[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 166 (Tuesday, October 30, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H12231-H12235]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             SAFETY RECALLS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) is recognized 
for 60 minutes.
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Speaker for the recognition.
  Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight to talk about a growing, a 
disturbing trend of food and consumer product recalls in this country, 
safety recalls. Mr. Speaker, the danger is real. That danger has been 
widely documented. It's been widely discussed in the media, in 
committee hearings, the Lou Dobbs show and around the watercooler at 
work.
  Mr. Speaker, parents are afraid. They're afraid that their children 
are playing with lead-tainted toy sets. Parents are afraid that the 
magnets in toys or charms may cause internal damage if a child 
accidentally swallows them. Families are afraid that the food they eat 
or the food they feed their pets may actually be contaminated with 
plastic that can cause harm or death to their beloved pet. People are 
afraid their toothpaste may contain antifreeze. People are afraid that 
the fish they serve to their families may contain dangerous 
antibiotics.
  Now, I could elaborate about additional concerns, but generally, 
people are afraid about the source of these products and the dangers 
attendant to them and rightfully so. Mr. Speaker, people are afraid 
about defective products being imported into our country, and honestly, 
it seems like most of these concerns focus around a single country, the 
People's Republic of China.
  Consumers' health and well-being are being endangered on two fronts: 
the food we eat, the goods we use. Let's use some time tonight, let's 
spend some time tonight discussing both fronts and what we in Congress 
can do and should be doing to protect American families from harmful 
products.
  In the arena of food safety, you might ask the question, has anyone 
in Congress been paying attention to the safety of the food we eat? 
Well, I feel the answer to that question is yes. We've spent some time 
in the committee on which I sit, the Committee on Energy and Commerce, 
and we are pursuing an aggressive investigation and an aggressive 
legislative agenda to confront the problem.
  Now, as a member of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, 
we have taken an active role in investigating the safety of our 
Nation's own food supply. In August, a bipartisan team of investigators 
was sent to China to see firsthand if they could elucidate the cause of 
the problem. Now, the committee staff report, the investigators came to 
the following conclusions from their trip and from their investigation 
thus far.

  Quoting directly from the staff report now, Mr. Speaker, it would 
appear that the Chinese food supply chain does not meet international 
safety standards. It is, in fact, responsible for very serious domestic 
Chinese food poisoning outbreaks.
  Number 2, the Chinese Government appears to be determined to avoid 
embarrassing food safety outbreaks in export markets due to the 
damaging and potentially lasting effect that this would have on their 
``Made in China'' brand.
  And thirdly, the lack of meaningful internal regulation of farming 
and food processing in China, the advanced development of the document 
counterfeiting industry, and the willingness of some people to simply 
break the law, the willingness of some entrepreneurs in both China and 
the United States to smuggle foodstuffs that do not meet quality 
standards, necessitates a much more vigorous program of inspection and 
laboratory testing in China and at U.S. points of entry than the Food 
and Drug Administration has been able or willing to pursue.
  Let me say that again, Mr. Speaker, because it's so important. This 
necessitates a much more vigorous program of inspection and laboratory 
testing in China and at U.S. ports of entry than the Food and Drug 
Administration has been able or willing to pursue to date.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, these are important conclusions, and we must not 
simply watch the problem worsen. We must be willing to confront the 
problem head-on and transform the Food and Drug Administration into an 
agency that can fully cope with the importation problems of a 21st 
century world.
  The Energy and Commerce Committee is doing their part to do just 
that. In addition to the staff trip to China, they're in the middle of 
a series of five hearings to discuss the topic: Can the Food and Drug 
Administration

