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AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999
(Senate - July 16, 1998)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S8297-S8330] AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999 The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill. Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I am hopeful that we can continue now with consideration of amendments of Senators who wish to offer them on the agriculture appropriations bill. We sent word out through the cloakrooms at 3 o'clock that we were prepared to conclude consideration and approve amendments, recommend acceptance of Senators' amendments, which have been brought to the attention of the managers, and those that could not be agreed upon, we would offer them for Senators and get votes on them if they wanted us to do that, or move to table them and dispose of them in that way, so that we could complete action on this bill. We need to complete action on the bill today and move on to other matters. I notice the distinguished Senator from Iowa is on the floor. He has an amendment to offer. I am happy to yield the floor to permit him to do so. Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa. Privilege of the Floor Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the privilege of the floor during the debate on the agriculture appropriations bill be granted to Sarah Lister, a member of my staff. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Amendment No. 3175 (Purpose: To provide funding for the Food Safety Initiative with an offset) Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report. The legislative clerk read as follows: The Senator from Iowa (Mr. Harkin), for himself, and Mr. Leahy, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Torricelli, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Wellstone, Ms. Mikulski, and Mrs. Murray, proposes an amendment numbered 3175. Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The amendment is as follows: On page 67, after line 23, insert the following: SEC. 7. FOOD SAFETY INITIATIVE. (a) In General.--In addition to the amounts made available under other provisions of this Act, there are appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to carry out activities described in the Food Safety Initiative submitted by the President for fiscal year 1999-- (1) $98,000 to the Chief Economist; (2) $906,000 to the Economic Research Service; (3) $8,920,000 to the Agricultural Research Service; (4) $11,000,000 to the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service; (5) $8,347,000 to the Food Safety and Inspection Service; and (6) $37,000,000 to the Food and Drug Administration. 1. Amendment of the No Net Cost Fund assessments to provide for collection of all administrative costs not previously covered and all crop insurance costs for tobacco. Section 106A of the Agricultural Act of 1949, as amended, 7 U.S.C. 1445-1(c), is hereby amended by, in (d)(7) changing ``the Secretary'' to ``the Secretary: and'' and by adding a new clause. (d)(8) read as follows: ``(8) Notwithstanding any other provision of this subsection or other law, that with respect to the 1999 and subsequent crops of tobacco for which price support is made available and for which a Fund is maintained under this section, an additional assessment shall be remitted over and above that otherwise provided for in this subsection. Such additional assessment shall be equal to: (1) the administrative costs within the Department of Agriculture that not otherwise covered under another assessment under this section or under another provision of law; and (2) any and all net losses in federal crop insurance programs for tobacco, whether those losses be on price-supported tobacco or on other tobaccos. The Secretary shall estimate those administrative and insurance costs in advance. The Secretary may make such adjustments in the assessment under this clause for future crops as are needed to cover shortfalls or over- collections. The assessment shall be applied so that the additional amount to be collected under this clause shall be the same for all price support tobaccos (and imported tobacco of like kind) which are marketed or imported into the United States during the marketing year for the crops covered by this clause. For each domestically produced pound of tobacco the assessment amount to be remitted under this clause shall be paid by the purchaser of the tobacco. On imported tobacco, the assessment shall be paid by the importer. Monies collected pursuant to this section shall be commingled with other monies in the No Net Cost Fund maintained under this section. The administrative and crop insurance costs that are taken into account in fixing the amount of the assessment shall be a claim on the Fund and shall be transferred to the appropriate account for the payment of administrative costs and insurance costs at a time determined appropriate by the Secretary. Collections under this clause shall not effect the amount of any other collection established under this section or under another provision of law but shall be enforceable in the same manner as other assessments under this section and shall be subject to the same sanctions for nonpayment.'' 2. Amendment of the No Net Cost Account assessments to provide for collection of all administrative cost not previously covered and all crop insurance costs. Section 106B of the Agricultural Act of 1949, as amended, 7 U.S.C. 1445-2, is amended by renumbering subsections ``(i)'' and ``(j)'' as ``(j)'' and ``(k)'' respectively, and by adding a new subsection ``(i)'' to read as follows: ``(i) Notwithstanding any other provision of this section or other law, the Secretary shall require with respect to the 1999 and subsequent crops of tobacco for which price support is made available and for which an Account is maintained under this section, that an additional assessment shall be remitted over and above that otherwise provided for in this subsection. Such additional assessment shall be equal to: (1) the administrative costs within the Department of Agriculture that are not otherwise covered under another assessment under this section or under another provision of law; and (2) any and all net losses in federal crop insurance programs for tobacco, whether those losses be on price-supported tobacco or on other tobaccos. The Secretary shall estimate those administrative and insurance costs in advance. The Secretary may make such adjustments in the assessments under this clause for future crops as are needed to cover shortfalls or over-collections. The assessment shall be applied so that the additional amount to be collected under this clause shall be the same for all price support tobaccos (and imported tobacco of like kind) which are marketed or imported into the United States during the marketing year for the crops covered by this clause. For each domestically produced pound of tobacco the assessment amount to be remitted under this clause shall be paid by the purchaser of the tobacco. On imported tobacco, the assessment shall be paid by the importer. Monies collected pursuant to this section shall be commingled with other monies in the No Net Cost Account maintained under this section. The administrative and crop insurance costs that are taken into account in fixing the amount of the assessment shall be a claim on the Account and shall be transferred to the appropriate account for the payment of administrative costs and insurance costs at a [[Page S8298]] time determined appropriate by the Secretary.Collections under this clause shall not effect the amount of any other collection established under this section or under another provision of law but shall be enforceable in the same manner as other assessments under this section and shall be subject to the same sanctions for nonpayment.'' 3. Elimination of the Tobacco Budget Assessment. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the provisions of Section 106(g) of the Agricultural Act of 1949, as amended, 7 USC 1445(g) shall not apply or be extended to the 1999 crops of tobacco and shall not, in any case, apply to any tobacco for which additional assessments have been rendered under Sections 1 and 2 of this Act. Section 4(g) of the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act (15 U.S.C. 714b(g)) is amended in the first sentence by striking ``$193,000,000'' and inserting ``$178,000,000''. Amend the figure on page 12 line 20 by reducing the sum by $13,500,000. Amend page 12 line 25 by striking ``law.'' and inserting in lieu thereof the following: ``law, and an additional $13,500,000 is provided to be available on October 1, 1999 under the provisions of this paragraph.'' Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, my cosponsors on this amendment are Senators Leahy, Kennedy, Torricelli, Durbin, Wellstone, Mikulski, and Murray. I want them all added as cosponsors of this amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, the amendment that I just offered would restore $66 million for the President's Food Safety Initiative, the funding of which I believe should be a national priority. I understand the constraints faced here on this subcommittee on spending. But food safety is an increasing problem in this country. As the President has pointed out, I think we ought to make food safety a priority. If there is one thing we all do, it is that we all eat. And there are few things more important than knowing that the food you are going to eat isn't going to make you sick. So this amendment really is to ensure that the health and safety of American consumers is protected, and protected even better than it has been in the past. Again, Mr. President, I don't know the reason why this is happening. But more and more frequently we are getting outbreaks of pathogens and foodborne illnesses in this country. Just last month, in June of 1998, there were 12 outbreaks of foodborne illnesses in this country. Here is the chart that depicts that. I know there are more dots here than 12. But there are 12 different outbreaks. Some outbreaks occurred in more than one State. So we had 12 different outbreaks. It affected consumers in 41 States and caused more than 7,000 illnesses. That is in the month of June of this year. That is one month. That is just the tip of the iceberg. It is estimated that there are millions of cases and over 9,000 deaths per year in this country from foodborne illnesses, including a lot of kids who need dialysis, or kidney transplants, after eating food contaminated with what now has become a well known pathogen, E. coli 0157H7. We all know that kids get it. They get deathly ill from it. Many die. Those who do not go on kidney dialysis have kidney transplants. Here is the interesting thing. This pathogen, E. coli 0157H7, we all read about. And you can talk to persons on the street and they know about E. coli 0157H7. It didn't even exist 20 years ago. So we are seeing new mutations. Twenty years ago, E. coli 0157H7 didn't even exist, and today thousands of people are getting sick and dying from it throughout the United States. The E. coli 0157H7 are the blue dots. The white dots, the green dots, and all these others--about six different ones here--E. coli 0157H7 outbreaks throughout the country in June. One other outbreak, which affected hundreds of people in 12 States, involved an unusual strain of Salmonella that came in breakfast cereals. That is the one in the red dots here you can see all over the United States. I happen to be a cereal eater. I have eaten cereal--Cheerios, Wheaties, and everything else--since I was a kid, obviously, and I am sure everyone else has. If there is one thing that you think is really safe, it is cereal. It is dry. It is roasted, toasted, baked, or something. You get it in a box, you open it, put it in the bowl, put milk on it, and you think it is safe. This is the first time that we have ever had Salmonella occur in a dry cereal. Usually you get Salmonella in raw eggs, or things like that, but not from cereal. So, as I said, there is something happening that we have not seen before in terms of the kinds of foods and the numbers of outbreaks and the new pathogens that are affecting our country. I always like to ask people when I talk about this in meetings in Iowa and other places. I say, ``How many people here have ever gone out to a restaurant to eat and you come home, you have had a nice meal out, you watch the evening news, you go to bed, and at 2 o'clock in the morning you wake up and there is a railroad train going through your stomach, and you make a bee-line for the bathroom?'' Usually people start laughing. But they are nodding their heads. A lot of those aren't even reported. And people are a little sluggish the next day, they don't feel quite right the next day, productivity goes down, but after 24 hours they are over it and move on. That is what I mean. A lot of these aren't even reported, but it happens to people every single day. If that happens to me, and I get a little upset stomach, I get a little sick, a little diarrhea the next day, or I feel a little down, I move on, think what happens to a kid. What about a child? What about someone 12, 13, or 10 years old? They are affected a lot worse than that. Or an elderly person whose immune system may not be as strong as someone my age. They are the ones who are getting hit harder and harder by these foodborne pathogens. This is really an appropriate time to be talking about this, during the middle of a hot summer, because there is another interesting thing about foodborne pathogens. In 1997, and we know in previous years the same is true, the number of foodborne illnesses always peaks in the summer, and they come down in the winter. May to September is when we get our peak. Pathogens flourish on the foods and any foods that aren't handled properly in the summer heat. So during the summertime, we see the number of incidents of foodborne pathogens going up. So this is a proper time to be talking about it, in the summer months. We can reduce the number of foodborne illnesses that we have in this country. We can reduce the incidence and severity of foodborne illnesses, and the Food Safety Initiative that the President announced will provide funding for necessary inspection, surveillance, research, and education activities at both the USDA and the FDA to improve the level of food safety in this country. I will go over each one of those. First, inspection. The amendment that I sent to the desk provides for increased spending to improve inspection. Now, what kind of inspection are we talking about? Well, the FDA inspects the 53,000 domestic food processing plants on the average of once every 10 years. That is right, on the average of once every 10 years, FDA inspects the plants that can our fruits, can our vegetables, handle our produce and fresh fruits and things like that-- about once every 10 years. Right now, FDA inspects only about 2 percent of imported produce, although consumption of these products is increasing and imported produce has been linked to several outbreaks of illnesses in recent years. So only 2 percent of imported produce is even inspected by the FDA. This amendment funds 250 new inspectors at FDA for this purpose. It will also fund a program at USDA to implement the new inspection procedures for meat inspection in State-inspected meat and poultry plants. Right now, we have a Federal system. We also have State- inspected meat and poultry plants, and this amendment would help fund the implementation of these new--HACCP, as it is called--meat inspection systems in our State-inspected meat and poultry plants. So that is the first part, inspection. The second part has to do with research and risk assessment. The Food Safety Initiative seeks new funds for research and risk assessment. The funding will lead to new rapid-testing methods to identify pathogens before they can be spread far and wide. Funding for on-farm testing will help determine where simple solutions such as vaccines can make major improvements in the safety of food. So risk assessment and research can point to [[Page S8299]] practical solutions that will get to it early on and make high-risk foods a lot safer--I mean foods that are handled a lot, foods that are used a lot in the summertime, maybe are handled and cooked outdoors, that type of thing. The third aspect of this amendment deals with education. This amendment calls for funding for education programs for farmers, food service workers, and consumers. I might just point out that consumer food safety education is crucial as traditional homemaker education in schools and at home is increasingly rare. Educating food service workers is also important as more and more of us eat out or eat take- out foods. The last part is surveillance. In the case of these outbreaks in June, extensive investigations were necessary before tainted products could be identified and recalled. The Food Safety Initiative provides new funds for the USDA and FDA to coordinate with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in identifying and controlling outbreaks of illnesses from food; in other words, get better surveillance out there to coordinate with CDC, USDA, and FDA--and that is not taking place right now--so that if you do have an outbreak, you can contain it and keep it in one locality without it spreading to other States. And that is really important. I will take this chart and again put it up here to show the outbreaks that happened in June. What you can see is, you have an outbreak of E. coli here in one State, and you see it spreading to other States, the same strain, the same packages. Why would it be in Ohio, then in Kansas, and then out here in Utah? Why would it be in those States all at the same time? We know how fast we move food around this country. You could have something slaughtered, processed, produced, and packaged in one State and 24 hours later it is being eaten halfway across the country. That is why you need good surveillance. If you find something that has happened in one locality, you can coordinate with the CDC down here in Atlanta, GA, and put the brakes on right away. We don't have that kind of in-depth coordination and surveillance right now, and this amendment would provide that. Last October at a hearing before the Senate Ag Committee, numerous producer, industry, and consumer groups called on the Federal Government to increase resources for food safety in research, education, risk assessment, and surveillance. I thought I might just quote a couple of these. Mike Doyle, Ph.D., on behalf of the American Meat Institute, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, National Broiler Council, National Food Processors Association, and the National Turkey Federation, testified last October, and he said: The problem we should be facing is how to prevent or reduce pathogens in the food supply. Research, technology and consumer education are the best and most immediate tools available. Government can be most helpful by facilitating the aggressive use of these tools to find new ways to protect consumers. A strategic plan for a prevention-oriented, farm-to-table food safety research technology development and transfer that engages the resources of the public and private sector must be developed and fully funded. Alan Janzen on behalf of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. Gregg Page, President, Red Meat Group, Cargil, Inc., on behalf of the American Meat Institute, said: Congress can help ensure that there is reality in the laws and regulations governing food safety by endorsing educational activities focused on proper cooking and handling practices and a comprehensive, coordinated and prioritized approach to food safety research. C. Manly Molpus, Grocery Manufacturers of America, in a letter dated January 19, 1998, said: With new, emerging food pathogens, FDA must have the resources to recruit scientists and fund research and surveillance. Increased resources will mean better, more focused and planned scientific research programs. So we have a lot of comments from the industry about the need to make sure that this Food Safety Initiative is, indeed, fully funded. Now, lastly, let me just point out where we get the offset for this amendment. The offset has several components. The principal one would complete the job of getting the U.S. taxpayer out of the business of supporting the production of tobacco. It is a common question I hear: If smoking is so bad and we are trying to get this tobacco bill passed around here, then why is the Government subsidizing the production of tobacco? Well, it is not supposed to be. Under the 1982 No Net Cost Tobacco legislation, the cost of the tobacco price support program is covered by assessments made by tobacco companies and growers. But that is only for the price support program. These assessments do not cover the cost to the taxpayer of crop insurance on tobacco, nor do they cover the administrative costs of the tobacco program or the various other tobacco-related activities at the USDA. The total cost of these USDA tobacco activities is about $60 million a year. Under this amendment, tobacco companies will cover the cost of these USDA tobacco activities. After all, it is the tobacco companies that benefit from having a dependable supply of tobacco available to them. So I think it is about time that we close this last little loophole and have the tobacco growers and companies pay the $60 million that the taxpayers are paying today. So that is the first part of the offset. The second one is that we get $15 million from the mandatory CCC computer account. These funds are available to the USDA to be spent for data processing and information technology services. Cutting this account will in no way reduce the ability of the USDA to prepare for the Y2K problem at all. So there is $15 million from this computer account. And, lastly, we cut $13 million from the ARS buildings and facilities account. Again, we do not propose to eliminate any building projects. Rather, we propose to delay the money that would be obligated but not spent during the fiscal year 1999. In other words, the money would be obligated, but it would not be spent. All projects would be allowed to continue development and planning of these facilities. But there is no point in appropriating money in fiscal year 1999, money that will not be spent, when there is a critical need for food safety funds to fund the Food Safety Initiative. I see two of my colleagues on the floor who have worked very hard on this Food Safety Initiative, who are strong supporters of it. I yield the floor at this time. Several Senators addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey. Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Illinois. Privilege of the Floor Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Kevin Mulry, a Brookings fellow in my office, be granted the privilege of the floor during consideration of the Harkin amendment on the agriculture appropriations bill, S. 2159. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. DURBIN. I make a second unanimous consent request, if there is no objection from the chairman, the Senator from Mississippi, since it does not appear there is another Senator on the floor, I ask unanimous consent to follow the Senator from New Jersey in making remarks in support of the Harkin amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The Senator from New Jersey. Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Harkin amendment to fund President Clinton's Food Safety Initiative. In supporting this effort to fund food safety in our country, I must admit to some surprise about the debate. Through the years in this Congress, we have had controversial debates with legitimately and strongly held different views. This is a difference of opinion that I just do not understand. It is now estimated that there are 9,000 Americans per year losing their lives because of food safety. There is a rising cost in human life and suffering because of compromises in the quality of food consumed in America. In a nation where we are accustomed to automobile accidents and crime, the leading reason in our country to visit an emergency room is because of food that you purchased and consumed. It is not [[Page S8300]] an insubstantial cost to our economy. Mr. President, 6.5 million people suffering from foodborne illness; $22 billion in cost to our economy. Two years ago, on a bipartisan basis, across philosophical lines as a national community, we came to recognize that this cost was not sustainable and mostly was not necessary. This Congress began to fund, under President Clinton's leadership, an initiative to ensure the quality and safety of our Nation's food supply. We are now about to enter into the second year of that program, which has included hiring more inspectors, enhancing surveillance and early warning, increasing research into pathogens like the E. coli bacteria, and to develop more fast, cost-efficient, and more modern detection methods. The second year is about to begin, but a preliminary judgment has been made on the budget of the Government to abandon the effort: No research, no new technology, no new inspectors--nothing. It would be a legitimately held view to come to the floor of this Senate and say, ``The President's plan has been tried and has been evaluated, it is understood, but there is a better idea.'' There may be better ideas. There is no monopoly of wisdom in constructing this plan. But to argue, in the U.S. Senate, in the face of this rising problem, that the better answer is to do nothing, confounds logic. I do not understand it--governmentally or politically. The American people may be under the impression that their food supply is safe. It is certainly true by world standards; compared with many nations, it is safe. But it is not what they believe. Mr. President, 9,000 deaths is unconscionable, but it is not even the full extent of the problem. Some years ago, like most Americans not recognizing the full extent of this problem, I heard testimony from a constituent of mine named Art O'Connell. His 23-month-old daughter, Katie, had visited a fast-food restaurant in New Jersey. The next day she wasn't feeling well. Two days later she was in a hospital. By that night her kidneys and her liver began to fail. A day later, she was dead. I thought it was about as bad a story as I could hear, and then in the same hearing I heard mothers and fathers from around America whose children had also been exposed to the E. coli bacteria, and realized that sometimes the child that dies can be the fortunate child. The E. coli bacteria will leave an infant blind, deaf, paralyzed for life. In the elderly, it can strike more quickly and also result in death. It is a crisis in our country, but it is one that will not solve itself. Indeed, it is estimated over the next decade, the death toll and the suffering from foodborne illness in America will increase by 10 to 15 percent per decade. There are, to be certain, a number of reasons--the sources of food supplies, a more complex distribution system, failures to prepare food properly, and almost certainly because of rising imports of food. Food imports since 1992 have increased by 60 percent. Yet, notably, inspections have fallen by 22 percent. There are 53,000 potential sites in America involved in the production of food for the American people-- 53,000. The United States has 700 inspectors. To place this in context, in the State of New Jersey where we operate a gaming industry, in Atlantic City, we have 14 casinos. We operate with 850 inspectors. What my State government in New Jersey is doing to assure that the roulette wheels and gaming tables of Atlantic City are safe for gamers, the United States of America is not doing for the food supply of the entire country. Mr. President, 700 inspectors for this country. To be honest, I do not argue that, even if Senator Harkin's amendment is accepted, that the Members of this Senate can face their constituents honestly and claim that this problem is being solved, no less managed. It would, in truth, require much more. Over the years, in working with Senator Durbin, we have outlined legislation that is far more comprehensive, in my judgment, much more attuned to what is required--to create a single food agency to replace the current 12 Government agencies involved in food safety, to remove agencies whose principal mission is to prevent the consumption and sale of food from inspection--to remove an inherent conflict of interest in the management of the Nation's food supply; and certainly to give the Department of Agriculture a mandatory recall authority so the moment we know there is a problem and health is endangered, we can eliminate the distribution problems. All these things are required, but we are asking for none of that today. All that Senator Harkin is asking is to fund at the commitment levels we decided on a year ago, to do the second half of a 2-year program to provide for the inspections, the technologies of this food safety program. Mr. President, many of us years ago learned of a different period in American history through the words of Upton Sinclair in his writing, ``The Jungle.'' At a time when the Federal Government was not doing little to ensure the safety of our food supply for our people, it was doing nothing. Most Americans will be surprised to learn that, as they read as a student of Upton Sinclair, the technology of food inspection has not really changed in these several generations. The principal instrument used by the U.S. Government to ensure that meat is safe is the human nose of an inspector. The second line of defense is his eyesight. As food comes down the assembly line, assuring that it is safe is based on the instinct of those inspectors, albeit inspecting 2 percent of the Nation's imported food supply. Part of this program is to advance the technologies which we are using in every other aspect of American life, the extraordinary technologies of our time which uniquely, incredibly and inexplicably are not being used on a very item of life and death of our citizens-- our food supply. This program will develop and advance those technologies. New pathogens are being found all the time. The E. coli bacteria itself is changing. This program will research to understand those pathogens, to use our technology to defeat them in biomedicine. As the Senator from Iowa has said, we also need enhanced surveillance. Because we live in a time when the food supply of one State can appear in another State within hours, a single source of contaminated food can be across America in days. We need to track it through surveillance to find it and eliminate it. Of course, as I suggested, we need more inspectors to also ensure the presence of the Government is there. All we are doing is attempting to fulfill what the American people believe they already have. Most Americans, if you were to ask them today, would tell you: ``Yes, there's a Federal inspector where that meat is produced, those fruits and vegetables, that syrup, they are there, and we are using the best technology and we are understanding the pathogens.'' We are asking that this Senate help fund that which we committed to 2 years ago and that which the American people already believe exists. Finally, there is ample time for us to disagree on many issues. There are legitimate concerns about which we can differ. If ever there was an issue about which we could come together in common cause, this is that issue. This is not an expansion of Government power, it is a power which the Government has had for all the 20th century. It is not draining significant resources we do not have. It is $100 million in a modest program. I am proud to join with Senator Harkin, Senator Durbin and Senator Kennedy in offering this amendment. I hope we can receive an affirmative vote and proceed with this program and avoid all that suffering, which is just so unnecessary, and begin to turn the corner on dealing with this very important problem. Mr. President, I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from Illinois is recognized. Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, first I thank my colleague from New Jersey for his fine statement, as well as my colleague from Iowa. The Senator from New Jersey and I have introduced legislation which attempts to streamline this entire process. It is mind-boggling to try to come to grips with the many different agencies and laws that apply to food safety inspection in America. Though that is not the object of the amendment of the Senator from Iowa, it is something which I hope on another day the Senate will address. To [[Page S8301]] think that there are some six different Federal agencies with the responsibility of food inspection, some 35 different laws and a crazy quilt of jurisdiction which not only wastes taxpayers' dollars, but creates risk for consumers is unacceptable. What we address today is more immediate, different than a change of jurisdiction within agencies. It is to address the immediate need to assure the consumers of America that its Government is doing all in its power to protect them at their family tables. This issue first came to my attention about 3 or 4 years ago. I certainly heard about the E. coli outbreaks in Jack-in-the-Box and the others that were well publicized, but I received a letter when I was a Member of the House of Representatives from a lady in Chicago. I didn't represent the city, but she sent me a letter when she heard we were debating modernizing our food inspection system. In this handwritten letter, Nancy Donley of Chicago told the tragic story of going to the local grocery store to buy hamburger for her 6- year-old son Alex, coming home and preparing it. Alex ate the hamburger and within a few days was dead, dead from E. coli-contaminated hamburger, which led to one of the most gruesome episodes one can imagine. Your heart breaks to think of a mother and father standing helplessly by a hospital bed wondering what is taking the life away from this little boy whom they love so much. She tells in graphic detail how Alex's body organ by organ shut down until he finally expired because of contamination in a food product. It brought to my attention an issue which I had not thought about for a long time, because you see, unlike some Members of the Senate, I have some personal knowledge when it comes to this issue, not just because I eat, which all of us do, but 30 years ago, I worked my way through college working in a slaughterhouse in East St. Louis, IL. I spent 12 months of my life there, and I saw the meat inspection process and the meat processing firsthand. I still eat meat, and I still believe America has the safest food supply in the world, but I am convinced that we need to do more. The world has changed in 30 years. The distribution network of food in the United States has changed. When I was a young boy, it was a local butcher shop buying from a local farmer processing for my family. Now look at it--nationwide and worldwide distribution, sometimes of a great product but sometimes of a great problem. That some contaminated beef last year led to the greatest meat recall in our history is just a suggestion of the scope of this problem. A contamination in one plant in one city can literally become a national problem. This chart that Senator Harkin of Iowa brought before us doesn't tell what happened across the United States in 1 year. It tells us what happened in 1 month, June of 1998. These were the outbreaks and recalls in the United States of America. I am sorry to say, with the possible exception of New York, my home State of Illinois was hit the hardest, for you see, we had over 6,000 people in the Chicago area who were felled by some food-related illness that might have been associated with potato salad--6,000 people. We are still searching to find exactly what caused it. We had a hearing with Senator Collins of Maine just a few days ago in the Governmental Affairs Committee which took a look at the importation of fruits and vegetables. She focused--and I think it was an excellent hearing--on Guatemalan raspberries that came into the United States contaminated with cyclospora, and, of course, caused illnesses for many people across the United States. The fascinating thing, the challenging part of that testimony was that if you look at our inspection process today, there is no way for us to detect the presence of that bacteria, nor is it easy for any doctor to diagnose a person as having been stricken by that illness. As we trace those imports in the United States of fruits and vegetables, we find that we face a new challenge in addition to this broadening distribution network. It is a challenge where our appetites have changed, and where we enjoy the bounty of produce from all over the world. So our concerns which used to be focused on the United States and partially on imported fruits and vegetables have expanded dramatically. Now we worry about imported fruits and vegetables from the far corners of the world. We worry about contaminations which we never heard of before which could, in fact, affect literally millions of Americans. The challenge of food inspection is changing dramatically. Let me give you another illustration about what is happening. Most of us can recall, when we were children, when mom would bake a cake or make cookies, and she finished putting it all together, and you were standing dutifully by waiting for the cookies or the cake, she would hand you the mixing bowl--and you would reach in with a spoon or spatula and taste a little bit of the dough, cake batter, whatever it might be. As you see, I did that many times; and I appreciated it very much. You know, now that is dangerous. You know why it is dangerous? Because of the raw eggs that are part of the mix. It used to be that the salmonella was traced to the shell of the egg, so if the shell fell in the batter, you would say, ``Oh, that's something we need to be concerned about.'' But, sadly, within the last few years they have found the salmonella inside the egg. So you can never be certain handing that mixing bowl to a tiny tot in the kitchen that you are not inviting a foodborne illness that could be very serious. Things are changing. We need to change with them. When President Clinton stepped forward and said, ``America's concerned about this problem and American families realize they can't protect themselves as individuals, they're counting on us to do the job,'' he challenged us to fund it. Sadly, we are not funding it in this bill. That is why the Senator from Iowa, Senator Harkin, Senator Kennedy, Senator Torricelli, and I are offering this amendment to increase the funds. What will we do with them? First, increase the number of inspectors. We clearly need more people on the borders taking at look at the process and the fresh food coming into the United States. I have been there. I have been to Nogales, Mexico, Nogales, AZ. I have seen that border crossing. I have followed the FDA inspection all the way from the trucks to the samples taken into the laboratory in Los Angeles, CA, to be tested; and I can tell you that, though it is good, it is far from perfect. In most instances, by the time they have tested that sample of fruits or sample of vegetables, and if they find anything wrong with it, it is long gone, it is already on the grocery shelves somewhere in America. Oh, they are going to be more watchful the next time around, but they cannot protect us with the resources presently available. President Clinton said we can do more, and we should do more. We also need to look into this whole question of surveillance. As we noted here, this distribution system around the Nation really calls on us to move quickly. If we find a problem at a processing plant in my home State of Illinois, we need to know very quickly whether or not it has been spread across the United States so that recalls can take place. We need more research, too, research on these foodborne illnesses, how they can be averted and avoided. I think we can achieve that, as we should. The Senator from New Jersey had the most telling statistic: 53,000 different food production sites around America, 700 inspectors. We will never have an inspector for every site. We certainly can do better than we have at the present time. Let me also say that the offset that the Senator from Iowa is offering to us is a very good one. I am personally aware of it because a large part of it represents an amendment which I have offered for several years, first in the House and then in the Senate. It answers a question which virtually all of us, as politicians--Senators and Members of Congress--face. How many times I have gone into a town meeting and someone raises their hand and says, ``Senator, let me ask you a question. If you tell us that tobacco is so dangerous, why does the Federal Government subsidize it?'' Well, I will tell you, there is not a very good answer to that question. [[Page S8302]] This amendment being offered by the Senator from Iowa finally puts to rest and answers that question. We are going to stop subsidizing the growing of tobacco in America. We are going to stop asking taxpayers across the United States to pay for a subsidy to the tobacco-growing industry. I have offered this amendment before. I have never had a better use of it than what the Senator from Iowa is offering today. Take the taxpayers' money now being invested in the cultivation and growth of this deadly product, tobacco, take that money, put it into food safety. There is a real justice to this amendment and what the Senator is offering so that we can say to people, we are not only stopping this Federal subsidy of the cultivation of tobacco, we are trying to protect children, the elderly, and those who have some health problems that may make them particularly vulnerable. So I heartily support the offset which is being offered by the Senator from Iowa. Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield? Mr. DURBIN. I am happy to yield. Mr. HARKIN. I want to make it clear for the Record that the Senator from Illinois, Senator Durbin, has been the leader in going after this aspect of the taxpayer funding of tobacco at USDA for years. So I just thank the Senator for letting me capitalize on that and use this money that he has tried so valiantly over the years to stop--to use that for this offset for the Food Safety Initiative. I appreciate the Senator's support and his willingness to let us use the offset that he has been trying to kill for years, because it really is unfair for the taxpayers of this country to spend $60 million every year in support of USDA activities that go to help grow more tobacco in this country. If they want to do it, let the tobacco companies fund it themselves. I thank the Senator for his years on this effort in this regard. Mr. DURBIN. Let me say to the Senator from Iowa, I am happy to join him in this effort. We could not think of a better investment of this money than to take it away from the promotion of a product which causes so much death and disease and put it into the kind of health initiative which the Senator from Iowa has suggested. Let me just say this: Mark my words. Within a few weeks we will read in the newspapers again of some outbreak of food contamination and food illness. We will be alarmed and saddened by the stories of the vulnerable--the children, the elderly, and those who are in a frail medical condition who have become victims because of it. Each of us, in our own way, if it affects our State will express our outrage, our disappointment; and we will promise that we will do something about it. Well, let us be honest. This is the amendment that might do something about it. We can give these speeches--and we will-- but the real question is, Are we prepared to back up our concern in front of a television camera with our votes on the floor of the U.S. Senate? The Senator from Iowa is offering us an opportunity to really be certain that the American people understand what our commitment is to this important issue. I thank him for his commitment. I am happy to join him as a cosponsor of this amendment. I yield back the remainder of my time. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. Privilege of the Floor Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that floor privileges during the debate on the agriculture appropriations bill be granted to Diane Robertson, Stacey Sachs, and Mary Reichman. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I join in thanking my friend and colleague from Iowa, Senator Harkin, and Senator Durbin, and others, for providing the leadership in what I consider to be one of the most important amendments introduced as part of this legislation. I hope that we will be successful, because it addresses a problem that has been outlined by my colleagues on the floor of the Senate about what has been happening in our food supply over recent years. What we have seen, Mr. President, over the period of the last 5 years, has been the doubling of imported food into the United States. We expect that the food that has come into the United States will double again over the next 5 years. We are finding that a third of all of the fruit, and over half of the seafood consumed in this country is being imported into the United States. And those figures are going to grow over the next 5 years. At the same time, we have seen a significant reduction in resources dedicated to inspections. Over the period of the last 5 years, there has been a 22-percent reduction of support for inspections and food safety in the Food and Drug Administration. The Department of Agriculture has primary responsibility for meat and poultry. The Food and Drug Administration has primary responsibility for inspection of all other food. The increase in imports in these other food categories--produce, seafood, etc.--inspected by FDA would be one factor which could justify the increase that is included in the Harkin amendment. But that really does not tell the whole story, Mr. President. To understand the whole story, we have to understand the very dramatic changes which have taken place in terms of our food supply. For example, let's look at E. coli, which occurs naturally in our bodies. In the last 20 years, E. coli has mutated to be more virulent and even deadly. This was illustrated today by my friend and colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin, and illustrated by the food disease outbreaks that we have seen from January to July of 1998. We are not just saying that the appropriations haven't kept up with the need, as important as that is, and that ought to justify it, but there are dramatic differences in the eating habits of the American people. More people are eating out. More people are eating products that are coming from different countries. More Americans are storing their food over longer periods of time. All of this is having an impact in terms of the increased risk from foodborne pathogens and the increased occurrence of foodborne illness. The bottom line, Mr. President, is that foodborne diseases are much, much more dangerous today than they were 3 years ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago. You are getting a change in quantity and the severity of the illnesses, the virulence of foodborne pathogens and their impact on human beings. Antimicrobial resistance contributes to this phenomenon, and those in the pharmaceutical industry see it every single day. They believe that this is one of the very significant new phenomena in the whole area of health science. It is reflected in the severity of these illnesses. They are deadly today. They don't just give you a stomach ache; they kill you. That is why I believe this amendment is of enormous importance. We need to have the kind of support that this amendment provides, to make sure that we, as Americans, are going to have the safest food supply in the world. We do. But it is threatened. For us not to understand the risk is foolishness. I believe this amendment, with its offsets, is justifiable and of enormous importance. I thank the Senator from Iowa for his leadership in this area. I commend him for his legislation and for the seriousness with which he has approached it and for his constancy in pursuit of it. We are very much in your debt. Even with this, Mr. President, I think all of us have a responsibility of watching, and watching carefully, what is happening to our food supply as we move ahead in these next months and years. Tragically, if we fail to do this, and we see the kind of tragedies that are bound to take place, we will have, once again, I think, in an important way, failed to meet our responsibilities to provide protections for the American people in the most basic and fundamental way. Every day, more Americans are stricken with food poisoning. Children and the elderly are especially at risk. Outbreaks of foodborne illness are increasing. The toxicity of bacteria is increasing. Yet resources to combat these festering problems are decreasing. Without additional resources, FDA and the Department of Agriculture cannot act effectively to prevent these illnesses. The American public deserves better. [[Page S8303]] In the last two months: over 400 people became ill and 74 were hospitalized in 21 states from Salmonella in dry cereal; 6,500 people in Illinois became ill from salad contaminated with E. coli; 40 people became ill and almost half were hospitalized because of an outbreak of E. coli in cheese; and over 300 people became ill in six states from bacteria in oysters. These cases are a small sample. According to the Congressional General Accounting Office, foodborne illnesses affect up to 80 million citizens a year and cause 9,000 deaths. Medical costs and lost productivity are estimated at $30 billion. This is not a problem that we can ignore. Michael Osterholm, state epidemiologist for the Minnesota Department of Health, condemned the lack of action after a recent outbreak in the state. He said that, ``If we don't do better, and we don't give the FDA more money, more events like this are going to happen. Right now, we don't seem to have the resources or the will to keep something like this from happening again. As long as we don't, we will have other outbreaks.'' The old wisdom does not apply. You can't just cook your food more thoroughly to avoid these illnesses. Harmful bacteria are appearing in virtually all food products--juice, lettuce, even cereal. Our amendment will provide $73 million in additional funds to support greater monitoring, education, research, and enforcement to address this growing problem. We have the ability to prevent most foodborne illnesses. Improved monitoring allows earlier detection and an earlier response to outbreaks. Increased food inspections are needed to keep unsafe food out of our stores and off our dining room tables. Expanded research is needed to detect and identify dangerous organisms likely to contaminate food. The need is especially great with respect to imports of fresh produce and vegetables. Our amendment will provide the resources needed to perform these essential activities. It will mean 150 new inspectors for FDA to focus on food imports, which have more than doubled since 1992. Yet during that same period, FDA resources devoted to imported foods dropped by 22 percent. As a result, FDA now inspects less than 2 percent of imported food. Clearly, we have to do better. Our amendment would also provide funds to enhance ``early warning'' and monitoring systems needed to detect and respond to outbreaks. These systems will also provide information to prevent future outbreaks. Early detection and control are essential to ensure the safety of every American. In addition, our amendment will fund research essential to understand dangerous organisms in food. Many cannot be identified today. Others have developed resistance to traditional methods of preserving food. Still others have developed resistance to antibiotics. Clearly, additional research is needed to protect the food supply. We have broad support for this amendment. The food industry, consumer groups and the public all favor increased funding. Food safety affects every American every day. Without additional resources, we will continue to see the escalation of these outbreaks. Congress must act to ensure the safety of the food supply for all Americans. The American people deserve to know that the food they eat is safe, no matter where it is grown, processed, or packaged. I thank the Senator and urge our colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. HARKIN. I want to thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his kind words. But more than that, I want to thank him for his efforts through the years to make sure we had a Food and Drug Administration that was on the side of consumers in this country, a strong Food and Drug Administration that made sure that we could have confidence when we went to the drugstore or to the grocery store to get our food, drugs and medicine, that they would indeed be safe. I want to thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his leadership in that area and thank him for his kind and generous support of this amendment. Everything he said is right on mark. It is not just the consumers, I say to my friend from Massachusetts. I earlier had some comments from people representing the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the Cattlemen's Beef Association, the Broiler Council, the National Food Processors Association, all of whom basically said we need better surveillance, we need better risk assessment, we need better education out there. That is what this amendment does. It is the processors, the wholesalers--everyone recognizes that this is a new phenomenon, as the Senator from Massachusetts said, something new we have not experienced in the past. Everyone recognizes the need to get on top of this. Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield? Biologically, we have E. coli in our bodies, and humankind has always had E. coli, but it was not the deadly strain we are seeing today. Twenty years ago we were not even aware of the E. coli O157:H7 strain that is deadly, and we increasingly see this deadly strain. How many more outbreaks do we have to have before we act? This is why I think this amendment is so important, because of the increased danger that these outbreaks pose for our people. Particularly vulnerable are the children and the seniors. With the offset that you have proposed, I cannot understand the reluctance to protect the consumer, rather than taking our chances. I find it difficult to understand why we wouldn't have it accepted. Mr. HARKIN. You are right about E. coli. I counted up in June of this year, this last month, and we had six E. coli outbreaks of food poisoning in this country, of a strain of E. coli that didn't exist 20 years ago. It wasn't there. And now it is here. It is not only making people sick, but killing kids. There are new pathogens that become more virulent. The surveillance systems we have in place and the risk assessment and the other inspection systems we have--the FDA, as the Senator knows, only on average inspects our food processing plants once every 10 years. Mr. KENNEDY. It is less than 2 percent of the imported products that are being inspected; 2 percent. We are seeing a doubling of the imported foods that are coming into this country and from a greater number of countries around the world. We are looking at less than 2 percent and the number of imports will be doubling. Mr. HARKIN. I wonder how many consumers know that only 2 percent of all the produce they eat that comes from outside this country is ever inspected--2 percent. The rest of it, who knows what is on that stuff when it comes to this country. The consumers don't know this. And as the Senator said, it will go up in the future. We will get more and more of that produce from other countries. That is why this is really needed. I thank the Senator for his support and his comments on this. Mr. President, there is an editorial that appeared in today's Los Angeles Times that I was just made aware, calling on us to do something about food safety. Obviously, they probably didn't know about my amendment. But they did say. . . . the U.S. Senate can take a big step to combat food contamination by restoring all or most of the $101-million initiative the Clinton administration has proposed to improve food safety. The money would go to hire new safety inspectors, upgrade technologies, and bring coherence to disjointed oversight. So far, The Senate has allocated only a piddling $2.6 million for the initiative at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and nothing at all at the Food and Drug Administration. The editorial went on to say that we needed more funding. I will quote the last paragraph of the editorial: Food safety is an unassailable cause. There are some things that only government can do, and guaranteeing the wholesomeness of our food supply is one of them. I ask unanimous consent that the editorial from the Los Angeles Times of this morning, Thursday, July 16, 1998, be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Starving Food Safety Americans now enjoying their summer picnics may suffer a glimmer of anxiety over recent outbreaks of food-borne illness: 6,500 people became sick in Illinois last month after eating commercial potato salad, and E. coli bacterial contamination occurred in fruit juice and lettuce that originated in California. Today, the U.S. Senate can take [[Page S8304]] a big step to combat food contamination by restoring all or most of the $101-million initiative the Clinton administration has proposed to improve food safety. The money would go to hire new safety inspectors, upgrade technologies and bring coherence to disjointed oversight. So far, the Senate has allocated only a piddling $2.6 million for the initiative at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and nothing at all at the Food and Drug Administration. The shame of this penny-pinching is that it comes when lawmakers are spending like drunken sailors elsewhere, for instance in the pork-laden transportation bill. The need for better food safety oversight could not be stronger. The Centers for Disease Control estimated that this year 9,000 Americans will die and millions will fall seriously ill because of tainted foods, numbers that have been growing. CDC officials aren't sure why those statistics are rising, though they suspect part of the reason may be improved detection and the increase in imported foods bearing bacteria and other pathogens to which Americans have little resistance. Food imports have doubled in the last seven years and are expected to increase by one-third in the next three years. The administration's Food Safety Initiative would get at this problem first by hiring new inspectors. Less than 2% of imported food is inspected now because the FDA's budget has not grown along with imports. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), the chairman of the Senate committee that decided not to fund the initiative at the FDA, suggested that some of the FDA's duties be delegated to states and local governments, but the increasing movement of food across state lines and national borders argues for just the opposite: a coordinated national strategy. National planning, for instance, is the only way to successfully deploy new technologies like DNA fingerprinting, which within hours allows federal inspectors to trace the genetic signature of, say, a dangerous bacterium on apples marketed in the West back to the farm where the fruit was harvested in Maine. Funding the initiative would enable federal agencies to continue efforts to install such technology in sites around the country and train workers to quickly identify and track food pathogens. And Congress needs to consider pending bills to give the FDA and the USDA the power to recall food and to create a single food safety agency to consolidate scattered oversight. Food safety in an unassilable cause. There are some things that only government can do, and guaranteeing the wholesomeness of our food supply is one of them. Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, one other thing. I listened to the comments made by the Senator from Illinois, Senator Durbin, when he very poignantly told the story of the young child who died in Illinois. I just point out again that these outbreaks are growing with rapidity and showing up in the oddest of places. For example, last month, dozens of children got sick--again, with this E. coli 0157H7--in Atlanta after swimming in a public pool. Many of these children spent time on dialysis for kidney failure. This was just last month. Now, the infection they got was the same strai

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AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999
(Senate - July 16, 1998)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S8297-S8330] AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999 The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill. Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I am hopeful that we can continue now with consideration of amendments of Senators who wish to offer them on the agriculture appropriations bill. We sent word out through the cloakrooms at 3 o'clock that we were prepared to conclude consideration and approve amendments, recommend acceptance of Senators' amendments, which have been brought to the attention of the managers, and those that could not be agreed upon, we would offer them for Senators and get votes on them if they wanted us to do that, or move to table them and dispose of them in that way, so that we could complete action on this bill. We need to complete action on the bill today and move on to other matters. I notice the distinguished Senator from Iowa is on the floor. He has an amendment to offer. I am happy to yield the floor to permit him to do so. Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa. Privilege of the Floor Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the privilege of the floor during the debate on the agriculture appropriations bill be granted to Sarah Lister, a member of my staff. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Amendment No. 3175 (Purpose: To provide funding for the Food Safety Initiative with an offset) Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report. The legislative clerk read as follows: The Senator from Iowa (Mr. Harkin), for himself, and Mr. Leahy, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Torricelli, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Wellstone, Ms. Mikulski, and Mrs. Murray, proposes an amendment numbered 3175. Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The amendment is as follows: On page 67, after line 23, insert the following: SEC. 7. FOOD SAFETY INITIATIVE. (a) In General.--In addition to the amounts made available under other provisions of this Act, there are appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to carry out activities described in the Food Safety Initiative submitted by the President for fiscal year 1999-- (1) $98,000 to the Chief Economist; (2) $906,000 to the Economic Research Service; (3) $8,920,000 to the Agricultural Research Service; (4) $11,000,000 to the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service; (5) $8,347,000 to the Food Safety and Inspection Service; and (6) $37,000,000 to the Food and Drug Administration. 1. Amendment of the No Net Cost Fund assessments to provide for collection of all administrative costs not previously covered and all crop insurance costs for tobacco. Section 106A of the Agricultural Act of 1949, as amended, 7 U.S.C. 1445-1(c), is hereby amended by, in (d)(7) changing ``the Secretary'' to ``the Secretary: and'' and by adding a new clause. (d)(8) read as follows: ``(8) Notwithstanding any other provision of this subsection or other law, that with respect to the 1999 and subsequent crops of tobacco for which price support is made available and for which a Fund is maintained under this section, an additional assessment shall be remitted over and above that otherwise provided for in this subsection. Such additional assessment shall be equal to: (1) the administrative costs within the Department of Agriculture that not otherwise covered under another assessment under this section or under another provision of law; and (2) any and all net losses in federal crop insurance programs for tobacco, whether those losses be on price-supported tobacco or on other tobaccos. The Secretary shall estimate those administrative and insurance costs in advance. The Secretary may make such adjustments in the assessment under this clause for future crops as are needed to cover shortfalls or over- collections. The assessment shall be applied so that the additional amount to be collected under this clause shall be the same for all price support tobaccos (and imported tobacco of like kind) which are marketed or imported into the United States during the marketing year for the crops covered by this clause. For each domestically produced pound of tobacco the assessment amount to be remitted under this clause shall be paid by the purchaser of the tobacco. On imported tobacco, the assessment shall be paid by the importer. Monies collected pursuant to this section shall be commingled with other monies in the No Net Cost Fund maintained under this section. The administrative and crop insurance costs that are taken into account in fixing the amount of the assessment shall be a claim on the Fund and shall be transferred to the appropriate account for the payment of administrative costs and insurance costs at a time determined appropriate by the Secretary. Collections under this clause shall not effect the amount of any other collection established under this section or under another provision of law but shall be enforceable in the same manner as other assessments under this section and shall be subject to the same sanctions for nonpayment.'' 2. Amendment of the No Net Cost Account assessments to provide for collection of all administrative cost not previously covered and all crop insurance costs. Section 106B of the Agricultural Act of 1949, as amended, 7 U.S.C. 1445-2, is amended by renumbering subsections ``(i)'' and ``(j)'' as ``(j)'' and ``(k)'' respectively, and by adding a new subsection ``(i)'' to read as follows: ``(i) Notwithstanding any other provision of this section or other law, the Secretary shall require with respect to the 1999 and subsequent crops of tobacco for which price support is made available and for which an Account is maintained under this section, that an additional assessment shall be remitted over and above that otherwise provided for in this subsection. Such additional assessment shall be equal to: (1) the administrative costs within the Department of Agriculture that are not otherwise covered under another assessment under this section or under another provision of law; and (2) any and all net losses in federal crop insurance programs for tobacco, whether those losses be on price-supported tobacco or on other tobaccos. The Secretary shall estimate those administrative and insurance costs in advance. The Secretary may make such adjustments in the assessments under this clause for future crops as are needed to cover shortfalls or over-collections. The assessment shall be applied so that the additional amount to be collected under this clause shall be the same for all price support tobaccos (and imported tobacco of like kind) which are marketed or imported into the United States during the marketing year for the crops covered by this clause. For each domestically produced pound of tobacco the assessment amount to be remitted under this clause shall be paid by the purchaser of the tobacco. On imported tobacco, the assessment shall be paid by the importer. Monies collected pursuant to this section shall be commingled with other monies in the No Net Cost Account maintained under this section. The administrative and crop insurance costs that are taken into account in fixing the amount of the assessment shall be a claim on the Account and shall be transferred to the appropriate account for the payment of administrative costs and insurance costs at a [[Page S8298]] time determined appropriate by the Secretary.Collections under this clause shall not effect the amount of any other collection established under this section or under another provision of law but shall be enforceable in the same manner as other assessments under this section and shall be subject to the same sanctions for nonpayment.'' 3. Elimination of the Tobacco Budget Assessment. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the provisions of Section 106(g) of the Agricultural Act of 1949, as amended, 7 USC 1445(g) shall not apply or be extended to the 1999 crops of tobacco and shall not, in any case, apply to any tobacco for which additional assessments have been rendered under Sections 1 and 2 of this Act. Section 4(g) of the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act (15 U.S.C. 714b(g)) is amended in the first sentence by striking ``$193,000,000'' and inserting ``$178,000,000''. Amend the figure on page 12 line 20 by reducing the sum by $13,500,000. Amend page 12 line 25 by striking ``law.'' and inserting in lieu thereof the following: ``law, and an additional $13,500,000 is provided to be available on October 1, 1999 under the provisions of this paragraph.'' Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, my cosponsors on this amendment are Senators Leahy, Kennedy, Torricelli, Durbin, Wellstone, Mikulski, and Murray. I want them all added as cosponsors of this amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, the amendment that I just offered would restore $66 million for the President's Food Safety Initiative, the funding of which I believe should be a national priority. I understand the constraints faced here on this subcommittee on spending. But food safety is an increasing problem in this country. As the President has pointed out, I think we ought to make food safety a priority. If there is one thing we all do, it is that we all eat. And there are few things more important than knowing that the food you are going to eat isn't going to make you sick. So this amendment really is to ensure that the health and safety of American consumers is protected, and protected even better than it has been in the past. Again, Mr. President, I don't know the reason why this is happening. But more and more frequently we are getting outbreaks of pathogens and foodborne illnesses in this country. Just last month, in June of 1998, there were 12 outbreaks of foodborne illnesses in this country. Here is the chart that depicts that. I know there are more dots here than 12. But there are 12 different outbreaks. Some outbreaks occurred in more than one State. So we had 12 different outbreaks. It affected consumers in 41 States and caused more than 7,000 illnesses. That is in the month of June of this year. That is one month. That is just the tip of the iceberg. It is estimated that there are millions of cases and over 9,000 deaths per year in this country from foodborne illnesses, including a lot of kids who need dialysis, or kidney transplants, after eating food contaminated with what now has become a well known pathogen, E. coli 0157H7. We all know that kids get it. They get deathly ill from it. Many die. Those who do not go on kidney dialysis have kidney transplants. Here is the interesting thing. This pathogen, E. coli 0157H7, we all read about. And you can talk to persons on the street and they know about E. coli 0157H7. It didn't even exist 20 years ago. So we are seeing new mutations. Twenty years ago, E. coli 0157H7 didn't even exist, and today thousands of people are getting sick and dying from it throughout the United States. The E. coli 0157H7 are the blue dots. The white dots, the green dots, and all these others--about six different ones here--E. coli 0157H7 outbreaks throughout the country in June. One other outbreak, which affected hundreds of people in 12 States, involved an unusual strain of Salmonella that came in breakfast cereals. That is the one in the red dots here you can see all over the United States. I happen to be a cereal eater. I have eaten cereal--Cheerios, Wheaties, and everything else--since I was a kid, obviously, and I am sure everyone else has. If there is one thing that you think is really safe, it is cereal. It is dry. It is roasted, toasted, baked, or something. You get it in a box, you open it, put it in the bowl, put milk on it, and you think it is safe. This is the first time that we have ever had Salmonella occur in a dry cereal. Usually you get Salmonella in raw eggs, or things like that, but not from cereal. So, as I said, there is something happening that we have not seen before in terms of the kinds of foods and the numbers of outbreaks and the new pathogens that are affecting our country. I always like to ask people when I talk about this in meetings in Iowa and other places. I say, ``How many people here have ever gone out to a restaurant to eat and you come home, you have had a nice meal out, you watch the evening news, you go to bed, and at 2 o'clock in the morning you wake up and there is a railroad train going through your stomach, and you make a bee-line for the bathroom?'' Usually people start laughing. But they are nodding their heads. A lot of those aren't even reported. And people are a little sluggish the next day, they don't feel quite right the next day, productivity goes down, but after 24 hours they are over it and move on. That is what I mean. A lot of these aren't even reported, but it happens to people every single day. If that happens to me, and I get a little upset stomach, I get a little sick, a little diarrhea the next day, or I feel a little down, I move on, think what happens to a kid. What about a child? What about someone 12, 13, or 10 years old? They are affected a lot worse than that. Or an elderly person whose immune system may not be as strong as someone my age. They are the ones who are getting hit harder and harder by these foodborne pathogens. This is really an appropriate time to be talking about this, during the middle of a hot summer, because there is another interesting thing about foodborne pathogens. In 1997, and we know in previous years the same is true, the number of foodborne illnesses always peaks in the summer, and they come down in the winter. May to September is when we get our peak. Pathogens flourish on the foods and any foods that aren't handled properly in the summer heat. So during the summertime, we see the number of incidents of foodborne pathogens going up. So this is a proper time to be talking about it, in the summer months. We can reduce the number of foodborne illnesses that we have in this country. We can reduce the incidence and severity of foodborne illnesses, and the Food Safety Initiative that the President announced will provide funding for necessary inspection, surveillance, research, and education activities at both the USDA and the FDA to improve the level of food safety in this country. I will go over each one of those. First, inspection. The amendment that I sent to the desk provides for increased spending to improve inspection. Now, what kind of inspection are we talking about? Well, the FDA inspects the 53,000 domestic food processing plants on the average of once every 10 years. That is right, on the average of once every 10 years, FDA inspects the plants that can our fruits, can our vegetables, handle our produce and fresh fruits and things like that-- about once every 10 years. Right now, FDA inspects only about 2 percent of imported produce, although consumption of these products is increasing and imported produce has been linked to several outbreaks of illnesses in recent years. So only 2 percent of imported produce is even inspected by the FDA. This amendment funds 250 new inspectors at FDA for this purpose. It will also fund a program at USDA to implement the new inspection procedures for meat inspection in State-inspected meat and poultry plants. Right now, we have a Federal system. We also have State- inspected meat and poultry plants, and this amendment would help fund the implementation of these new--HACCP, as it is called--meat inspection systems in our State-inspected meat and poultry plants. So that is the first part, inspection. The second part has to do with research and risk assessment. The Food Safety Initiative seeks new funds for research and risk assessment. The funding will lead to new rapid-testing methods to identify pathogens before they can be spread far and wide. Funding for on-farm testing will help determine where simple solutions such as vaccines can make major improvements in the safety of food. So risk assessment and research can point to [[Page S8299]] practical solutions that will get to it early on and make high-risk foods a lot safer--I mean foods that are handled a lot, foods that are used a lot in the summertime, maybe are handled and cooked outdoors, that type of thing. The third aspect of this amendment deals with education. This amendment calls for funding for education programs for farmers, food service workers, and consumers. I might just point out that consumer food safety education is crucial as traditional homemaker education in schools and at home is increasingly rare. Educating food service workers is also important as more and more of us eat out or eat take- out foods. The last part is surveillance. In the case of these outbreaks in June, extensive investigations were necessary before tainted products could be identified and recalled. The Food Safety Initiative provides new funds for the USDA and FDA to coordinate with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in identifying and controlling outbreaks of illnesses from food; in other words, get better surveillance out there to coordinate with CDC, USDA, and FDA--and that is not taking place right now--so that if you do have an outbreak, you can contain it and keep it in one locality without it spreading to other States. And that is really important. I will take this chart and again put it up here to show the outbreaks that happened in June. What you can see is, you have an outbreak of E. coli here in one State, and you see it spreading to other States, the same strain, the same packages. Why would it be in Ohio, then in Kansas, and then out here in Utah? Why would it be in those States all at the same time? We know how fast we move food around this country. You could have something slaughtered, processed, produced, and packaged in one State and 24 hours later it is being eaten halfway across the country. That is why you need good surveillance. If you find something that has happened in one locality, you can coordinate with the CDC down here in Atlanta, GA, and put the brakes on right away. We don't have that kind of in-depth coordination and surveillance right now, and this amendment would provide that. Last October at a hearing before the Senate Ag Committee, numerous producer, industry, and consumer groups called on the Federal Government to increase resources for food safety in research, education, risk assessment, and surveillance. I thought I might just quote a couple of these. Mike Doyle, Ph.D., on behalf of the American Meat Institute, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, National Broiler Council, National Food Processors Association, and the National Turkey Federation, testified last October, and he said: The problem we should be facing is how to prevent or reduce pathogens in the food supply. Research, technology and consumer education are the best and most immediate tools available. Government can be most helpful by facilitating the aggressive use of these tools to find new ways to protect consumers. A strategic plan for a prevention-oriented, farm-to-table food safety research technology development and transfer that engages the resources of the public and private sector must be developed and fully funded. Alan Janzen on behalf of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. Gregg Page, President, Red Meat Group, Cargil, Inc., on behalf of the American Meat Institute, said: Congress can help ensure that there is reality in the laws and regulations governing food safety by endorsing educational activities focused on proper cooking and handling practices and a comprehensive, coordinated and prioritized approach to food safety research. C. Manly Molpus, Grocery Manufacturers of America, in a letter dated January 19, 1998, said: With new, emerging food pathogens, FDA must have the resources to recruit scientists and fund research and surveillance. Increased resources will mean better, more focused and planned scientific research programs. So we have a lot of comments from the industry about the need to make sure that this Food Safety Initiative is, indeed, fully funded. Now, lastly, let me just point out where we get the offset for this amendment. The offset has several components. The principal one would complete the job of getting the U.S. taxpayer out of the business of supporting the production of tobacco. It is a common question I hear: If smoking is so bad and we are trying to get this tobacco bill passed around here, then why is the Government subsidizing the production of tobacco? Well, it is not supposed to be. Under the 1982 No Net Cost Tobacco legislation, the cost of the tobacco price support program is covered by assessments made by tobacco companies and growers. But that is only for the price support program. These assessments do not cover the cost to the taxpayer of crop insurance on tobacco, nor do they cover the administrative costs of the tobacco program or the various other tobacco-related activities at the USDA. The total cost of these USDA tobacco activities is about $60 million a year. Under this amendment, tobacco companies will cover the cost of these USDA tobacco activities. After all, it is the tobacco companies that benefit from having a dependable supply of tobacco available to them. So I think it is about time that we close this last little loophole and have the tobacco growers and companies pay the $60 million that the taxpayers are paying today. So that is the first part of the offset. The second one is that we get $15 million from the mandatory CCC computer account. These funds are available to the USDA to be spent for data processing and information technology services. Cutting this account will in no way reduce the ability of the USDA to prepare for the Y2K problem at all. So there is $15 million from this computer account. And, lastly, we cut $13 million from the ARS buildings and facilities account. Again, we do not propose to eliminate any building projects. Rather, we propose to delay the money that would be obligated but not spent during the fiscal year 1999. In other words, the money would be obligated, but it would not be spent. All projects would be allowed to continue development and planning of these facilities. But there is no point in appropriating money in fiscal year 1999, money that will not be spent, when there is a critical need for food safety funds to fund the Food Safety Initiative. I see two of my colleagues on the floor who have worked very hard on this Food Safety Initiative, who are strong supporters of it. I yield the floor at this time. Several Senators addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey. Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Illinois. Privilege of the Floor Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Kevin Mulry, a Brookings fellow in my office, be granted the privilege of the floor during consideration of the Harkin amendment on the agriculture appropriations bill, S. 2159. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. DURBIN. I make a second unanimous consent request, if there is no objection from the chairman, the Senator from Mississippi, since it does not appear there is another Senator on the floor, I ask unanimous consent to follow the Senator from New Jersey in making remarks in support of the Harkin amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The Senator from New Jersey. Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Harkin amendment to fund President Clinton's Food Safety Initiative. In supporting this effort to fund food safety in our country, I must admit to some surprise about the debate. Through the years in this Congress, we have had controversial debates with legitimately and strongly held different views. This is a difference of opinion that I just do not understand. It is now estimated that there are 9,000 Americans per year losing their lives because of food safety. There is a rising cost in human life and suffering because of compromises in the quality of food consumed in America. In a nation where we are accustomed to automobile accidents and crime, the leading reason in our country to visit an emergency room is because of food that you purchased and consumed. It is not [[Page S8300]] an insubstantial cost to our economy. Mr. President, 6.5 million people suffering from foodborne illness; $22 billion in cost to our economy. Two years ago, on a bipartisan basis, across philosophical lines as a national community, we came to recognize that this cost was not sustainable and mostly was not necessary. This Congress began to fund, under President Clinton's leadership, an initiative to ensure the quality and safety of our Nation's food supply. We are now about to enter into the second year of that program, which has included hiring more inspectors, enhancing surveillance and early warning, increasing research into pathogens like the E. coli bacteria, and to develop more fast, cost-efficient, and more modern detection methods. The second year is about to begin, but a preliminary judgment has been made on the budget of the Government to abandon the effort: No research, no new technology, no new inspectors--nothing. It would be a legitimately held view to come to the floor of this Senate and say, ``The President's plan has been tried and has been evaluated, it is understood, but there is a better idea.'' There may be better ideas. There is no monopoly of wisdom in constructing this plan. But to argue, in the U.S. Senate, in the face of this rising problem, that the better answer is to do nothing, confounds logic. I do not understand it--governmentally or politically. The American people may be under the impression that their food supply is safe. It is certainly true by world standards; compared with many nations, it is safe. But it is not what they believe. Mr. President, 9,000 deaths is unconscionable, but it is not even the full extent of the problem. Some years ago, like most Americans not recognizing the full extent of this problem, I heard testimony from a constituent of mine named Art O'Connell. His 23-month-old daughter, Katie, had visited a fast-food restaurant in New Jersey. The next day she wasn't feeling well. Two days later she was in a hospital. By that night her kidneys and her liver began to fail. A day later, she was dead. I thought it was about as bad a story as I could hear, and then in the same hearing I heard mothers and fathers from around America whose children had also been exposed to the E. coli bacteria, and realized that sometimes the child that dies can be the fortunate child. The E. coli bacteria will leave an infant blind, deaf, paralyzed for life. In the elderly, it can strike more quickly and also result in death. It is a crisis in our country, but it is one that will not solve itself. Indeed, it is estimated over the next decade, the death toll and the suffering from foodborne illness in America will increase by 10 to 15 percent per decade. There are, to be certain, a number of reasons--the sources of food supplies, a more complex distribution system, failures to prepare food properly, and almost certainly because of rising imports of food. Food imports since 1992 have increased by 60 percent. Yet, notably, inspections have fallen by 22 percent. There are 53,000 potential sites in America involved in the production of food for the American people-- 53,000. The United States has 700 inspectors. To place this in context, in the State of New Jersey where we operate a gaming industry, in Atlantic City, we have 14 casinos. We operate with 850 inspectors. What my State government in New Jersey is doing to assure that the roulette wheels and gaming tables of Atlantic City are safe for gamers, the United States of America is not doing for the food supply of the entire country. Mr. President, 700 inspectors for this country. To be honest, I do not argue that, even if Senator Harkin's amendment is accepted, that the Members of this Senate can face their constituents honestly and claim that this problem is being solved, no less managed. It would, in truth, require much more. Over the years, in working with Senator Durbin, we have outlined legislation that is far more comprehensive, in my judgment, much more attuned to what is required--to create a single food agency to replace the current 12 Government agencies involved in food safety, to remove agencies whose principal mission is to prevent the consumption and sale of food from inspection--to remove an inherent conflict of interest in the management of the Nation's food supply; and certainly to give the Department of Agriculture a mandatory recall authority so the moment we know there is a problem and health is endangered, we can eliminate the distribution problems. All these things are required, but we are asking for none of that today. All that Senator Harkin is asking is to fund at the commitment levels we decided on a year ago, to do the second half of a 2-year program to provide for the inspections, the technologies of this food safety program. Mr. President, many of us years ago learned of a different period in American history through the words of Upton Sinclair in his writing, ``The Jungle.'' At a time when the Federal Government was not doing little to ensure the safety of our food supply for our people, it was doing nothing. Most Americans will be surprised to learn that, as they read as a student of Upton Sinclair, the technology of food inspection has not really changed in these several generations. The principal instrument used by the U.S. Government to ensure that meat is safe is the human nose of an inspector. The second line of defense is his eyesight. As food comes down the assembly line, assuring that it is safe is based on the instinct of those inspectors, albeit inspecting 2 percent of the Nation's imported food supply. Part of this program is to advance the technologies which we are using in every other aspect of American life, the extraordinary technologies of our time which uniquely, incredibly and inexplicably are not being used on a very item of life and death of our citizens-- our food supply. This program will develop and advance those technologies. New pathogens are being found all the time. The E. coli bacteria itself is changing. This program will research to understand those pathogens, to use our technology to defeat them in biomedicine. As the Senator from Iowa has said, we also need enhanced surveillance. Because we live in a time when the food supply of one State can appear in another State within hours, a single source of contaminated food can be across America in days. We need to track it through surveillance to find it and eliminate it. Of course, as I suggested, we need more inspectors to also ensure the presence of the Government is there. All we are doing is attempting to fulfill what the American people believe they already have. Most Americans, if you were to ask them today, would tell you: ``Yes, there's a Federal inspector where that meat is produced, those fruits and vegetables, that syrup, they are there, and we are using the best technology and we are understanding the pathogens.'' We are asking that this Senate help fund that which we committed to 2 years ago and that which the American people already believe exists. Finally, there is ample time for us to disagree on many issues. There are legitimate concerns about which we can differ. If ever there was an issue about which we could come together in common cause, this is that issue. This is not an expansion of Government power, it is a power which the Government has had for all the 20th century. It is not draining significant resources we do not have. It is $100 million in a modest program. I am proud to join with Senator Harkin, Senator Durbin and Senator Kennedy in offering this amendment. I hope we can receive an affirmative vote and proceed with this program and avoid all that suffering, which is just so unnecessary, and begin to turn the corner on dealing with this very important problem. Mr. President, I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from Illinois is recognized. Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, first I thank my colleague from New Jersey for his fine statement, as well as my colleague from Iowa. The Senator from New Jersey and I have introduced legislation which attempts to streamline this entire process. It is mind-boggling to try to come to grips with the many different agencies and laws that apply to food safety inspection in America. Though that is not the object of the amendment of the Senator from Iowa, it is something which I hope on another day the Senate will address. To [[Page S8301]] think that there are some six different Federal agencies with the responsibility of food inspection, some 35 different laws and a crazy quilt of jurisdiction which not only wastes taxpayers' dollars, but creates risk for consumers is unacceptable. What we address today is more immediate, different than a change of jurisdiction within agencies. It is to address the immediate need to assure the consumers of America that its Government is doing all in its power to protect them at their family tables. This issue first came to my attention about 3 or 4 years ago. I certainly heard about the E. coli outbreaks in Jack-in-the-Box and the others that were well publicized, but I received a letter when I was a Member of the House of Representatives from a lady in Chicago. I didn't represent the city, but she sent me a letter when she heard we were debating modernizing our food inspection system. In this handwritten letter, Nancy Donley of Chicago told the tragic story of going to the local grocery store to buy hamburger for her 6- year-old son Alex, coming home and preparing it. Alex ate the hamburger and within a few days was dead, dead from E. coli-contaminated hamburger, which led to one of the most gruesome episodes one can imagine. Your heart breaks to think of a mother and father standing helplessly by a hospital bed wondering what is taking the life away from this little boy whom they love so much. She tells in graphic detail how Alex's body organ by organ shut down until he finally expired because of contamination in a food product. It brought to my attention an issue which I had not thought about for a long time, because you see, unlike some Members of the Senate, I have some personal knowledge when it comes to this issue, not just because I eat, which all of us do, but 30 years ago, I worked my way through college working in a slaughterhouse in East St. Louis, IL. I spent 12 months of my life there, and I saw the meat inspection process and the meat processing firsthand. I still eat meat, and I still believe America has the safest food supply in the world, but I am convinced that we need to do more. The world has changed in 30 years. The distribution network of food in the United States has changed. When I was a young boy, it was a local butcher shop buying from a local farmer processing for my family. Now look at it--nationwide and worldwide distribution, sometimes of a great product but sometimes of a great problem. That some contaminated beef last year led to the greatest meat recall in our history is just a suggestion of the scope of this problem. A contamination in one plant in one city can literally become a national problem. This chart that Senator Harkin of Iowa brought before us doesn't tell what happened across the United States in 1 year. It tells us what happened in 1 month, June of 1998. These were the outbreaks and recalls in the United States of America. I am sorry to say, with the possible exception of New York, my home State of Illinois was hit the hardest, for you see, we had over 6,000 people in the Chicago area who were felled by some food-related illness that might have been associated with potato salad--6,000 people. We are still searching to find exactly what caused it. We had a hearing with Senator Collins of Maine just a few days ago in the Governmental Affairs Committee which took a look at the importation of fruits and vegetables. She focused--and I think it was an excellent hearing--on Guatemalan raspberries that came into the United States contaminated with cyclospora, and, of course, caused illnesses for many people across the United States. The fascinating thing, the challenging part of that testimony was that if you look at our inspection process today, there is no way for us to detect the presence of that bacteria, nor is it easy for any doctor to diagnose a person as having been stricken by that illness. As we trace those imports in the United States of fruits and vegetables, we find that we face a new challenge in addition to this broadening distribution network. It is a challenge where our appetites have changed, and where we enjoy the bounty of produce from all over the world. So our concerns which used to be focused on the United States and partially on imported fruits and vegetables have expanded dramatically. Now we worry about imported fruits and vegetables from the far corners of the world. We worry about contaminations which we never heard of before which could, in fact, affect literally millions of Americans. The challenge of food inspection is changing dramatically. Let me give you another illustration about what is happening. Most of us can recall, when we were children, when mom would bake a cake or make cookies, and she finished putting it all together, and you were standing dutifully by waiting for the cookies or the cake, she would hand you the mixing bowl--and you would reach in with a spoon or spatula and taste a little bit of the dough, cake batter, whatever it might be. As you see, I did that many times; and I appreciated it very much. You know, now that is dangerous. You know why it is dangerous? Because of the raw eggs that are part of the mix. It used to be that the salmonella was traced to the shell of the egg, so if the shell fell in the batter, you would say, ``Oh, that's something we need to be concerned about.'' But, sadly, within the last few years they have found the salmonella inside the egg. So you can never be certain handing that mixing bowl to a tiny tot in the kitchen that you are not inviting a foodborne illness that could be very serious. Things are changing. We need to change with them. When President Clinton stepped forward and said, ``America's concerned about this problem and American families realize they can't protect themselves as individuals, they're counting on us to do the job,'' he challenged us to fund it. Sadly, we are not funding it in this bill. That is why the Senator from Iowa, Senator Harkin, Senator Kennedy, Senator Torricelli, and I are offering this amendment to increase the funds. What will we do with them? First, increase the number of inspectors. We clearly need more people on the borders taking at look at the process and the fresh food coming into the United States. I have been there. I have been to Nogales, Mexico, Nogales, AZ. I have seen that border crossing. I have followed the FDA inspection all the way from the trucks to the samples taken into the laboratory in Los Angeles, CA, to be tested; and I can tell you that, though it is good, it is far from perfect. In most instances, by the time they have tested that sample of fruits or sample of vegetables, and if they find anything wrong with it, it is long gone, it is already on the grocery shelves somewhere in America. Oh, they are going to be more watchful the next time around, but they cannot protect us with the resources presently available. President Clinton said we can do more, and we should do more. We also need to look into this whole question of surveillance. As we noted here, this distribution system around the Nation really calls on us to move quickly. If we find a problem at a processing plant in my home State of Illinois, we need to know very quickly whether or not it has been spread across the United States so that recalls can take place. We need more research, too, research on these foodborne illnesses, how they can be averted and avoided. I think we can achieve that, as we should. The Senator from New Jersey had the most telling statistic: 53,000 different food production sites around America, 700 inspectors. We will never have an inspector for every site. We certainly can do better than we have at the present time. Let me also say that the offset that the Senator from Iowa is offering to us is a very good one. I am personally aware of it because a large part of it represents an amendment which I have offered for several years, first in the House and then in the Senate. It answers a question which virtually all of us, as politicians--Senators and Members of Congress--face. How many times I have gone into a town meeting and someone raises their hand and says, ``Senator, let me ask you a question. If you tell us that tobacco is so dangerous, why does the Federal Government subsidize it?'' Well, I will tell you, there is not a very good answer to that question. [[Page S8302]] This amendment being offered by the Senator from Iowa finally puts to rest and answers that question. We are going to stop subsidizing the growing of tobacco in America. We are going to stop asking taxpayers across the United States to pay for a subsidy to the tobacco-growing industry. I have offered this amendment before. I have never had a better use of it than what the Senator from Iowa is offering today. Take the taxpayers' money now being invested in the cultivation and growth of this deadly product, tobacco, take that money, put it into food safety. There is a real justice to this amendment and what the Senator is offering so that we can say to people, we are not only stopping this Federal subsidy of the cultivation of tobacco, we are trying to protect children, the elderly, and those who have some health problems that may make them particularly vulnerable. So I heartily support the offset which is being offered by the Senator from Iowa. Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield? Mr. DURBIN. I am happy to yield. Mr. HARKIN. I want to make it clear for the Record that the Senator from Illinois, Senator Durbin, has been the leader in going after this aspect of the taxpayer funding of tobacco at USDA for years. So I just thank the Senator for letting me capitalize on that and use this money that he has tried so valiantly over the years to stop--to use that for this offset for the Food Safety Initiative. I appreciate the Senator's support and his willingness to let us use the offset that he has been trying to kill for years, because it really is unfair for the taxpayers of this country to spend $60 million every year in support of USDA activities that go to help grow more tobacco in this country. If they want to do it, let the tobacco companies fund it themselves. I thank the Senator for his years on this effort in this regard. Mr. DURBIN. Let me say to the Senator from Iowa, I am happy to join him in this effort. We could not think of a better investment of this money than to take it away from the promotion of a product which causes so much death and disease and put it into the kind of health initiative which the Senator from Iowa has suggested. Let me just say this: Mark my words. Within a few weeks we will read in the newspapers again of some outbreak of food contamination and food illness. We will be alarmed and saddened by the stories of the vulnerable--the children, the elderly, and those who are in a frail medical condition who have become victims because of it. Each of us, in our own way, if it affects our State will express our outrage, our disappointment; and we will promise that we will do something about it. Well, let us be honest. This is the amendment that might do something about it. We can give these speeches--and we will-- but the real question is, Are we prepared to back up our concern in front of a television camera with our votes on the floor of the U.S. Senate? The Senator from Iowa is offering us an opportunity to really be certain that the American people understand what our commitment is to this important issue. I thank him for his commitment. I am happy to join him as a cosponsor of this amendment. I yield back the remainder of my time. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. Privilege of the Floor Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that floor privileges during the debate on the agriculture appropriations bill be granted to Diane Robertson, Stacey Sachs, and Mary Reichman. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I join in thanking my friend and colleague from Iowa, Senator Harkin, and Senator Durbin, and others, for providing the leadership in what I consider to be one of the most important amendments introduced as part of this legislation. I hope that we will be successful, because it addresses a problem that has been outlined by my colleagues on the floor of the Senate about what has been happening in our food supply over recent years. What we have seen, Mr. President, over the period of the last 5 years, has been the doubling of imported food into the United States. We expect that the food that has come into the United States will double again over the next 5 years. We are finding that a third of all of the fruit, and over half of the seafood consumed in this country is being imported into the United States. And those figures are going to grow over the next 5 years. At the same time, we have seen a significant reduction in resources dedicated to inspections. Over the period of the last 5 years, there has been a 22-percent reduction of support for inspections and food safety in the Food and Drug Administration. The Department of Agriculture has primary responsibility for meat and poultry. The Food and Drug Administration has primary responsibility for inspection of all other food. The increase in imports in these other food categories--produce, seafood, etc.