
went to Laredo, TX, and went to McAllen, TX, went into Reynosa, Mexico, 
and looked across the border from Laredo into Nuevo Laredo. I saw the 
inspections at the border, I saw the number of trucks coming into the 
United States from Mexico, I saw the number of cars, the hundreds and 
hundreds and hundreds of cars coming streaming across the border, 
basically 24 hours a day. And it is clear that when the North American 
Free-Trade Agreement was passed by this Congress in 1993, that the 
President, the administration, the leadership in this Congress, simply 
have not prepared at the border for the huge amounts of materials 
coming into the country.
  There are too many drugs coming across the border undetected, there 
are too many trucks crossing the border that are not safe, and 
probably, most importantly, there is too much food coming across the 
border that is contaminated.
  There are pesticides that are illegal in the United States that are 
legal in some countries in Latin America. There are contaminants in the 
way that food is grown, contaminated by urine and feces and other kinds 
of human contaminants and other contaminants and wastes that end up on

[[Page H9546]]

some of these fruits and vegetables that make their way uninspected 
into the United States, simply because we are overwhelmed at the 
border.
  The people at the border are doing their jobs very well. Neither the 
Governor of Texas, Governor Bush, nor the President of the United 
States, President Clinton, have done what they need to do, to do those 
protections and those inspections at the border.
  That is why, Mr. Speaker, we have no business passing fast track. The 
President and Speaker Gingrich and leadership in the other body have 
asked us in this Congress to give the President fast track authority to 
extend all of these trade agreements to the rest of Latin America.
  My contention and the contention clearly of the majority of this 
House, that is why we have not voted on this issue yet, my contention 
is you do not rush headlong into new trade agreements, into more 
NAFTA's, until you fix the North American Free-Trade Agreement.
  You do not rush headlong into a trade agreement with Chile that costs 
American jobs until you fix NAFTA, so American jobs do not flee to 
Mexico. You do not extend fast track to Central and Latin America, 
which will jeopardize our food supply, until you take care of those 
problems at the border in Mexico where food contamination is becoming 
more and more common, where pathogens and other airborne and foodborne 
illnesses are coming into this country.
  Do not rush headlong into other trade agreements until we fix NAFTA. 
Vote no on fast track.

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