[[Page H12232]]

assure the safety and security of our Nation's food supply. And what 
have we learned so far?
  Well, let me recapitulate. At the hearing on July 17, 2007, on this 
very topic a former FDA associate commissioner, William Hubbard, 
testified that in 1999 the Food and Drug Administration drafted a 
legislative proposal which would have given the Food and Drug 
Administration authority to require foreign countries to take more 
responsibility for the foods that they send into the United States. The 
agency's proposal would have allowed the Food and Drug Administration 
to embargo a given food from a given country if there were repeated 
instances of that food being found contaminated when it arrived in the 
United States. Countries that send safe food would have no reason to be 
concerned, as they would be unaffected, but countries that demonstrated 
a pattern of disregard for U.S. safety standards would have to increase 
their oversight of food exported from their country.
  Unfortunately, Congress did not accept this recommendation in 1999, 
and neither did the Clinton administration, and the situation with some 
imported foods from some countries has obviously gotten much worse.
  Congress has a chance to examine the problem and consider 
recommendations on how to solve the problem, but you know, Mr. Speaker, 
the world was a different place then, and it was difficult to 
anticipate the acceleration of foreign products coming into our 
country. Was the safety of food products from foreign countries not a 
priority for Congress back in 1999? Well, the answer likely is not as 
much as it should have been, but then, the amount of globalization, the 
amount of imports was nowhere near what we see imported today.
  The question is why we have allowed the problem to persist when we 
know how much harm these unsafe products have the potential to cause. 
We may not know the answer to that question right now, but as I stand 
here tonight to tell you about it, it is absolutely a priority of mine 
that I intend to do something about it.
  October 11, the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and 
Investigations held the third part of a five-part series on hearings of 
the Food and Drug Administration's ability to assure the safety and 
security of our Nation's food supply.
  According to testimony given by Mr. David Nelson, the senior 
investigator for the Energy and Commerce Committee, currently the Food 
and Drug Administration does not go over and see if the products that 
are produced in China are done so under the same standards as we depend 
on here in the United States of America. These are the products that 
are produced in China that are sent over to the United States for 
consumption, the products that Americans will be consuming, and they 
are not produced under American standards.
  Now, Ranking Member Whitfield asked Mr. Nelson that, well, if you're 
speaking to a group and a member of the audience asks the question 
about how safe it is to consume the products produced and imported from 
China, he answered, and I quote, You are taking your chances on any 
imported food, end quote.
  This is a chance we simply cannot afford to take. America has to have 
the authority to prohibit these foods from coming into our country if 
they are not safe. We have to be able to stop the food that we would, 
quote, be taking our chances on, close quote.
  Chairman Dingell asked Mr. Nelson whether or not the Food and Drug 
Administration can protect the United States' citizens from unsafe 
imports with the resources that they currently are applying towards 
this problem, and the answer was that would be an emphatic no. Not just 
no, not yes, no, but an emphatic no.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, I also asked Mr. Nelson, You were over there for 
some time. What did you all eat when you were over there? And he 
replied that they ate the food that was served to them, and this was 
the food that was also eaten by members of their host country. And I 
asked him if he had any problem, and he alluded that, yes, some members 
of the committee did have problems while they were over there.
  Now, I also asked him, when I got my chance to question, what 
protocol they will follow after discovering a contaminated food supply 
of foods, specifically poultry. And we had a witness during that day, 
and during my questioning of Mr. James Rice, the vice president and 
country manager for Tyson Food in China, I asked him, So when you find 
a problem, do you communicate that to, say, the United States 
authorities so that they know to be on the lookout for similar products 
in other facilities? Well, do you know what he said? He simply said, 
No, we don't.
  He explained to me that, because Tyson was using local Chinese 
suppliers and the products were mostly for the Chinese markets, he 
simply felt it would not be necessary.