--inspected by FDA would be one factor which could justify the increase that is included in the Harkin amendment. But that really does not tell the whole story, Mr. President. To understand the whole story, we have to understand the very dramatic changes which have taken place in terms of our food supply. For example, let's look at E. coli, which occurs naturally in our bodies. In the last 20 years, E. coli has mutated to be more virulent and even deadly. This was illustrated today by my friend and colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin, and illustrated by the food disease outbreaks that we have seen from January to July of 1998. We are not just saying that the appropriations haven't kept up with the need, as important as that is, and that ought to justify it, but there are dramatic differences in the eating habits of the American people. More people are eating out. More people are eating products that are coming from different countries. More Americans are storing their food over longer periods of time. All of this is having an impact in terms of the increased risk from foodborne pathogens and the increased occurrence of foodborne illness. The bottom line, Mr. President, is that foodborne diseases are much, much more dangerous today than they were 3 years ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago. You are getting a change in quantity and the severity of the illnesses, the virulence of foodborne pathogens and their impact on human beings. Antimicrobial resistance contributes to this phenomenon, and those in the pharmaceutical industry see it every single day. They believe that this is one of the very significant new phenomena in the whole area of health science. It is reflected in the severity of these illnesses. They are deadly today. They don't just give you a stomach ache; they kill you. That is why I believe this amendment is of enormous importance. We need to have the kind of support that this amendment provides, to make sure that we, as Americans, are going to have the safest food supply in the world. We do. But it is threatened. For us not to understand the risk is foolishness. I believe this amendment, with its offsets, is justifiable and of enormous importance. I thank the Senator from Iowa for his leadership in this area. I commend him for his legislation and for the seriousness with which he has approached it and for his constancy in pursuit of it. We are very much in your debt. Even with this, Mr. President, I think all of us have a responsibility of watching, and watching carefully, what is happening to our food supply as we move ahead in these next months and years. Tragically, if we fail to do this, and we see the kind of tragedies that are bound to take place, we will have, once again, I think, in an important way, failed to meet our responsibilities to provide protections for the American people in the most basic and fundamental way. Every day, more Americans are stricken with food poisoning. Children and the elderly are especially at risk. Outbreaks of foodborne illness are increasing. The toxicity of bacteria is increasing. Yet resources to combat these festering problems are decreasing. Without additional resources, FDA and the Department of Agriculture cannot act effectively to prevent these illnesses. The American public deserves better. [[Page S8303]] In the last two months: over 400 people became ill and 74 were hospitalized in 21 states from Salmonella in dry cereal; 6,500 people in Illinois became ill from salad contaminated with E. coli; 40 people became ill and almost half were hospitalized because of an outbreak of E. coli in cheese; and over 300 people became ill in six states from bacteria in oysters. These cases are a small sample. According to the Congressional General Accounting Office, foodborne illnesses affect up to 80 million citizens a year and cause 9,000 deaths. Medical costs and lost productivity are estimated at $30 billion. This is not a problem that we can ignore. Michael Osterholm, state epidemiologist for the Minnesota Department of Health, condemned the lack of action after a recent outbreak in the state. He said that, ``If we don't do better, and we don't give the FDA more money, more events like this are going to happen. Right now, we don't seem to have the resources or the will to keep something like this from happening again. As long as we don't, we will have other outbreaks.'' The old wisdom does not apply. You can't just cook your food more thoroughly to avoid these illnesses. Harmful bacteria are appearing in virtually all food products--juice, lettuce, even cereal. Our amendment will provide $73 million in additional funds to support greater monitoring, education, research, and enforcement to address this growing problem. We have the ability to prevent most foodborne illnesses. Improved monitoring allows earlier detection and an earlier response to outbreaks. Increased food inspections are needed to keep unsafe food out of our stores and off our dining room tables. Expanded research is needed to detect and identify dangerous organisms likely to contaminate food. The need is especially great with respect to imports of fresh produce and vegetables. Our amendment will provide the resources needed to perform these essential activities. It will mean 150 new inspectors for FDA to focus on food imports, which have more than doubled since 1992. Yet during that same period, FDA resources devoted to imported foods dropped by 22 percent. As a result, FDA now inspects less than 2 percent of imported food. Clearly, we have to do better. Our amendment would also provide funds to enhance ``early warning'' and monitoring systems needed to detect and respond to outbreaks. These systems will also provide information to prevent future outbreaks. Early detection and control are essential to ensure the safety of every American. In addition, our amendment will fund research essential to understand dangerous organisms in food. Many cannot be identified today. Others have developed resistance to traditional methods of preserving food. Still others have developed resistance to antibiotics. Clearly, additional research is needed to protect the food supply. We have broad support for this amendment. The food industry, consumer groups and the public all favor increased funding. Food safety affects every American every day. Without additional resources, we will continue to see the escalation of these outbreaks. Congress must act to ensure the safety of the food supply for all Americans. The American people deserve to know that the food they eat is safe, no matter where it is grown, processed, or packaged. I thank the Senator and urge our colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. HARKIN. I want to thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his kind words. But more than that, I want to thank him for his efforts through the years to make sure we had a Food and Drug Administration that was on the side of consumers in this country, a strong Food and Drug Administration that made sure that we could have confidence when we went to the drugstore or to the grocery store to get our food, drugs and medicine, that they would indeed be safe. I want to thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his leadership in that area and thank him for his kind and generous support of this amendment. Everything he said is right on mark. It is not just the consumers, I say to my friend from Massachusetts. I earlier had some comments from people representing the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the Cattlemen's Beef Association, the Broiler Council, the National Food Processors Association, all of whom basically said we need better surveillance, we need better risk assessment, we need better education out there. That is what this amendment does. It is the processors, the wholesalers--everyone recognizes that this is a new phenomenon, as the Senator from Massachusetts said, something new we have not experienced in the past. Everyone recognizes the need to get on top of this. Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield? Biologically, we have E. coli in our bodies, and humankind has always had E. coli, but it was not the deadly strain we are seeing today. Twenty years ago we were not even aware of the E. coli O157:H7 strain that is deadly, and we increasingly see this deadly strain. How many more outbreaks do we have to have before we act? This is why I think this amendment is so important, because of the increased danger that these outbreaks pose for our people. Particularly vulnerable are the children and the seniors. With the offset that you have proposed, I cannot understand the reluctance to protect the consumer, rather than taking our chances. I find it difficult to understand why we wouldn't have it accepted. Mr. HARKIN. You are right about E. coli. I counted up in June of this year, this last month, and we had six E. coli outbreaks of food poisoning in this country, of a strain of E. coli that didn't exist 20 years ago. It wasn't there. And now it is here. It is not only making people sick, but killing kids. There are new pathogens that become more virulent. The surveillance systems we have in place and the risk assessment and the other inspection systems we have--the FDA, as the Senator knows, only on average inspects our food processing plants once every 10 years. Mr. KENNEDY. It is less than 2 percent of the imported products that are being inspected; 2 percent. We are seeing a doubling of the imported foods that are coming into this country and from a greater number of countries around the world. We are looking at less than 2 percent and the number of imports will be doubling. Mr. HARKIN. I wonder how many consumers know that only 2 percent of all the produce they eat that comes from outside this country is ever inspected--2 percent. The rest of it, who knows what is on that stuff when it comes to this country. The consumers don't know this. And as the Senator said, it will go up in the future. We will get more and more of that produce from other countries. That is why this is really needed. I thank the Senator for his support and his comments on this. Mr. President, there is an editorial that appeared in today's Los Angeles Times that I was just made aware, calling on us to do something about food safety. Obviously, they probably didn't know about my amendment. But they did say. . . . the U.S. Senate can take a big step to combat food contamination by restoring all or most of the $101-million initiative the Clinton administration has proposed to improve food safety. The money would go to hire new safety inspectors, upgrade technologies, and bring coherence to disjointed oversight. So far, The Senate has allocated only a piddling $2.6 million for the initiative at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and nothing at all at the Food and Drug Administration. The editorial went on to say that we needed more funding. I will quote the last paragraph of the editorial: Food safety is an unassailable cause. There are some things that only government can do, and guaranteeing the wholesomeness of our food supply is one of them. I ask unanimous consent that the editorial from the Los Angeles Times of this morning, Thursday, July 16, 1998, be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Starving Food Safety Americans now enjoying their summer picnics may suffer a glimmer of anxiety over recent outbreaks of food-borne illness: 6,500 people became sick in Illinois last month after eating commercial potato salad, and E. coli bacterial contamination occurred in fruit juice and lettuce that originated in California. Today, the U.S. Senate can take [[Page S8304]] a big step to combat food contamination by restoring all or most of the $101-million initiative the Clinton administration has proposed to improve food safety. The money would go to hire new safety inspectors, upgrade technologies and bring coherence to disjointed oversight. So far, the Senate has allocated only a piddling $2.6 million for the initiative at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and nothing at all at the Food and Drug Administration. The shame of this penny-pinching is that it comes when lawmakers are spending like drunken sailors elsewhere, for instance in the pork-laden transportation bill. The need for better food safety oversight could not be stronger. The Centers for Disease Control estimated that this year 9,000 Americans will die and millions will fall seriously ill because of tainted foods, numbers that have been growing. CDC officials aren't sure why those statistics are rising, though they suspect part of the reason may be improved detection and the increase in imported foods bearing bacteria and other pathogens to which Americans have little resistance. Food imports have doubled in the last seven years and are expected to increase by one-third in the next three years. The administration's Food Safety Initiative would get at this problem first by hiring new inspectors. Less than 2% of imported food is inspected now because the FDA's budget has not grown along with imports. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), the chairman of the Senate committee that decided not to fund the initiative at the FDA, suggested that some of the FDA's duties be delegated to states and local governments, but the increasing movement of food across state lines and national borders argues for just the opposite: a coordinated national strategy. National planning, for instance, is the only way to successfully deploy new technologies like DNA fingerprinting, which within hours allows federal inspectors to trace the genetic signature of, say, a dangerous bacterium on apples marketed in the West back to the farm where the fruit was harvested in Maine. Funding the initiative would enable federal agencies to continue efforts to install such technology in sites around the country and train workers to quickly identify and track food pathogens. And Congress needs to consider pending bills to give the FDA and the USDA the power to recall food and to create a single food safety agency to consolidate scattered oversight. Food safety in an unassilable cause. There are some things that only government can do, and guaranteeing the wholesomeness of our food supply is one of them. Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, one other thing. I listened to the comments made by the Senator from Illinois, Senator Durbin, when he very poignantly told the story of the young child who died in Illinois. I just point out again that these outbreaks are growing with rapidity and showing up in the oddest of places. For example, last month, dozens of children got sick--again, with this E. coli 0157H7--in Atlanta after swimming in a public pool. Many of these children spent time on dialysis for kidney failure. This was just last month. Now, the infection they got was the s

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AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999
(Senate - July 16, 1998)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S8297-S8330] AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999 The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill. Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I am hopeful that we can continue now with consideration of amendments of Senators who wish to offer them on the agriculture appropriations bill. We sent word out through the cloakrooms at 3 o'clock that we were prepared to conclude consideration and approve amendments, recommend acceptance of Senators' amendments, which have been brought to the attention of the managers, and those that could not be agreed upon, we would offer them for Senators and get votes on them if they wanted us to do that, or move to table them and dispose of them in that way, so that we could complete action on this bill. We need to complete action on the bill today and move on to other matters. I notice the distinguished Senator from Iowa is on the floor. He has an amendment to offer. I am happy to yield the floor to permit him to do so. Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa. Privilege of the Floor Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the privilege of the floor during the debate on the agriculture appropriations bill be granted to Sarah Lister, a member of my staff. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Amendment No. 3175 (Purpose: To provide funding for the Food Safety Initiative with an offset) Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report. The legislative clerk read as follows: The Senator from Iowa (Mr. Harkin), for himself, and Mr. Leahy, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Torricelli, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Wellstone, Ms. Mikulski, and Mrs. Murray, proposes an amendment numbered 3175. Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The amendment is as follows: On page 67, after line 23, insert the following: SEC. 7. FOOD SAFETY INITIATIVE. (a) In General.--In addition to the amounts made available under other provisions of this Act, there are appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to carry out activities described in the Food Safety Initiative submitted by the President for fiscal year 1999-- (1) $98,000 to the Chief Economist; (2) $906,000 to the Economic Research Service; (3) $8,920,000 to the Agricultural Research Service; (4) $11,000,000 to the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service; (5) $8,347,000 to the Food Safety and Inspection Service; and (6) $37,000,000 to the Food and Drug Administration. 1. Amendment of the No Net Cost Fund assessments to provide for collection of all administrative costs not previously covered and all crop insurance costs for tobacco. Section 106A of the Agricultural Act of 1949, as amended, 7 U.S.C. 1445-1(c), is hereby amended by, in (d)(7) changing ``the Secretary'' to ``the Secretary: and'' and by adding a new clause. (d)(8) read as follows: ``(8) Notwithstanding any other provision of this subsection or other law, that with respect to the 1999 and subsequent crops of tobacco for which price support is made available and for which a Fund is maintained under this section, an additional assessment shall be remitted over and above that otherwise provided for in this subsection. Such additional assessment shall be equal to: (1) the administrative costs within the Department of Agriculture that not otherwise covered under another assessment under this section or under another provision of law; and (2) any and all net losses in federal crop insurance programs for tobacco, whether those losses be on price-supported tobacco or on other tobaccos. The Secretary shall estimate those administrative and insurance costs in advance. The Secretary may make such adjustments in the assessment under this clause for future crops as are needed to cover shortfalls or over- collections. The assessment shall be applied so that the additional amount to be collected under this clause shall be the same for all price support tobaccos (and imported tobacco of like kind) which are marketed or imported into the United States during the marketing year for the crops covered by this clause. For each domestically produced pound of tobacco the assessment amount to be remitted under this clause shall be paid by the purchaser of the tobacco. On imported tobacco, the assessment shall be paid by the importer. Monies collected pursuant to this section shall be commingled with other monies in the No Net Cost Fund maintained under this section. The administrative and crop insurance costs that are taken into account in fixing the amount of the assessment shall be a claim on the Fund and shall be transferred to the appropriate account for the payment of administrative costs and insurance costs at a time determined appropriate by the Secretary. Collections under this clause shall not effect the amount of any other collection established under this section or under another provision of law but shall be enforceable in the same manner as other assessments under this section and shall be subject to the same sanctions for nonpayment.'' 2. Amendment of the No Net Cost Account assessments to provide for collection of all administrative cost not previously covered and all crop insurance costs. Section 106B of the Agricultural Act of 1949, as amended, 7 U.S.C. 1445-2, is amended by renumbering subsections ``(i)'' and ``(j)'' as ``(j)'' and ``(k)'' respectively, and by adding a new subsection ``(i)'' to read as follows: ``(i) Notwithstanding any other provision of this section or other law, the Secretary shall require with respect to the 1999 and subsequent crops of tobacco for which price support is made available and for which an Account is maintained under this section, that an additional assessment shall be remitted over and above that otherwise provided for in this subsection. Such additional assessment shall be equal to: (1) the administrative costs within the Department of Agriculture that are not otherwise covered under another assessment under this section or under another provision of law; and (2) any and all net losses in federal crop insurance programs for tobacco, whether those losses be on price-supported tobacco or on other tobaccos. The Secretary shall estimate those administrative and insurance costs in advance. The Secretary may make such adjustments in the assessments under this clause for future crops as are needed to cover shortfalls or over-collections. The assessment shall be applied so that the additional amount to be collected under this clause shall be the same for all price support tobaccos (and imported tobacco of like kind) which are marketed or imported into the United States during the marketing year for the crops covered by this clause. For each domestically produced pound of tobacco the assessment amount to be remitted under this clause shall be paid by the purchaser of the tobacco. On imported tobacco, the assessment shall be paid by the importer. Monies collected pursuant to this section shall be commingled with other monies in the No Net Cost Account maintained under this section. The administrative and crop insurance costs that are taken into account in fixing the amount of the assessment shall be a claim on the Account and shall be transferred to the appropriate account for the payment of administrative costs and insurance costs at a [[Page S8298]] time determined appropriate by the Secretary.Collections under this clause shall not effect the amount of any other collection established under this section or under another provision of law but shall be enforceable in the same manner as other assessments under this section and shall be subject to the same sanctions for nonpayment.'' 3. Elimination of the Tobacco Budget Assessment. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the provisions of Section 106(g) of the Agricultural Act of 1949, as amended, 7 USC 1445(g) shall not apply or be extended to the 1999 crops of tobacco and shall not, in any case, apply to any tobacco for which additional assessments have been rendered under Sections 1 and 2 of this Act. Section 4(g) of the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act (15 U.S.C. 714b(g)) is amended in the first sentence by striking ``$193,000,000'' and inserting ``$178,000,000''. Amend the figure on page 12 line 20 by reducing the sum by $13,500,000. Amend page 12 line 25 by striking ``law.'' and inserting in lieu thereof the following: ``law, and an additional $13,500,000 is provided to be available on October 1, 1999 under the provisions of this paragraph.'' Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, my cosponsors on this amendment are Senators Leahy, Kennedy, Torricelli, Durbin, Wellstone, Mikulski, and Murray. I want them all added as cosponsors of this amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, the amendment that I just offered would restore $66 million for the President's Food Safety Initiative, the funding of which I believe should be a national priority. I understand the constraints faced here on this subcommittee on spending. But food safety is an increasing problem in this country. As the President has pointed out, I think we ought to make food safety a priority. If there is one thing we all do, it is that we all eat. And there are few things more important than knowing that the food you are going to eat isn't going to make you sick. So this amendment really is to ensure that the health and safety of American consumers is protected, and protected even better than it has been in the past. Again, Mr. President, I don't know the reason why this is happening. But more and more frequently we are getting outbreaks of pathogens and foodborne illnesses in this country. Just last month, in June of 1998, there were 12 outbreaks of foodborne illnesses in this country. Here is the chart that depicts that. I know there are more dots here than 12. But there are 12 different outbreaks. Some outbreaks occurred in more than one State. So we had 12 different outbreaks. It affected consumers in 41 States and caused more than 7,000 illnesses. That is in the month of June of this year. That is one month. That is just the tip of the iceberg. It is estimated that there are millions of cases and over 9,000 deaths per year in this country from foodborne illnesses, including a lot of kids who need dialysis, or kidney transplants, after eating food contaminated with what now has become a well known pathogen, E. coli 0157H7. We all know that kids get it. They get deathly ill from it. Many die. Those who do not go on kidney dialysis have kidney transplants. Here is the interesting thing. This pathogen, E. coli 0157H7, we all read about. And you can talk to persons on the street and they know about E. coli 0157H7. It didn't even exist 20 years ago. So we are seeing new mutations. Twenty years ago, E. coli 0157H7 didn't even exist, and today thousands of people are getting sick and dying from it throughout the United States. The E. coli 0157H7 are the blue dots. The white dots, the green dots, and all these others--about six different ones here--E. coli 0157H7 outbreaks throughout the country in June. One other outbreak, which affected hundreds of people in 12 States, involved an unusual strain of Salmonella that came in breakfast cereals. That is the one in the red dots here you can see all over the United States. I happen to be a cereal eater. I have eaten cereal--Cheerios, Wheaties, and everything else--since I was a kid, obviously, and I am sure everyone else has. If there is one thing that you think is really safe, it is cereal. It is dry. It is roasted, toasted, baked, or something. You get it in a box, you open it, put it in the bowl, put milk on it, and you think it is safe. This is the first time that we have ever had Salmonella occur in a dry cereal. Usually you get Salmonella in raw eggs, or things like that, but not from cereal. So, as I said, there is something happening that we have not seen before in terms of the kinds of foods and the numbers of outbreaks and the new pathogens that are affecting our country. I always like to ask people when I talk about this in meetings in Iowa and other places. I say, ``How many people here have ever gone out to a restaurant to eat and you come home, you have had a nice meal out, you watch the evening news, you go to bed, and at 2 o'clock in the morning you wake up and there is a railroad train going through your stomach, and you make a bee-line for the bathroom?'' Usually people start laughing. But they are nodding their heads. A lot of those aren't even reported. And people are a little sluggish the next day, they don't feel quite right the next day, productivity goes down, but after 24 hours they are over it and move on. That is what I mean. A lot of these aren't even reported, but it happens to people every single day. If that happens to me, and I get a little upset stomach, I get a little sick, a little diarrhea the next day, or I feel a little down, I move on, think what happens to a kid. What about a child? What about someone 12, 13, or 10 years old? They are affected a lot worse than that. Or an elderly person whose immune system may not be as strong as someone my age. They are the ones who are getting hit harder and harder by these foodborne pathogens. This is really an appropriate time to be talking about this, during the middle of a hot summer, because there is another interesting thing about foodborne pathogens. In 1997, and we know in previous years the same is true, the number of foodborne illnesses always peaks in the summer, and they come down in the winter. May to September is when we get our peak. Pathogens flourish on the foods and any foods that aren't handled properly in the summer heat. So during the summertime, we see the number of incidents of foodborne pathogens going up. So this is a proper time to be talking about it, in the summer months. We can reduce the number of foodborne illnesses that we have in this country. We can reduce the incidence and severity of foodborne illnesses, and the Food Safety Initiative that the President announced will provide funding for necessary inspection, surveillance, research, and education activities at both the USDA and the FDA to improve the level of food safety in this country. I will go over each one of those. First, inspection. The amendment that I sent to the desk provides for increased spending to improve inspection. Now, what kind of inspection are we talking about? Well, the FDA inspects the 53,000 domestic food processing plants on the average of once every 10 years. That is right, on the average of once every 10 years, FDA inspects the plants that can our fruits, can our vegetables, handle our produce and fresh fruits and things like that-- about once every 10 years. Right now, FDA inspects only about 2 percent of imported produce, although consumption of these products is increasing and imported produce has been linked to several outbreaks of illnesses in recent years. So only 2 percent of imported produce is even inspected by the FDA. This amendment funds 250 new inspectors at FDA for this purpose. It will also fund a program at USDA to implement the new inspection procedures for meat inspection in State-inspected meat and poultry plants. Right now, we have