                              {time}  2045

  In essence, there would be no dialogue whatsoever. Mr. Rice told me 
that if persistent problems from one supplier were identified, no one 
would alert others as to this problematic supplier. There is no system 
in place to let others know about a bad apple. Well, this is a serious, 
serious problem.
  It was important, so important, that I introduced legislation that 
relates to the 1999 proposal that was not acted upon by Congress. This 
is H.R. 3967, the Imported Food Safety Improvement Act of 2007, eight 
years late. I firmly believe that the Food and Drug Administration 
needs the ability and the explicit authority to immediately stop 
dangerous foods and products from coming into this country.
  Let me give you an illustration. I could think of it like this: goods 
are coming into this country on a giant conveyer belt. When you find a 
bad apple coming down that conveyer belt, the Food and Drug 
Administration needs to be able to push a big red button with ``stop'' 
written on it and immediately stop the apple from continuing into the 
line of commerce.
  This legislation would give the Food and Drug Administration this 
great big red button to push. The idea is simple. If enacted, the Food 
and Drug Administration would have the authority to embargo a specific 
food from a specific country if there were repeated instances that the 
type of food produced had been contaminated.
  We frankly need to be able to stop countries from sending harmful 
food, harmful food products into the United States. So H.R. 3967 will 
allow us to finally take control of the food that is being sent to 
America. It would also send a strong message to countries that have, in 
the past, sent harmful products our way. Solve the problem on your end, 
or we will take steps to solve the problem on ours.
  After a summer of recall upon recall, it's time to take matters into 
our own hands. I don't know about you, but I am sick and tired of 
hearing a different news story every week about the new and dangerous 
products coming in from the People's Republic of China that are being 
sent to America and then subsequently have to be recalled.
  The Health Subcommittee, of which I am also a member, had a 
legislative hearing on September 26 regarding a bill from Chairman 
Dingell, H.R. 3610, the Food and Drug Import Safety Act of 2007.
  Having reviewed this legislation, I think the intentions are 
certainly good. We will look forward to working with the chairman on 
this issue. I don't support every single provision, but I do support 
the spirit of the proposed law.
  I believe we need to look toward how other Federal agencies have 
dealt with this issue and whether it would be appropriate to give the 
Food and Drug Administration similar authorities. According to the 
Government Accountability Office, 15 Federal agencies, 15 Federal 
agencies collectively administer at least 30 different food laws 
related to food safety.
  The Food and Drug Administration, which is part of the U.S. 
Department of Health and Human Services and the Food Safety and 
Inspection Service, which is part of the United States Department of 
Agriculture, together comprise a majority of both the total funding and 
the total staffing of the government's food regulatory system.
  However, the food safety laws vary greatly from agency to agency, and 
not all foods are treated equally. For example, the United States 
Department of Agriculture, which has jurisdiction over meat, poultry, 
eggs, has established an equivalency determination, a determination 
standard for those specific foods.
  On October 11, at the third oversight investigation hearing on the 
Food and

[[Page H12233]]

Drug Administration's ability to assure food safety and the security of 
our Nation's food supply, Under Secretary for Food Safety at the United 
States Department of Agriculture, Dr. Richard Raymond, gave the 
following testimony about equivalency. Again, I am quoting: 
``Equivalency is the foundation of our system of imports. It recognizes 
that an exporting country can provide an appropriate level of food 
safety even if those measures are different from those applied here at 
home. Food safety and inspection service has always required an 
assessment of foreign inspection systems before those nations can 
export to the United States of America. This prior review is mandated 
by our laws, which originally required that a foreign system be equal 
to our system before any foreign product can be admitted.''
  It has to be equal to our system before they have the able to import 
under rules put forth by the United States Department of Agriculture. 
So that's one set.
  He further went on to state: ``An exporting country has the burden of 
proving that its system is equivalent to our own if that country wishes 
to export to the United States.''
  Now, I understand that applying a system of equivalency, the system 
of equivalency that has been developed by the United States Department 
of Agriculture, taking that same system and applying it to the Food and 
Drug Administration, is tough. Because, in fairness, the Food and Drug 
Administration has about 80 percent of the jurisdiction of imported 
food to roughly 20 percent that is imported under the jurisdiction of 
the United States Department of Agriculture. So, clearly, this will be 
an extremely difficult and onerous task for the Food and Drug 
Administration to undertake.
  Currently, only 33 countries are eligible to import meat or poultry 
products into the United States. If the exact standard that the United 
States Department of Agriculture employs was used by the FDA, it would 
drastically change, and some people might say it would hinder or even 
cripple the food system if there were not enough resources available to 
support it.
  As former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich says: ``Real change 
requires real change.'' Maybe the system should be drastically changed. 
Consider this: in 2005, 15 percent of the overall food was imported. 
Between 1996 and 2006, a decade, the amount of U.S. imports of 
agriculture and seafood products from all countries increased by 42 
percent. Furthermore, in the last decade, the volume of Food and Drug 
Administration-regulated imports has tripled.
  Chinese imports to the United States have increased more rapidly than 
the global average. Between the years 1996 to 2006, the volume of 
Chinese imports, of the imports of Chinese agriculture and seafood 
products, increased by 346 percent. China is now the third largest 
exporter of agriculture and seafood products in the United States only 
behind our neighbor to the north and our neighbor to the south.
  So perhaps our food import system should change drastically. The Food 
and Drug Administration was created in a time when we were still 
domestically growing the majority of our own foods. While we do have 
real issues here at home to deal with regarding our food regulatory 
system, at least we have a regulatory system to deal with that problem.
  This is not the case for all of the countries involved from which we 
receive food. It seems that it would be common sense that we would only 
import food from a country if they can prove that their system is as 
safe as ours. Yet only the U.S. Department of Agriculture can require 
this, which, once again, controls 20 percent of our food supply, 20 
percent equivalency, 80 percent, no match. It seems to me that it may 
be time to rebalance that portfolio or at least make the 80 percent of 
the food that's imported as safe as the 20 percent that's under the 
jurisdiction of the United States Department of Agriculture with their 
equivalency standards.
  Now, it seems to be very arbitrary that the system the United States 
Department of Agriculture can employ is so much tougher than the system 
the Food and Drug Administration can employ. Yet at the end of the day, 
all that food, all that food winds up on the same kitchen table. No one 
makes a distinction that, well, this is the 20 percent that we got 
under the jurisdiction of the FDA or the United States Department of 
Agriculture, and this is the 80 percent we got from the Food and Drug 
Administration, so we will be much more circumspect about this 80 
percent of the food that's on our table than the 20 percent that's 
under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
  That's nonsense. We know that doesn't happen in American homes. 
Americans don't discriminate food upon the agency that regulates them, 
nor should they, nor should they be asked to. But it's curious that 
Congress does. Congress sets forth these dual standards, you might say 
dueling standards, and Congress must have a candid discussion on 
whether or not we need to make the systems more comparable. Again, 
former Speaker Newt Gingrich: ``Real change requires real change.''
  Now, Chairman Dingell's food safety bill is tentatively scheduled to 
be marked up at both the subcommittee level and the full committee 
level the week of November 5, that's next week. It's my goal to 
encourage this frank conversation at the committee level and hopefully 
Members of both sides of the aisle will continue to have input on this 
important issue.
  Now, we all know, although it hasn't been the experience of late, we 
all know that the system works best, and we have the most effective 
legislation for the American people, if the bills are allowed to go 
through the regular prescribed order.
  For the sake of the safety and the sanity of the American consumer, I 
implore our leadership of the House, our Democratic leadership of the 
House to allow this important piece of legislation to go through the 
regular process, let it go through the normal process.
  We saw what happened with the reauthorization of the Food and Drug 
Administration early this year. It was a good product. Although the 
bill was vastly different coming out than it was going in, I think we 
have got a better bill at the end of the process. It was worked on by 
staff, worked on at the subcommittee level, worked on by staff, worked 
on at the full committee level, went to conference and ultimately we 
got an FDA reauthorization bill that I thought was quite serviceable.

  We saw the system at its worst in the past eight weeks with the State 
Children's Health Insurance Program where regular order was subverted: 
here is the bill, up or down, take it or leave it, got to ram it 
through the committee in 8 hours, got to ram it through the House floor 
the next day. But, guess what, it's so bad even the Senate won't touch 
it.
  So we come back with a Senate bill, but it's not really a conference 
product. That SCHIP product that came from the Senate in September was, 
in fact, a new bill. It could have gone to the subcommittee level, it 
could have gone to the full committee, it could have been modified, it 
could have been amended, it could have been reworked, there could have 
been input from both sides.
  If your goal is only the next election, then you are going to do 
things like we have seen the last 8 weeks with the State Children's 
Health Insurance Program. If your goal is focused on near-term, mid-
term and far-term priorities, if you are worried about what your 
legislation is going to do to Americans 10 years, 20 years, 30 years 
from now, you will take the time to do it correctly.
  Well, I hope we take the time to do it correctly with the food safety 
import bill that we will be taking up next week.
  Well, let's not allow the issue of protecting our families from 
harmful and dangerous goods coming over from other countries to become 
a debate of R versus D, one side versus the other, a political 
bludgeon, a political wedge, make all the political hay you can because 
2008, after all, is going to be a year where it's all politics all the 
time.
  No, we cannot do that. This is something that I am certain holds some 
resonance in the minds of us all working together, find the most 
efficient and effective method of solving this crisis and solving it 
now. It ought to be the priority for every one of us in this House.
  Well, let's move from food safety and consider the issue of consumer 
product

[[Page H12234]]

safety recalls. It seems like the Nation is very focused on this issue 
as well. These days it seems like every time you turn on the TV or open 
the newspaper, you learn about yet another consumer product safety 
recall.
  While people are generally concerned about the issue of recalls, many 
people, myself included, are concerned about the source of all of those 
recalls since it appears to be, and maybe it's just me, but it appears 
to be that the majority of those recalls all emanate from a single 
source, a single country. Of course, those are goods that are 
manufactured in the People's Republic of China.
  Christmas, if we can say Christmas on the House floor, Christmas is 
rapidly approaching. I cannot help but think there would be a huge 
market, a huge market for any manufacturer who wanted to put the ``Made 
in America'' label on their toys and products, maybe a little bitty 
American flag on that toy or product as well.
  I encourage retailers, I encourage retailers to think about this. 
Stock as many ``Made in America'' products as you can. I will bet they 
are big sellers this year. Since the majority of all of the products 
that are being recalled this year were made in China, quite honestly, 
this year, myself and my family have made the personal decision to try 
to not buy anything with a ``Made in China'' label. We regard it as a 
warning label, just the same as you would see on a package of 
cigarettes. Warning: purchasing this product may be hazardous to your 
health, your child's health or your loved one's health or your pet's 
health.
  Given all the circumstances, it seems like the right thing for me to 
do and my family. I feel certain that other American families have made 
similar decisions. I know because I heard about it over and over again 
during the August recess at town hall meetings. I got the feeling that 
the Lou Dobbs family is probably among them.
  Well, this concern about imported products is real, and it has been 
substantiated with real data. The United States Consumer Product Safety 
Commission, which is tasked with the job of trying to safeguard our 
society from unreasonable risk of injury and death associated with 
consumer products, informs me that as of this week, 2007, the year 
2007, not even completed yet, but so far in year 2007, year-to-date, a 
record-breaking 472 consumer product safety recalls. Of the 472 
consumer product safety recalls, more than 60 percent were manufactured 
in the People's Republic of China.
  Are you beginning to pick up on the repetitive nature of this theme? 
More than 60 percent of all recall products this past year were made in 
China.

                              {time}  2100

  Furthermore, of the 472 total consumer product recalls, 61 of those 
recalls affected whom, our most vulnerable members of society, our 
children. Sixty-one consumer recall products were toys. And how many of 
those products were manufactured in the People's Republic of China you 
might ask? Well, I'll tell you. And the figure is illuminating. The 
figure is astounding. The figure is staggering. The United States 
Consumer Products Safety Commission estimated that over 90 percent of 
the toy recalls were made in China.
  We'll take our stop button down for a minute because it doesn't seem 
to be doing any good anyway. Let's look at this. It's not doing any 
good because we don't have one and we need one.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I'm just a simple country doctor who ran and won 
the race for Congress several years ago, but I find myself asking 
myself over and over, what in the world can we do to protect ourselves 
and our families?
  Here's a poster from the Consumer Product Safety Commission that 
shows just a few of the consumer product recalls for the month of 
October: trick-or-treat bucket, some type of sword, a sprinkler that 
looks like a turtle, a child's gardening equipment, a bendable 
dinosaur, a crash helmet. I don't know what that is. I don't know what 
that is. A skull and cross bones and a boot. All of these things, and 
this is not the total amount of recalls, but all of these things were 
recalled, issued recalls in the month of October alone. For the safety 
of our families we need to get to the bottom of the cause behind all of 
the recalls.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, I also sit on the Commerce, Trade and Consumer 
Protection Subcommittee which has jurisdiction over this issue, and our 
committee is investigating the problem, and in the weeks to come, 
legislation will be introduced on this issue. We've passed bills 
individually recently that have dealt with specific issues, the 
specific safety concerns of consumer products, including a bill that I 
amended to make ornamental pools safer, and the committee is currently 
formulating comprehensive bipartisan legislation to strengthen the 
consumer product safety system in this country. A lot of topics are on 
the table, including enhancing the commission's recall authority. I 
firmly believe that we must improve the United States Consumer Product 
Safety Commission's ability to notify consumers about dangerous 
products more quickly and on a broader scope.
  I am very concerned that there may be a large gap of people and 
associations that are not receiving the information about the product 
recalls in a timely manner. As we all know, products are recalled 
because they have been found to have some element of danger to the 
consumer and they need to be immediately gathered in and usage stopped 
and somehow safely discarded.
  We always wonder: What are you going to do with all of those lead 
based toys that come into this country? You can't burn them because we 
don't want to breathe the lead fumes. You can't bury them in a landfill 
because we don't want to drink the water that has now had the lead 
leached out into it. So what are we going to do with all of those lead-
contaminated products that are finding their way into our country?
  And another aspect, what do you do about nonprofits, Salvation Army, 
Goodwill? In my hometown of Lewisville, Christian Community Action, 
that's located in Denton County, they can provide some invaluable 
resource to their communities because of what they do with recycling 
used products. But they also have an obligation to make certain that 
they comply with all of the issues resulting from a recall.
  Now, I've been informed by some of the nonprofits back in my home 
districts in Texas that, through no faults of their own, they are 
unaware of many of the product recalls and, therefore, the fear is that 
they could inadvertently sell or resell a recalled product to a family 
or to an individual. So I'm currently working with the United States 
Consumer Product Safety Commission to try to close this gap.
  Now, this is, Mr. Speaker, this is just a blowup of the Web site 
listing the Web site up here at the top, www.cpsc.gov, Consumer Product 
Safety Commission. And on the opening page there is a place where, I've 
got the arrow pointing to it, but there's a place on the page where you 
can sign up for e-mail announcements of product safety recalls and 
certainly encourage nonprofits to take part in that. But realistically, 
any American consumer, any consuming American family may well want to 
do the same thing so they get immediate notification through an e-mail-
based system if there is a product recall.
  Unfortunately, based on the testimony and the work we've seen that 
has occurred in our committee, I've got to believe that we're nowhere 
near the end of this. And unfortunately, as we drive further into the 
Christmas season, we may see other product recalls and they may yet 
dwarf the size of the recalls. As big as they've been, they may dwarf 
the size of the recalls that have already occurred this year.
  Well, while we continue to try to close the gap through legislation, 
I encourage Members of Congress and, Mr. Speaker, I know we can't 
directly address the audience on C-SPAN, but if I could do that, I 
would ask them to perhaps consider signing up for the product recall 
safety alerts. It's easy, it's free, and it just might save a life. If 
you have access to an e-mail account and the Internet, all you've got 
to do is go to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission's 
home page, again, www.cpsc.gov and sign up for free recall and safety 
news. So, again, www.cpsc.gov. And yes, for people who English is not 
the primary language, you can sign up in English and in Spanish.
  The Consumer Product Safety Commission also has a neighborhood safety

[[Page H12235]]

network which is for organizations or even civic-minded individuals to 
help disseminate information about recalls and posters to members of 
society who may not be aware of the recalls.
  We all know, Mr. Speaker, education can save lives. Unfortunately, 
though, certain groups of Americans, such as the elderly, urban and 
rural low-income families, and some minority groups often don't hear 
about the safety messages from the government. Certainly, additional 
outreach is needed.
  One of the reasons to sign up for the product e-mail alerts is, you 
know, Mr. Speaker, there may be some unscrupulous vendors out there 
who, after a recall, after a recall has been issued, may take up and 
resell these products in a bargain house somewhere. So we want people 
to have easy and free access to the information so, obviously, they can 
make the best decisions.
  So please help make your community safer by getting the word out 
about how to get notification on these product safety recalls.
  I'm a member of the Neighborhood Safety Network and will disseminate 
information through my Web site, www.house.gov/burgess. Information 
available in linking you to the CPSC Web site is available through that 
Web site as well. Again, www.house.gov/burgess.
  Well, with all the talking I've done on this, I'm sure some people, 
Mr. Speaker, would ask, is there a downside? Is there a dark side of 
this that we should consider? And the answer is, of course, yes. You 
must always be cautious of jumping over the line. We all worry about 
the encroaching reach and grasp of an ever-expanding Federal 
Government. We worry about things like federalizing our child's toy 
sets. But at the same time, the Federal Government does have an 
important duty to the safety and welfare of all Americans. And the last 
thing you want is for the Federal Government to have control over every 
item that you buy. But there's got to be a balancing test. And right 
now, I'm afraid the balance has tipped too far the other way, and the 
actual protection for the consumer doesn't exist.
  I started out the beginning of my talk talking about recalls, and 
certainly the summer that we've just gone through has been the summer 
of recalls. We've had several of the individuals come in and testify in 
our committee about where the process broke down, where it went wrong. 
Again, there's a way to avoid the recall after recall after recall that 
we've witnessed the past several months in products coming in from 
overseas and from one country in particular; and one way to do that 
would be for manufacturers to increase the manufacturing that takes 
place in the United States of America. I can think of no better way to 
market your products than to say with a little American flag and a 
little ``Made in America'' label on that toy.
  I mean, we talked about food safety, Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of 
this. You know, if I walk into a place that sells chicken, for example, 
and I can buy 1 bucket of chicken where the product might harm me and 
it costs $8, and I can buy a different bucket of chicken where the 
product won't harm me and it costs $9, I'm going to take the $9 bucket 
of chicken, thank you very much. And we hear over and over again, well, 
consumers don't want to pay higher prices. They want lower price. No, 
the consumer wants safe products, and if the consumer has to pay a 
little bit more to ensure that those products are safe, they're willing 
to do that, because everyone is sick of recall upon recall upon recall. 
Don't let the summer of recalls become the fall of recalls, become the 
winter of recalls, become the election year of recalls in 2008. We have 
it in our power to stop this process. Begin more manufacturing in this 
country. Manufacturers who step up and do that, I think, will be 
handsomely rewarded. Food importers who actually stop all of the 
importation and work with American farmers to buy American products, I 
think, will be rewarded. I would pay the extra buck for a bucket of 
chicken that wasn't going to poison me or my family. And most Americans 
would feel the same way. I would pay the extra buck for a 50-pound bag 
of dog food that's not going to give my beloved pet kidney failure and 
take them from me early.
  This is a pretty simple concept. If we can assure the safety in this 
country, let's move the manufacturing, let's move the production, let's 
move the farming production to where we know we can have the safety and 
the oversight that's required.
  Mr. Speaker, we have to be vigilant in our plight in restoring safety 
and trust back to the foods we eat and the products that we use. I 
believe that the legislation introduced, H.R. 3967, the Food Import and 
Safety Act of 2007, will further this goal, as will the enhanced recall 
authority by the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission that 
we've also talked about tonight.
  Compromising the safety of foods we put on our tables is, frankly, 
not an option. Compromising consumer products we buy for our families 
is, frankly, not an option. Compromising the security of Americans can 
never be an option. Compromising cannot be an option that we take 
because we lack power. H.R. 3967 gives us back that power, gives us 
that big red stop button. If something's coming in from overseas and, 
hey, we see it's wrong, we see it's tainted, stop. Stop. Don't let it 
even come on our shores. Don't let us be the ones that have to dispose 
of the stuff. Stop it. Send it back where it came from.
  We can no longer sit back and allow harmful products to reach our 
homes. All Americans, my family included, have the choice to take a 
stance individually and not buy products with those warning labels on 
them. The warning label, remember, says, ``Made in China,'' because 
those products have proven to be unsafe.
  But we could go a little farther than that. Stricter rules are 
necessary. And at this juncture I would say it's up to Congress to 
create and enact those rules and earn back the trust of the American 
people in the process.
  Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You've been very indulgent.
  I will yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________