a Federal system. We also have State- inspected meat and poultry plants, and this amendment would help fund the implementation of these new--HACCP, as it is called--meat inspection systems in our State-inspected meat and poultry plants. So that is the first part, inspection. The second part has to do with research and risk assessment. The Food Safety Initiative seeks new funds for research and risk assessment. The funding will lead to new rapid-testing methods to identify pathogens before they can be spread far and wide. Funding for on-farm testing will help determine where simple solutions such as vaccines can make major improvements in the safety of food. So risk assessment and research can point to [[Page S8299]] practical solutions that will get to it early on and make high-risk foods a lot safer--I mean foods that are handled a lot, foods that are used a lot in the summertime, maybe are handled and cooked outdoors, that type of thing. The third aspect of this amendment deals with education. This amendment calls for funding for education programs for farmers, food service workers, and consumers. I might just point out that consumer food safety education is crucial as traditional homemaker education in schools and at home is increasingly rare. Educating food service workers is also important as more and more of us eat out or eat take- out foods. The last part is surveillance. In the case of these outbreaks in June, extensive investigations were necessary before tainted products could be identified and recalled. The Food Safety Initiative provides new funds for the USDA and FDA to coordinate with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in identifying and controlling outbreaks of illnesses from food; in other words, get better surveillance out there to coordinate with CDC, USDA, and FDA--and that is not taking place right now--so that if you do have an outbreak, you can contain it and keep it in one locality without it spreading to other States. And that is really important. I will take this chart and again put it up here to show the outbreaks that happened in June. What you can see is, you have an outbreak of E. coli here in one State, and you see it spreading to other States, the same strain, the same packages. Why would it be in Ohio, then in Kansas, and then out here in Utah? Why would it be in those States all at the same time? We know how fast we move food around this country. You could have something slaughtered, processed, produced, and packaged in one State and 24 hours later it is being eaten halfway across the country. That is why you need good surveillance. If you find something that has happened in one locality, you can coordinate with the CDC down here in Atlanta, GA, and put the brakes on right away. We don't have that kind of in-depth coordination and surveillance right now, and this amendment would provide that. Last October at a hearing before the Senate Ag Committee, numerous producer, industry, and consumer groups called on the Federal Government to increase resources for food safety in research, education, risk assessment, and surveillance. I thought I might just quote a couple of these. Mike Doyle, Ph.D., on behalf of the American Meat Institute, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, National Broiler Council, National Food Processors Association, and the National Turkey Federation, testified last October, and he said: The problem we should be facing is how to prevent or reduce pathogens in the food supply. Research, technology and consumer education are the best and most immediate tools available. Government can be most helpful by facilitating the aggressive use of these tools to find new ways to protect consumers. A strategic plan for a prevention-oriented, farm-to-table food safety research technology development and transfer that engages the resources of the public and private sector must be developed and fully funded. Alan Janzen on behalf of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. Gregg Page, President, Red Meat Group, Cargil, Inc., on behalf of the American Meat Institute, said: Congress can help ensure that there is reality in the laws and regulations governing food safety by endorsing educational activities focused on proper cooking and handling practices and a comprehensive, coordinated and prioritized approach to food safety research. C. Manly Molpus, Grocery Manufacturers of America, in a letter dated January 19, 1998, said: With new, emerging food pathogens, FDA must have the resources to recruit scientists and fund research and surveillance. Increased resources will mean better, more focused and planned scientific research programs. So we have a lot of comments from the industry about the need to make sure that this Food Safety Initiative is, indeed, fully funded. Now, lastly, let me just point out where we get the offset for this amendment. The offset has several components. The principal one would complete the job of getting the U.S. taxpayer out of the business of supporting the production of tobacco. It is a common question I hear: If smoking is so bad and we are trying to get this tobacco bill passed around here, then why is the Government subsidizing the production of tobacco? Well, it is not supposed to be. Under the 1982 No Net Cost Tobacco legislation, the cost of the tobacco price support program is covered by assessments made by tobacco companies and growers. But that is only for the price support program. These assessments do not cover the cost to the taxpayer of crop insurance on tobacco, nor do they cover the administrative costs of the tobacco program or the various other tobacco-related activities at the USDA. The total cost of these USDA tobacco activities is about $60 million a year. Under this amendment, tobacco companies will cover the cost of these USDA tobacco activities. After all, it is the tobacco companies that benefit from having a dependable supply of tobacco available to them. So I think it is about time that we close this last little loophole and have the tobacco growers and companies pay the $60 million that the taxpayers are paying today. So that is the first part of the offset. The second one is that we get $15 million from the mandatory CCC computer account. These funds are available to the USDA to be spent for data processing and information technology services. Cutting this account will in no way reduce the ability of the USDA to prepare for the Y2K problem at all. So there is $15 million from this computer account. And, lastly, we cut $13 million from the ARS buildings and facilities account. Again, we do not propose to eliminate any building projects. Rather, we propose to delay the money that would be obligated but not spent during the fiscal year 1999. In other words, the money would be obligated, but it would not be spent. All projects would be allowed to continue development and planning of these facilities. But there is no point in appropriating money in fiscal year 1999, money that will not be spent, when there is a critical need for food safety funds to fund the Food Safety Initiative. I see two of my colleagues on the floor who have worked very hard on this Food Safety Initiative, who are strong supporters of it. I yield the floor at this time. Several Senators addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey. Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Illinois. Privilege of the Floor Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Kevin Mulry, a Brookings fellow in my office, be granted the privilege of the floor during consideration of the Harkin amendment on the agriculture appropriations bill, S. 2159. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. DURBIN. I make a second unanimous consent request, if there is no objection from the chairman, the Senator from Mississippi, since it does not appear there is another Senator on the floor, I ask unanimous consent to follow the Senator from New Jersey in making remarks in support of the Harkin amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The Senator from New Jersey. Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Harkin amendment to fund President Clinton's Food Safety Initiative. In supporting this effort to fund food safety in our country, I must admit to some surprise about the debate. Through the years in this Congress, we have had controversial debates with legitimately and strongly held different views. This is a difference of opinion that I just do not understand. It is now estimated that there are 9,000 Americans per year losing their lives because of food safety. There is a rising cost in human life and suffering because of compromises in the quality of food consumed in America. In a nation where we are accustomed to automobile accidents and crime, the leading reason in our country to visit an emergency room is because of food that you purchased and consumed. It is not [[Page S8300]] an insubstantial cost to our economy. Mr. President, 6.5 million people suffering from foodborne illness; $22 billion in cost to our economy. Two years ago, on a bipartisan basis, across philosophical lines as a national community, we came to recognize that this cost was not sustainable and mostly was not necessary. This Congress began to fund, under President Clinton's leadership, an initiative to ensure the quality and safety of our Nation's food supply. We are now about to enter into the second year of that program, which has included hiring more inspectors, enhancing surveillance and early warning, increasing research into pathogens like the E. coli bacteria, and to develop more fast, cost-efficient, and more modern detection methods. The second year is about to begin, but a preliminary judgment has been made on the budget of the Government to abandon the effort: No research, no new technology, no new inspectors--nothing. It would be a legitimately held view to come to the floor of this Senate and say, ``The President's plan has been tried and has been evaluated, it is understood, but there is a better idea.'' There may be better ideas. There is no monopoly of wisdom in constructing this plan. But to argue, in the U.S. Senate, in the face of this rising problem, that the better answer is to do nothing, confounds logic. I do not understand it--governmentally or politically. The American people may be under the impression that their food supply is safe. It is certainly true by world standards; compared with many nations, it is safe. But it is not what they believe. Mr. President, 9,000 deaths is unconscionable, but it is not even the full extent of the problem. Some years ago, like most Americans not recognizing the full extent of this problem, I heard testimony from a constituent of mine named Art O'Connell. His 23-month-old daughter, Katie, had visited a fast-food restaurant in New Jersey. The next day she wasn't feeling well. Two days later she was in a hospital. By that night her kidneys and her liver began to fail. A day later, she was dead. I thought it was about as bad a story as I could hear, and then in the same hearing I heard mothers and fathers from around America whose children had also been exposed to the E. coli bacteria, and realized that sometimes the child that dies can be the fortunate child. The E. coli bacteria will leave an infant blind, deaf, paralyzed for life. In the elderly, it can strike more quickly and also result in death. It is a crisis in our country, but it is one that will not solve itself. Indeed, it is estimated over the next decade, the death toll and the suffering from foodborne illness in America will increase by 10 to 15 percent per decade. There are, to be certain, a number of reasons--the sources of food supplies, a more complex distribution system, failures to prepare food properly, and almost certainly because of rising imports of food. Food imports since 1992 have increased by 60 percent. Yet, notably, inspections have fallen by 22 percent. There are 53,000 potential sites in America involved in the production of food for the American people-- 53,000. The United States has 700 inspectors. To place this in context, in the State of New Jersey where we operate a gaming industry, in Atlantic City, we have 14 casinos. We operate with 850 inspectors. What my State government in New Jersey is doing to assure that the roulette wheels and gaming tables of Atlantic City are safe for gamers, the United States of America is not doing for the food supply of the entire country. Mr. President, 700 inspectors for this country. To be honest, I do not argue that, even if Senator Harkin's amendment is accepted, that the Members of this Senate can face their constituents honestly and claim that this problem is being solved, no less managed. It would, in truth, require much more. Over the years, in working with Senator Durbin, we have outlined legislation that is far more comprehensive, in my judgment, much more attuned to what is required--to create a single food agency to replace the current 12 Government agencies involved in food safety, to remove agencies whose principal mission is to prevent the consumption and sale of food from inspection--to remove an inherent conflict of interest in the management of the Nation's food supply; and certainly to give the Department of Agriculture a mandatory recall authority so the moment we know there is a problem and health is endangered, we can eliminate the distribution problems. All these things are required, but we are asking for none of that today. All that Senator Harkin is asking is to fund at the commitment levels we decided on a year ago, to do the second half of a 2-year program to provide for the inspections, the technologies of this food safety program. Mr. President, many of us years ago learned of a different period in American history through the words of Upton Sinclair in his writing, ``The Jungle.'' At a time when the Federal Government was not doing little to ensure the safety of our food supply for our people, it was doing nothing. Most Americans will be surprised to learn that, as they read as a student of Upton Sinclair, the technology of food inspection has not really changed in these several generations. The principal instrument used by the U.S. Government to ensure that meat is safe is the human nose of an inspector. The second line of defense is his eyesight. As food comes down the assembly line, assuring that it is safe is based on the instinct of those inspectors, albeit inspecting 2 percent of the Nation's imported food supply. Part of this program is to advance the technologies which we are using in every other aspect of American life, the extraordinary technologies of our time which uniquely, incredibly and inexplicably are not being used on a very item of life and death of our citizens-- our food supply. This program will develop and advance those technologies. New pathogens are being found all the time. The E. coli bacteria itself is changing. This program will research to understand those pathogens, to use our technology to defeat them in biomedicine. As the Senator from Iowa has said, we also need enhanced surveillance. Because we live in a time when the food supply of one State can appear in another State within hours, a single source of contaminated food can be across America in days. We need to track it through surveillance to find it and eliminate it. Of course, as I suggested, we need more inspectors to also ensure the presence of the Government is there. All we are doing is attempting to fulfill what the American people believe they already have. Most Americans, if you were to ask them today, would tell you: ``Yes, there's a Federal inspector where that meat is produced, those fruits and vegetables, that syrup, they are there, and we are using the best technology and we are understanding the pathogens.'' We are asking that this Senate help fund that which we committed to 2 years ago and that which the American people already believe exists. Finally, there is ample time for us to disagree on many issues. There are legitimate concerns about which we can differ. If ever there was an issue about which we could come together in common cause, this is that issue. This is not an expansion of Government power, it is a power which the Government has had for all the 20th century. It is not draining significant resources we do not have. It is $100 million in a modest program. I am proud to join with Senator Harkin, Senator Durbin and Senator Kennedy in offering this amendment. I hope we can receive an affirmative vote and proceed with this program and avoid all that suffering, which is just so unnecessary, and begin to turn the corner on dealing with this very important problem. Mr. President, I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from Illinois is recognized. Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, first I thank my colleague from New Jersey for his fine statement, as well as my colleague from Iowa. The Senator from New Jersey and I have introduced legislation which attempts to streamline this entire process. It is mind-boggling to try to come to grips with the many different agencies and laws that apply to food safety inspection in America. Though that is not the object of the amendment of the Senator from Iowa, it is something which I hope on another day the Senate will address. To [[Page S8301]] think that there are some six different Federal agencies with the responsibility of food inspection, some 35 different laws and a crazy quilt of jurisdiction which not only wastes taxpayers' dollars, but creates risk for consumers is unacceptable. What we address today is more immediate, different than a change of jurisdiction within agencies. It is to address the immediate need to assure the consumers of America that its Government is doing all in its power to protect them at their family tables. This issue first came to my attention about 3 or 4 years ago. I certainly heard about the E. coli outbreaks in Jack-in-the-Box and the others that were well publicized, but I received a letter when I was a Member of the House of Representatives from a lady in Chicago. I didn't represent the city, but she sent me a letter when she heard we were debating modernizing our food inspection system. In this handwritten letter, Nancy Donley of Chicago told the tragic story of going to the local grocery store to buy hamburger for her 6- year-old son Alex, coming home and preparing it. Alex ate the hamburger and within a few days was dead, dead from E. coli-contaminated hamburger, which led to one of the most gruesome episodes one can imagine. Your heart breaks to think of a mother and father standing helplessly by a hospital bed wondering what is taking the life away from this little boy whom they love so much. She tells in graphic detail how Alex's body organ by organ shut down until he finally expired because of contamination in a food product. It brought to my attention an issue which I had not thought about for a long time, because you see, unlike some Members of the Senate, I have some personal knowledge when it comes to this issue, not just because I eat, which all of us do, but 30 years ago, I worked my way through college working in a slaughterhouse in East St. Louis, IL. I spent 12 months of my life there, and I saw the meat inspection process and the meat processing firsthand. I still eat meat, and I still believe America has the safest food supply in the world, but I am convinced that we need to do more. The world has changed in 30 years. The distribution network of food in the United States has changed. When I was a young boy, it was a local butcher shop buying from a local farmer processing for my family. Now look at it--nationwide and worldwide distribution, sometimes of a great product but sometimes of a great problem. That some contaminated beef last year led to the greatest meat recall in our history is just a suggestion of the scope of this problem. A contamination in one plant in one city can literally become a national problem. This chart that Senator Harkin of Iowa brought before us doesn't tell what happened across the United States in 1 year. It tells us what happened in 1 month, June of 1998. These were the outbreaks and recalls in the United States of America. I am sorry to say, with the possible exception of New York, my home State of Illinois was hit the hardest, for you see, we had over 6,000 people in the Chicago area who were felled by some food-related illness that might have been associated with potato salad--6,000 people. We are still searching to find exactly what caused it. We had a hearing with Senator Collins of Maine just a few days ago in the Governmental Affairs Committee which took a look at the importation of fruits and vegetables. She focused--and I think it was an excellent hearing--on Guatemalan raspberries that came into the United States contaminated with cyclospora, and, of course, caused illnesses for many people across the United States. The fascinating thing, the challenging part of that testimony was that if you look at our inspection process today, there is no way for us to detect the presence of that bacteria, nor is it easy for any doctor to diagnose a person as having been stricken by that illness. As we trace those imports in the United States of fruits and vegetables, we find that we face a new challenge in addition to this broadening distribution network. It is a challenge where our appetites have changed, and where we enjoy the bounty of produce from all over the world. So our concerns which used to be focused on the United States and partially on imported fruits and vegetables have expanded dramatically. Now we worry about imported fruits and vegetables from the far corners of the world. We worry about contaminations which we never heard of before which could, in fact, affect literally millions of Americans. The challenge of food inspection is changing dramatically. Let me give you another illustration about what is happening. Most of us can recall, when we were children, when mom would bake a cake or make cookies, and she finished putting it all together, and you were standing dutifully by waiting for the cookies or the cake, she would hand you the mixing bowl--and you would reach in with a spoon or spatula and taste a little bit of the dough, cake batter, whatever it might be. As you see, I did that many times; and I appreciated it very much. You know, now that is dangerous. You know why it is dangerous? Because of the raw eggs that are part of the mix. It used to be that the salmonella was traced to the shell of the egg, so if the shell fell in the batter, you would say, ``Oh, that's something we need to be concerned about.'' But, sadly, within the last few years they have found the salmonella inside the egg. So you can never be certain handing that mixing bowl to a tiny tot in the kitchen that you are not inviting a foodborne illness that could be very serious. Things are changing. We need to change with them. When President Clinton stepped forward and said, ``America's concerned about this problem and American families realize they can't protect themselves as individuals, they're counting on us to do the job,'' he challenged us to fund it. Sadly, we are not funding it in this bill. That is why the Senator from Iowa, Senator Harkin, Senator Kennedy, Senator Torricelli, and I are offering this amendment to increase the funds. What will we do with them? First, increase the number of inspectors. We clearly need more people on the borders taking at look at the process and the fresh food coming into the United States. I have been there. I have been to Nogales, Mexico, Nogales, AZ. I have seen that border crossing. I have followed the FDA inspection all the way from the trucks to the samples taken into the laboratory in Los Angeles, CA, to be tested; and I can tell you that, though it is good, it is far from perfect. In most instances, by the time they have tested that sample of fruits or sample of vegetables, and if they find anything wrong with it, it is long gone, it is already on the grocery shelves somewhere in America. Oh, they are going to be more watchful the next time around, but they cannot protect us with the resources presently available. President Clinton said we can do more, and we should do more. We also need to look into this whole question of surveillance. As we noted here, this distribution system around the Nation really calls on us to move quickly. If we find a problem at a processing plant in my home State of Illinois, we need to know very quickly whether or not it has been spread across the United States so that recalls can take place. We need more research, too, research on these foodborne illnesses, how they can be averted and avoided. I think we can achieve that, as we should. The Senator from New Jersey had the most telling statistic: 53,000 different food production sites around America, 700 inspectors. We will never have an inspector for every site. We certainly can do better than we have at the present time. Let me also say that the offset that the Senator from Iowa is offering to us is a very good one. I am personally aware of it because a large part of it represents an amendment which I have offered for several years, first in the House and then in the Senate. It answers a question which virtually all of us, as politicians--Senators and Members of Congress--face. How many times I have gone into a town meeting and someone raises their hand and says, ``Senator, let me ask you a question. If you tell us that tobacco is so dangerous, why does the Federal Government subsidize it?'' Well, I will tell you, there is not a very good answer to that question. [[Page S8302]] This amendment being offered by the Senator from Iowa finally puts to rest and answers that question. We are going to stop subsidizing the growing of tobacco in America. We are going to stop asking taxpayers across the United States to pay for a subsidy to the tobacco-growing industry. I have offered this amendment before. I have never had a better use of it than what the Senator from Iowa is offering today. Take the taxpayers' money now being invested in the cultivation and growth of this deadly product, tobacco, take that money, put it into food safety. There is a real justice to this amendment and what the Senator is offering so that we can say to people, we are not only stopping this Federal subsidy of the cultivation of tobacco, we are trying to protect children, the elderly, and those who have some health problems that may make them particularly vulnerable. So I heartily support the offset which is being offered by the Senator from Iowa. Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield? Mr. DURBIN. I am happy to yield. Mr. HARKIN. I want to make it clear for the Record that the Senator from Illinois, Senator Durbin, has been the leader in going after this aspect of the taxpayer funding of tobacco at USDA for years. So I just thank the Senator for letting me capitalize on that and use this money that he has tried so valiantly over the years to stop--to use that for this offset for the Food Safety Initiative. I appreciate the Senator's support and his willingness to let us use the offset that he has been trying to kill for years, because it really is unfair for the taxpayers of this country to spend $60 million every year in support of USDA activities that go to help grow more tobacco in this country. If they want to do it, let the tobacco companies fund it themselves. I thank the Senator for his years on this effort in this regard. Mr. DURBIN. Let me say to the Senator from Iowa, I am happy to join him in this effort. We could not think of a better investment of this money than to take it away from the promotion of a product which causes so much death and disease and put it into the kind of health initiative which the Senator from Iowa has suggested. Let me just say this: Mark my words. Within a few weeks we will read in the newspapers again of some outbreak of food contamination and food illness. We will be alarmed and saddened by the stories of the vulnerable--the children, the elderly, and those who are in a frail medical condition who have become victims because of it. Each of us, in our own way, if it affects our State will express our outrage, our disappointment; and we will promise that we will do something about it. Well, let us be honest. This is the amendment that might do something about it. We can give these speeches--and we will-- but the real question is, Are we prepared to back up our concern in front of a television camera with our votes on the floor of the U.S. Senate? The Senator from Iowa is offering us an opportunity to really be certain that the American people understand what our commitment is to this important issue. I thank him for his commitment. I am happy to join him as a cosponsor of this amendment. I yield back the remainder of my time. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. Privilege of the Floor Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that floor privileges during the debate on the agriculture appropriations bill be granted to Diane Robertson, Stacey Sachs, and Mary Reichman. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I join in thanking my friend and colleague from Iowa, Senator Harkin, and Senator Durbin, and others, for providing the leadership in what I consider to be one of the most important amendments introduced as part of this legislation. I hope that we will be successful, because it addresses a problem that has been outlined by my colleagues on the floor of the Senate about what has been happening in our food supply over recent years. What we have seen, Mr. President, over the period of the last 5 years, has been the doubling of imported food into the United States. We expect that the food that has come into the United States will double again over the next 5 years. We are finding that a third of all of the fruit, and over half of the seafood consumed in this country is being imported into the United States. And those figures are going to grow over the next 5 years. At the same time, we have seen a significant reduction in resources dedicated to inspections. Over the period of the last 5 years, there has been a 22-percent reduction of support for inspections and food safety in the Food and Drug Administration. The Department of Agriculture has primary responsibility for meat and poultry. The Food and Drug Administration has primary responsibility for inspection of all other food. The increase in imports in these other food categories--produce, seafood, etc.--inspected by FDA would be one factor which could justify the increase that is included in the Harkin amendment. But that really does not tell the whole story, Mr. President. To understand the whole story, we have to understand the very dramatic changes which have taken place in terms of our food supply. For example, let's look at E. coli, which occurs naturally in our bodies. In the last 20 years, E. coli has mutated to be more virulent and even deadly. This was illustrated today by my friend and colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin, and illustrated by the food disease outbreaks that we have seen from January to July of 1998. We are not just saying that the appropriations haven't kept up with the need, as important as that is, and that ought to justify it, but there are dramatic differences in the eating habits of the American people. More people are eating out. More people are eating products that are coming from different countries. More Americans are storing their food over longer periods of time. All of this is having an impact in terms of the increased risk from foodborne pathogens and the increased occurrence of foodborne illness. The bottom line, Mr. President, is that foodborne diseases are much, much more dangerous today than they were 3 years ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago. You are getting a change in quantity and the severity of the illnesses, the virulence of foodborne pathogens and their impact on human beings. Antimicrobial resistance contributes to this phenomenon, and those in the pharmaceutical industry see it every single day. They believe that this is one of the very significant new phenomena in the whole area of health science. It is reflected in the severity of these illnesses. They are deadly today. They don't just give you a stomach ache; they kill you. That is why I believe this amendment is of enormous importance. We need to have the kind of support that this amendment provides, to make sure that we, as Americans, are going to have the safest food supply in the world. We do. But it is threatened. For us not to understand the risk is foolishness. I believe this amendment, with its offsets, is justifiable and of enormous importance. I thank the Senator from Iowa for his leadership in this area. I commend him for his legislation and for the seriousness with which he has approached it and for his constancy in pursuit of it. We are very much in your debt. Even with this, Mr. President, I think all of us have a responsibility of watching, and watching carefully, what is happening to our food supply as we move ahead in these next months and years. Tragically, if we fail to do this, and we see the kind of tragedies that are bound to take place, we will have, once again, I think, in an important way, failed to meet our responsibilities to provide protections for the American people in the most basic and fundamental way. Every day, more Americans are stricken with food poisoning. Children and the elderly are especially at risk. Outbreaks of foodborne illness are increasing. The toxicity of bacteria is increasing. Yet resources to combat these festering problems are decreasing. Without additional resources, FDA and the Department of Agriculture cannot act effectively to prevent these illnesses. The American public deserves better. [[Page S8303]] In the last two months: over 400 people became ill and 74 were hospitalized in 21 states from Salmonella in dry cereal; 6,500 people in Illinois became ill from salad contaminated with E. coli; 40 people became ill and almost half were hospitalized because of an outbreak of E. coli in cheese; and over 300 people became ill in six states from bacteria in oysters. These cases are a small sample. According to the Congressional General Accounting Office, foodborne illnesses affect up to 80 million citizens a year and cause 9,000 deaths. Medical costs and lost productivity are estimated at $30 billion. This is not a problem that we can ignore. Michael Osterholm, state epidemiologist for the Minnesota Department of Health, condemned the lack of action after a recent outbreak in the state. He said that, ``If we don't do better, and we don't give the FDA more money, more events like this are going to happen. Right now, we don't seem to have the resources or the will to keep something like this from happening again. As long as we don't, we will have other outbreaks.'' The old wisdom does not apply. You can't just cook your food more thoroughly to avoid these illnesses. Harmful bacteria are appearing in virtually all food products--juice, lettuce, even cereal. Our amendment will provide $73 million in additional funds to support greater monitoring, education, research, and enforcement to address this growing problem. We have the ability to prevent most foodborne illnesses. Improved monitoring allows earlier detection and an earlier response to outbreaks. Increased food inspections are needed to keep unsafe food out of our stores and off our dining room tables. Expanded research is needed to detect and identify dangerous organisms likely to contaminate food. The need is especially great with respect to imports of fresh produce and vegetables. Our amendment will provide the resources needed to perform these essential activities. It will mean 150 new inspectors for FDA to focus on food imports, which have more than doubled since 1992. Yet during that same period, FDA resources devoted to imported foods dropped by 22 percent. As a result, FDA now inspects less than 2 percent of imported food. Clearly, we have to do better. Our amendment would also provide funds to enhance ``early warning'' and monitoring systems needed to detect and respond to outbreaks. These systems will also provide information to prevent future outbreaks. Early detection and control are essential to ensure the safety of every American. In addition, our amendment will fund research essential to understand dangerous organisms in food. Many cannot be identified today. Others have developed resistance to traditional methods of preserving food. Still others have developed resistance to antibiotics. Clearly, additional research is needed to protect the food supply. We have broad support for this amendment. The food industry, consumer groups and the public all favor increased funding. Food safety affects every American every day. Without additional resources, we will continue to see the escalation of these outbreaks. Congress must act to ensure the safety of the food supply for all Americans. The American people deserve to know that the food they eat is safe, no matter where it is grown, processed, or packaged. I thank the Senator and urge our colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. HARKIN. I want to thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his kind words. But more than that, I want to thank him for his efforts through the years to make sure we had a Food and Drug Administration that was on the side of consumers in this country, a strong Food and Drug Administration that made sure that we could have confidence when we went to the drugstore or to the grocery store to get our food, drugs and medicine, that they would indeed be safe. I want to thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his leadership in that area and thank him for his kind and generous support of this amendment. Everything he said is right on mark. It is not just the consumers, I say to my friend from Massachusetts. I earlier had some comments from people representing the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the Cattlemen's Beef Association, the Broiler Council, the National Food Processors Association, all of whom basically said we need better surveillance, we need better risk assessment, we need better education out there. That is what this amendment does. It is the processors, the wholesalers--everyone recognizes that this is a new phenomenon, as the Senator from Massachusetts said, something new we have not experienced in the past. Everyone recognizes the need to get on top of this. Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield? Biologically, we have E. coli in our bodies, and humankind has always had E. coli, but it was not the deadly strain we are seeing today. Twenty years ago we were not even aware of the E. coli O157:H7 strain that is deadly, and we increasingly see this deadly strain. How many more outbreaks do we have to have before we act? This is why I think this amendment is so important, because of the increased danger that these outbreaks pose for our people. Particularly vulnerable are the children and the seniors. With the offset that you have proposed, I cannot understand the reluctance to protect the consumer, rather than taking our chances. I find it difficult to understand why we wouldn't have it accepted. Mr. HARKIN. You are right about E. coli. I counted up in June of this year, this last month, and we had six E. coli outbreaks of food poisoning in this country, of a strain of E. coli that didn't exist 20 years ago. It wasn't there. And now it is here. It is not only making people sick, but killing kids. There are new pathogens that become more virulent. The surveillance systems we have in place and the risk assessment and the other inspection systems we have--the FDA, as the Senator knows, only on average inspects our food processing plants once every 10 years. Mr. KENNEDY. It is less than 2 percent of the imported products that are being inspected; 2 percent. We are seeing a doubling of the imported foods that are coming into this country and from a greater number of countries around the world. We are looking at less than 2 percent and the number of imports will be doubling. Mr. HARKIN. I wonder how many consumers know that only 2 percent of all the produce they eat that comes from outside this country is ever inspected--2 percent. The rest of it, who knows what is on that stuff when it comes to this country. The consumers don't know this. And as the Senator said, it will go up in the future. We will get more and more of that produce from other countries. That is why this is really needed. I thank the Senator for his support and his comments on this. Mr. President, there is an editorial that appeared in today's Los Angeles Times that I was just made aware, calling on us to do something about food safety. Obviously, they probably didn't know about my amendment. But they did say. . . . the U.S. Senate can take a big step to combat food contamination by restoring all or most of the $101-million initiative the Clinton administration has proposed to improve food safety. The money would go to hire new safety inspectors, upgrade technologies, and bring coherence to disjointed oversight. So far, The Senate has allocated only a piddling $2.6 million for the initiative at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and nothing at all at the Food and Drug Administration. The editorial went on to say that we needed more funding. I will quote the last paragraph of the editorial: Food safety is an unassailable cause. There are some things that only government can do, and guaranteeing the wholesomeness of our food supply is one of them. I ask unanimous consent that the editorial from the Los Angeles Times of this morning, Thursday, July 16, 1998, be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Starving Food Safety Americans now enjoying their summer picnics may suffer a glimmer of anxiety over recent outbreaks of food-borne illness: 6,500 people became sick in Illinois last month after eating commercial potato salad, and E. coli bacterial contamination occurred in fruit juice and lettuce that originated in California. Today, the U.S. Senate can take [[Page S8304]] a big step to combat food contamination by restoring all or most of the $101-million initiative the Clinton administration has proposed to improve food safety. The money would go to hire new safety inspectors, upgrade technologies and bring coherence to disjointed oversight. So far, the Senate has allocated only a piddling $2.6 million for the initiative at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and nothing at all at the Food and Drug Administration. The shame of this penny-pinching is that it comes when lawmakers are spending like drunken sailors elsewhere, for instance in the pork-laden transportation bill. The need for better food safety oversight could not be stronger. The Centers for Disease Control estimated that this year 9,000 Americans will die and millions will fall seriously ill because of tainted foods, numbers that have been growing. CDC officials aren't sure why those statistics are rising, though they suspect part of the reason may be improved detection and the increase in imported foods bearing bacteria and other pathogens to which Americans have little resistance. Food imports have doubled in the last seven years and are expected to increase by one-third in the next three years. The administration's Food Safety Initiative would get at this problem first by hiring new inspectors. Less than 2% of imported food is inspected now because the FDA's budget has not grown along with imports. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), the chairman of the Senate committee that decided not to fund the initiative at the FDA, suggested that some of the FDA's duties be delegated to states and local governments, but the increasing movement of food across state lines and national borders argues for just the opposite: a coordinated national strategy. National planning, for instance, is the only way to successfully deploy new technologies like DNA fingerprinting, which within hours allows federal inspectors to trace the genetic signature of, say, a dangerous bacterium on apples marketed in the West back to the farm where the fruit was harvested in Maine. Funding the initiative would enable federal agencies to continue efforts to install such technology in sites around the country and train workers to quickly identify and track food pathogens. And Congress needs to consider pending bills to give the FDA and the USDA the power to recall food and to create a single food safety agency to consolidate scattered oversight. Food safety in an unassilable cause. There are some things that only government can do, and guaranteeing the wholesomeness of our food supply is one of them. Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, one other thing. I listened to the comments made by the Senator from Illinois, Senator Durbin, when he very poignantly told the story of the young child who died in Illinois. I just point out again that these outbreaks are growing with rapidity and showing up in the oddest of places. For example, last month, dozens of children got sick--again, with this E. coli 0157H7--in Atlanta after swimming in a public pool. Many of these children spent time on dialysis for kidney failure. This was just last month. Now, the infection they got was the same strai

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AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999
(Senate - July 16, 1998)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S8297-S8330] AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999 The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill. Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I am hopeful that we can continue now with consideration of amendments of Senators who wish to offer them on the agriculture appropriations bill. We sent word out through the cloakrooms at 3 o'clock that we were prepared to conclude consideration and approve amendments, recommend acceptance of Senators' amendments, which have been brought to the attention of the managers, and those that could not be agreed upon, we would offer them for Senators and get votes on them if they wanted us to do that, or move to table them and dispose of them in that way, so that we could complete action on this bill. We need to complete action on the bill today and move on to other matters. I notice the distinguished Senator from Iowa is on the floor. He has an amendment to offer. I am happy to yield the floor to permit him to do so. Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa. Privilege of the Floor Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the privilege of the floor during the debate on the agriculture appropriations bill be granted to Sarah Lister, a member of my staff. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Amendment No. 3175 (Purpose: To provide funding for the Food Safety Initiative with an offset) Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report. The legislative clerk read as follows: The Senator from Iowa (Mr. Harkin), for himself, and Mr. Leahy, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Torricelli, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Wellstone, Ms. Mikulski, and Mrs. Murray, proposes an amendment numbered 3175. Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The amendment is as follows: On page 67, after line 23, insert the following: SEC. 7. FOOD SAFETY INITIATIVE. (a) In General.--In addition to the amounts made available under other provisions of this Act, there are appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to carry out activities described in the Food Safety Initiative submitted by the President for fiscal year 1999-- (1) $98,000 to the Chief Economist; (2) $906,000 to the Economic Research Service; (3) $8,920,000 to the Agricultural Research Service; (4) $11,000,000 to the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service; (5) $8,347,000 to the Food Safety and Inspection Service; and (6) $37,000,000 to the Food and Drug Administration. 1. Amendment of the No Net Cost Fund assessments to provide for collection of all administrative costs not previously covered and all crop insurance costs for tobacco. Section 106A of the Agricultural Act of 1949, as amended, 7 U.S.C. 1445-1(c), is hereby amended by, in (d)(7) changing ``the Secretary'' to ``the Secretary: and'' and by adding a new clause. (d)(8) read as follows: ``(8) Notwithstanding any other provision of this subsection or other law, that with respect to the 1999 and subsequent crops of tobacco for which price support is made available and for which a Fund is maintained under this section, an additional assessment shall be remitted over and above that otherwise provided for in this subsection. Such additional assessment shall be equal to: (1) the administrative costs within the Department of Agriculture that not otherwise covered under another assessment under this section or under another provision of law; and (2) any and all net losses in federal crop insurance programs for tobacco, whether those losses be on price-supported tobacco or on other tobaccos. The Secretary shall estimate those administrative and insurance costs in advance. The Secretary may make such adjustments in the assessment under this clause for future crops as are needed to cover shortfalls or over- collections. The assessment shall be applied so that the additional amount to be collected under this clause shall be the same for all price support tobaccos (and imported tobacco of like kind) which are marketed or imported into the United States during the marketing year for the crops covered by this clause. For each domestically produced pound of tobacco the assessment amount to be remitted under this clause shall be paid by the purchaser of the tobacco. On imported tobacco, the assessment shall be paid by the importer. Monies collected pursuant to this section shall be commingled with other monies in the No Net Cost Fund maintained under this section. The administrative and crop insurance costs that are taken into account in fixing the amount of the assessment shall be a claim on the Fund and shall be transferred to the appropriate account for the payment of administrative costs and insurance costs at a time determined appropriate by the Secretary. Collections under this clause shall not effect the amount of any other collection established under this section or under another provision of law but shall be enforceable in the same manner as other assessments under this section and shall be subject to the same sanctions for nonpayment.'' 2. Amendment of the No Net Cost Account assessments to provide for collection of all administrative cost not previously covered and all crop insurance costs. Section 106B of the Agricultural Act of 1949, as amended, 7 U.S.C. 1445-2, is amended by renumbering subsections ``(i)'' and ``(j)'' as ``(j)'' and ``(k)'' respectively, and by adding a new subsection ``(i)'' to read as follows: ``(i) Notwithstanding any other provision of this section or other law, the Secretary shall require with respect to the 1999 and subsequent crops of tobacco for which price support is made available and for which an Account is maintained under this section, that an additional assessment shall be remitted over and above that otherwise provided for in this subsection. Such additional assessment shall be equal to: (1) the administrative costs within the Department of Agriculture that are not otherwise covered under another assessment under this section or under another provision of law; and (2) any and all net losses in federal crop insurance programs for tobacco, whether those losses be on price-supported tobacco or on other tobaccos. The Secretary shall estimate those administrative and insurance costs in advance. The Secretary may make such adjustments in the assessments under this clause for future crops as are needed to cover shortfalls or over-collections. The assessment shall be applied so that the additional amount to be collected under this clause shall be the same for all price support tobaccos (and imported tobacco of like kind) which are marketed or imported into the United States during the marketing year for the crops covered by this clause. For each domestically produced pound of tobacco the assessment amount to be remitted under this clause shall be paid by the purchaser of the tobacco. On imported tobacco, the assessment shall be paid by the importer. Monies collected pursuant to this section shall be commingled with other monies in the No Net Cost Account maintained under this section. The administrative and crop insurance costs that are taken into account in fixing the amount of the assessment shall be a claim on the Account and shall be transferred to the appropriate account for the payment of administrative costs and insurance costs at a [[Page S8298]] time determined appropriate by the Secretary.Collections under this clause shall not effect the amount of any other collection established under this section or under another provision of law but shall be enforceable in the same manner as other assessments under this section and shall be subject to the same sanctions for nonpayment.'' 3. Elimination of the Tobacco Budget Assessment. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the provisions of Section 106(g) of the Agricultural Act of 1949, as amended, 7 USC 1445(g) shall not apply or be extended to the 1999 crops of tobacco and shall not, in any case, apply to any tobacco for which additional assessments have been rendered under Sections 1 and 2 of this Act. Section 4(g) of the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act (15 U.S.C. 714b(g)) is amended in the first sentence by striking ``$193,000,000'' and inserting ``$178,000,000''. Amend the figure on page 12 line 20 by reducing the sum by $13,500,000. Amend page 12 line 25 by striking ``law.'' and inserting in lieu thereof the following: ``law, and an additional $13,500,000 is provided to be available on October 1, 1999 under the provisions of this paragraph.'' Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, my cosponsors on this amendment are Senators Leahy, Kennedy, Torricelli, Durbin, Wellstone, Mikulski, and Murray. I want them all added as cosponsors of this amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, the amendment that I just offered would restore $66 million for the President's Food Safety Initiative, the funding of which I believe should be a national priority. I understand the constraints faced here on this subcommittee on spending. But food safety is an increasing problem in this country. As the President has pointed out, I think we ought to make food safety a priority. If there is one thing we all do, it is that we all eat. And there are few things more important than knowing that the food you are going to eat isn't going to make you sick. So this amendment really is to ensure that the health and safety of American consumers is protected, and protected even better than it has been in the past. Again, Mr. President, I don't know the reason why this is happening. But more and more frequently we are getting outbreaks of pathogens and foodborne illnesses in this country. Just last month, in June of 1998, there were 12 outbreaks of foodborne illnesses in this country. Here is the chart that depicts that. I know there are more dots here than 12. But there are 12 different outbreaks. Some outbreaks occurred in more than one State. So we had 12 different outbreaks. It affected consumers in 41 States and caused more than 7,000 illnesses. That is in the month of June of this year. That is one month. That is just the tip of the iceberg. It is estimated that there are millions of cases and over 9,000 deaths per year in this country from foodborne illnesses, including a lot of kids who need dialysis, or kidney transplants, after eating food contaminated with what now has become a well known pathogen, E. coli 0157H7. We all know that kids get it. They get deathly ill from it. Many die. Those who do not go on kidney dialysis have kidney transplants. Here is the interesting thing. This pathogen, E. coli 0157H7, we all read about. And you can talk to persons on the street and they know about E. coli 0157H7. It didn't even exist 20 years ago. So we are seeing new mutations. Twenty years ago, E. coli 0157H7 didn't even exist, and today thousands of people are getting sick and dying from it throughout the United States. The E. coli 0157H7 are the blue dots. The white dots, the green dots, and all these others--about six different ones here--E. coli 0157H7 outbreaks throughout the country in June. One other outbreak, which affected hundreds of people in 12 States, involved an unusual strain of Salmonella that came in breakfast cereals. That is the one in the red dots here you can see all over the United States. I happen to be a cereal eater. I have eaten cereal--Cheerios, Wheaties, and everything else--since I was a kid, obviously, and I am sure everyone else has. If there is one thing that you think is really safe, it is cereal. It is dry. It is roasted, toasted, baked, or something. You get it in a box, you open it, put it in the bowl, put milk on it, and you think it is safe. This is the first time that we have ever had Salmonella occur in a dry cereal. Usually you get Salmonella in raw eggs, or things like that, but not from cereal. So, as I said, there is something happening that we have not seen before in terms of the kinds of foods and the numbers of outbreaks and the new pathogens that are affecting our country. I always like to ask people when I talk about this in meetings in Iowa and other places. I say, ``How many people here have ever gone out to a restaurant to eat and you come home, you have had a nice meal out, you watch the evening news, you go to bed, and at 2 o'clock in the morning you wake up and there is a railroad train going through your stomach, and you make a bee-line for the bathroom?'' Usually people start laughing. But they are nodding their heads. A lot of those aren't even reported. And people are a little sluggish the next day, they don't feel quite right the next day, productivity goes down, but after 24 hours they are over it and move on. That is what I mean. A lot of these aren't even reported, but it happens to people every single day. If that happens to me, and I get a little upset stomach, I get a little sick, a little diarrhea the next day, or I feel a little down, I move on, think what happens to a kid. What about a child? What about someone 12, 13, or 10 years old? They are affected a lot worse than that. Or an elderly person whose immune system may not be as strong as someone my age. They are the ones who are getting hit harder and harder by these foodborne pathogens. This is really an appropriate time to be talking about this, during the middle of a hot summer, because there is another interesting thing about foodborne pathogens. In 1997, and we know in previous years the same is true, the number of foodborne illnesses always peaks in the summer, and they come down in the winter. May to September is when we get our peak. Pathogens flourish on the foods and any foods that aren't handled properly in the summer heat. So during the summertime, we see the number of incidents of foodborne pathogens going up. So this is a proper time to be talking about it, in the summer months. We can reduce the number of foodborne illnesses that we have in this country. We can reduce the incidence and severity of foodborne illnesses, and the Food Safety Initiative that the President announced will provide funding for necessary inspection, surveillance, research, and education activities at both the USDA and the FDA to improve the level of food safety in this country. I will go over each one of those. First, inspection. The amendment that I sent to the desk provides for increased spending to improve inspection. Now, what kind of inspection are we talking about? Well, the FDA inspects the 53,000 domestic food processing plants on the average of once every 10 years. That is right, on the average of once every 10 years, FDA inspects the plants that can our fruits, can our vegetables, handle our produce and fresh fruits and things like that-- about once every 10 years. Right now, FDA inspects only about 2 percent of imported produce, although consumption of these products is increasing and imported produce has been linked to several outbreaks of illnesses in recent years. So only 2 percent of imported produce is even inspected by the FDA. This amendment funds 250 new inspectors at FDA for this purpose. It will also fund a program at USDA to implement the new inspection procedures for meat inspection in State-inspected meat and poultry plants. Right now, we have a Federal system. We also have State- inspected meat and poultry plants, and this amendment would help fund the implementation of these new--HACCP, as it is called--meat inspection systems in our State-inspected meat and poultry plants. So that is the first part, inspection. The second part has to do with research and risk assessment. The Food Safety Initiative seeks new funds for research and risk assessment. The funding will lead to new rapid-testing methods to identify pathogens before they can be spread far and wide. Funding for on-farm testing will help determine where simple solutions such as vaccines can make major improvements in the safety of food. So risk assessment and research can point to [[Page S8299]] practical solutions that will get to it early on and make high-risk foods a lot safer--I mean foods that are handled a lot, foods that are used a lot in the summertime, maybe are handled and cooked outdoors, that type of thing. The third aspect of this amendment deals with education. This amendment calls for funding for education programs for farmers, food service workers, and consumers. I might just point out that consumer food safety education is crucial as traditional homemaker education in schools and at home is increasingly rare. Educating food service workers is also important as more and more of us eat out or eat take- out foods. The last part is surveillance. In the case of these outbreaks in June, extensive investigations were necessary before tainted products could be identified and recalled. The Food Safety Initiative provides new funds for the USDA and FDA to coordinate with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in identifying and controlling outbreaks of illnesses from food; in other words, get better surveillance out there to coordinate with CDC, USDA, and FDA--and that is not taking place right now--so that if you do have an outbreak, you can contain it and keep it in one locality without it spreading to other States. And that is really important. I will take this chart and again put it up here to show the outbreaks that happened in June. What you can see is, you have an outbreak of E. coli here in one State, and you see it spreading to other States, the same strain, the same packages. Why would it be in Ohio, then in Kansas, and then out here in Utah? Why would it be in those States all at the same time? We know how fast we move food around this country. You could have something slaughtered, processed, produced, and packaged in one State and 24 hours later it is being eaten halfway across the country. That is why you need good surveillance. If you find something that has happened in one locality, you can coordinate with the CDC down here in Atlanta, GA, and put the brakes on right away. We don't have that kind of in-depth coordination and surveillance right now, and this amendment would provide that. Last October at a hearing before the Senate Ag Committee, numerous producer, industry, and consumer groups called on the Federal Government to increase resources for food safety in research, education, risk assessment, and surveillance. I thought I might just quote a couple of these. Mike Doyle, Ph.D., on behalf of the American Meat Institute, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, National Broiler Council, National Food Processors Association, and the National Turkey Federation, testified last October, and he said: The problem we should be facing is how to prevent or reduce pathogens in the food supply. Research, technology and consumer education are the best and most immediate tools available. Government can be most helpful by facilitating the aggressive use of these tools to find new ways to protect consumers. A strategic plan for a prevention-oriented, farm-to-table food safety research technology development and transfer that engages the resources of the public and private sector must be developed and fully funded. Alan Janzen on behalf of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. Gregg Page, President, Red Meat Group, Cargil, Inc., on behalf of the American Meat Institute, said: Congress can help ensure that there is reality in the laws and regulations governing food safety by endorsing educational activities focused on proper cooking and handling practices and a comprehensive, coordinated and prioritized approach to food safety research. C. Manly Molpus, Grocery Manufacturers of America, in a letter dated January 19, 1998, said: With new, emerging food pathogens, FDA must have the resources to recruit scientists and fund research and surveillance. Increased resources will mean better, more focused and planned scientific research programs. So we have a lot of comments from the industry about the need to make sure that this Food Safety Initiative is, indeed, fully funded. Now, lastly, let me just point out where we get the offset for this amendment. The offset has several components. The principal one would complete the job of getting the U.S. taxpayer out of the business of supporting the production of tobacco. It is a common question I hear: If smoking is so bad and we are trying to get this tobacco bill passed around here, then why is the Government subsidizing the production of tobacco? Well, it is not supposed to be. Under the 1982 No Net Cost Tobacco legislation, the cost of the tobacco price support program is covered by assessments made by tobacco companies and growers. But that is only for the price support program. These assessments do not cover the cost to the taxpayer of crop insurance on tobacco, nor do they cover the administrative costs of the tobacco program or the various other tobacco-related activities at the USDA. The total cost of these USDA tobacco activities is about $60 million a year. Under this amendment, tobacco companies will cover the cost of these USDA tobacco activities. After all, it is the tobacco companies that benefit from having a dependable supply of tobacco available to them. So I think it is about time that we close this last little loophole and have the tobacco growers and companies pay the $60 million that the taxpayers are paying today. So that is the first part of the offset. The second one is that we get $15 million from the mandatory CCC computer account. These funds are available to the USDA to be spent for data processing and information technology services. Cutting this account will in no way reduce the ability of the USDA to prepare for the Y2K problem at all. So there is $15 million from this computer account. And, lastly, we cut $13 million from the ARS buildings and facilities account. Again, we do not propose to eliminate any building projects. Rather, we propose to delay the money that would be obligated but not spent during the fiscal year 1999. In other words, the money would be obligated, but it would not be spent. All projects would be allowed to continue development and planning of these facilities. But there is no point in appropriating money in fiscal year 1999, money that will not be spent, when there is a critical need for food safety funds to fund the Food Safety Initiative. I see two of my colleagues on the floor who have worked very hard on this Food Safety Initiative, who are strong supporters of it. I yield the floor at this time. Several Senators addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey. Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Illinois. Privilege of the Floor Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Kevin Mulry, a Brookings fellow in my office, be granted the privilege of the floor during consideration of the Harkin amendment on the agriculture appropriations bill, S. 2159. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. DURBIN. I make a second unanimous consent request, if there is no objection from the chairman, the Senator from Mississippi, since it does not appear there is another Senator on the floor, I ask unanimous consent to follow the Senator from New Jersey in making remarks in support of the Harkin amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The Senator from New Jersey. Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Harkin amendment to fund President Clinton's Food Safety Initiative. In supporting this effort to fund food safety in our country, I must admit to some surprise about the debate. Through the years in this Congress, we have had controversial debates with legitimately and strongly held different views. This is a difference of opinion that I just do not understand. It is now estimated that there are 9,000 Americans per year losing their lives because of food safety. There is a rising cost in human life and suffering because of compromises in the quality of food consumed in America. In a nation where we are accustomed to automobile accidents and crime, the leading reason in our country to visit an emergency room is because of food that you purchased and consumed. It is not [[Page S8300]] an insubstantial cost to our economy. Mr. President, 6.5 million people suffering from foodborne illness; $22 billion in cost to our economy. Two years ago, on a bipartisan basis, across philosophical lines as a national community, we came to recognize that this cost was not sustainable and mostly was not necessary. This Congress began to fund, under President Clinton's leadership, an initiative to ensure the quality and safety of our Nation's food supply. We are now about to enter into the second year of that program, which has included hiring more inspectors, enhancing surveillance and early warning, increasing research into pathogens like the E. coli bacteria, and to develop more fast, cost-efficient, and more modern detection methods. The second year is about to begin, but a preliminary judgment has been made on the budget of the Government to abandon the effort: No research, no new technology, no new inspectors--nothing. It would be a legitimately held view to come to the floor of this Senate and say, ``The President's plan has been tried and has been evaluated, it is understood, but there is a better idea.'' There may be better ideas. There is no monopoly of wisdom in constructing this plan. But to argue, in the U.S. Senate, in the face of this rising problem, that the better answer is to do nothing, confounds logic. I do not understand it--governmentally or politically. The American people may be under the impression that their food supply is safe. It is certainly true by world standards; compared with many nations, it is safe. But it is not what they believe. Mr. President, 9,000 deaths is unconscionable, but it is not even the full extent of the problem. Some years ago, like most Americans not recognizing the full extent of this problem, I heard testimony from a constituent of mine named Art O'Connell. His 23-month-old daughter, Katie, had visited a fast-food restaurant in New Jersey. The next day she wasn't feeling well. Two days later she was in a hospital. By that night her kidneys and her liver began to fail. A day later, she was dead. I thought it was about as bad a story as I could hear, and then in the same hearing I heard mothers and fathers from around America whose children had also been exposed to the E. coli bacteria, and realized that sometimes the child that dies can be the fortunate child. The E. coli bacteria will leave an infant blind, deaf, paralyzed for life. In the elderly, it can strike more quickly and also result in death. It is a crisis in our country, but it is one that will not solve itself. Indeed, it is estimated over the next decade, the death toll and the suffering from foodborne illness in America will increase by 10 to 15 percent per decade. There are, to be certain, a number of reasons--the sources of food supplies, a more complex distribution system, failures to prepare food properly, and almost certainly because of rising imports of food. Food imports since 1992 have increased by 60 percent. Yet, notably, inspections have fallen by 22 percent. There are 53,000 potential sites in America involved in the production of food for the American people-- 53,000. The United States has 700 inspectors. To place this in context, in the State of New Jersey where we operate a gaming industry, in Atlantic City, we have 14 casinos. We operate with 850 inspectors. What my State government in New Jersey is doing to assure that the roulette wheels and gaming tables of Atlantic City are safe for gamers, the United States of America is not doing for the food supply of the entire country. Mr. President, 700 inspectors for this country. To be honest, I do not argue that, even if Senator Harkin's amendment is accepted, that the Members of this Senate can face their constituents honestly and claim that this problem is being solved, no less managed. It would, in truth, require much more. Over the years, in working with Senator Durbin, we have outlined legislation that is far more comprehensive, in my judgment, much more attuned to what is required--to create a single food agency to replace the current 12 Government agencies involved in food safety, to remove agencies whose principal mission is to prevent the consumption and sale of food from inspection--to remove an inherent conflict of interest in the management of the Nation's food supply; and certainly to give the Department of Agriculture a mandatory recall authority so the moment we know there is a problem and health is endangered, we can eliminate the distribution problems. All these things are required, but we are asking for none of that today. All that Senator Harkin is asking is to fund at the commitment levels we decided on a year ago, to do the second half of a 2-year program to provide for the inspections, the technologies of this food safety program. Mr. President, many of us years ago learned of a different period in American history through the words of Upton Sinclair in his writing, ``The Jungle.'' At a time when the Federal Government was not doing little to ensure the safety of our food supply for our people, it was doing nothing. Most Americans will be surprised to learn that, as they read as a student of Upton Sinclair, the technology of food inspection has not really changed in these several generations. The principal instrument used by the U.S. Government to ensure that meat is safe is the human nose of an inspector. The second line of defense is his eyesight. As food comes down the assembly line, assuring that it is safe is based on the instinct of those inspectors, albeit inspecting 2 percent of the Nation's imported food supply. Part of this program is to advance the technologies which we are using in every other aspect of American life, the extraordinary technologies of our time which uniquely, incredibly and inexplicably are not being used on a very item of life and death of our citizens-- our food supply. This program will develop and advance those technologies. New pathogens are being found all the time. The E. coli bacteria itself is changing. This program will research to understand those pathogens, to use our technology to defeat them in biomedicine. As the Senator from Iowa has said, we also need enhanced surveillance. Because we live in a time when the food supply of one State can appear in another State within hours, a single source of contaminated food can be across America in days. We need to track it through surveillance to find it and eliminate it. Of course, as I suggested, we need more inspectors to also ensure the presence of the Government is there. All we are doing is attempting to fulfill what the American people believe they already have. Most Americans, if you were to ask them today, would tell you: ``Yes, there's a Federal inspector where that meat is produced, those fruits and vegetables, that syrup, they are there, and we are using the best technology and we are understanding the pathogens.'' We are asking that this Senate help fund that which we committed to 2 years ago and that which the American people already believe exists. Finally, there is ample time for us to disagree on many issues. There are legitimate concerns about which we can differ. If ever there was an issue about which we could come together in common cause, this is that issue. This is not an expansion of Government power, it is a power which the Government has had for all the 20th century. It is not draining significant resources we do not have. It is $100 million in a modest program. I am proud to join with Senator Harkin, Senator Durbin and Senator Kennedy in offering this amendment. I hope we can receive an affirmative vote and proceed with this program and avoid all that suffering, which is just so unnecessary, and begin to turn the corner on dealing with this very important problem. Mr. President, I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from Illinois is recognized. Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, first I thank my colleague from New Jersey for his fine statement, as well as my colleague from Iowa. The Senator from New Jersey and I have introduced legislation which attempts to streamline this entire process. It is mind-boggling to try to come to grips with the many different agencies and laws that apply to food safety inspection in America. Though that is not the object of the amendment of the Senator from Iowa, it is something which I hope on another day the Senate will address. To [[Page S8301]] think that there are some six different Federal agencies with the responsibility of food inspection, some 35 different laws and a crazy quilt of jurisdiction which not only wastes taxpayers' dollars, but creates risk for consumers is unacceptable. What we address today is more immediate, different than a change of jurisdiction within agencies. It is to address the immediate need to assure the consumers of America that its Government is doing all in its power to protect them at their family tables. This issue first came to my attention about 3 or 4 years ago. I certainly heard about the E. coli outbreaks in Jack-in-the-Box and the others that were well publicized, but I received a letter when I was a Member of the House of Representatives from a lady in Chicago. I didn't represent the city, but she sent me a letter when she heard we were debating modernizing our food inspection system. In this handwritten letter, Nancy Donley of Chicago told the tragic story of going to the local grocery store to buy hamburger for her 6- year-old son Alex, coming home and preparing it. Alex ate the hamburger and within a few days was dead, dead from E. coli-contaminated hamburger, which led to one of the most gruesome episodes one can imagine. Your heart breaks to think of a mother and father standing helplessly by a hospital bed wondering what is taking the life away from this little boy whom they love so much. She tells in graphic detail how Alex's body organ by organ shut down until he finally expired because of contamination in a food product. It brought to my attention an issue which I had not thought about for a long time, because you see, unlike some Members of the Senate, I have some personal knowledge when it comes to this issue, not just because I eat, which all of us do, but 30 years ago, I worked my way through college working in a slaughterhouse in East St. Louis, IL. I spent 12 months of my life there, and I saw the meat inspection process and the meat processing firsthand. I still eat meat, and I still believe America has the safest food supply in the world, but I am convinced that we need to do more. The world has changed in 30 years. The distribution network of food in the United States has changed. When I was a young boy, it was a local butcher shop buying from a local farmer processing for my family. Now look at it--nationwide and worldwide distribution, sometimes of a great product but sometimes of a great problem. That some contaminated beef last year led to the greatest meat recall in our history is just a suggestion of the scope of this problem. A contamination in one plant in one city can literally become a national problem. This chart that Senator Harkin of Iowa brought before us doesn't tell what happened across the United States in 1 year. It tells us what happened in 1 month, June of 1998. These were the outbreaks and recalls in the United States of America. I am sorry to say, with the possible exception of New York, my home State of Illinois was hit the hardest, for you see, we had over 6,000 people in the Chicago area who were felled by some food-related illness that might have been associated with potato salad--6,000 people. We are still searching to find exactly what caused it. We had a hearing with Senator Collins of Maine just a few days ago in the Governmental Affairs Committee which took a look at the importation of fruits and vegetables. She focused--and I think it was an excellent hearing--on Guatemalan raspberries that came into the United States contaminated with cyclospora, and, of course, caused illnesses for many people across the United States. The fascinating thing, the challenging part of that testimony was that if you look at our inspection process today, there is no way for us to detect the presence of that bacteria, nor is it easy for any doctor to diagnose a person as having been stricken by that illness. As we trace those imports in the United States of fruits and vegetables, we find that we face a new challenge in addition to this broadening distribution network. It is a challenge where our appetites have changed, and where we enjoy the bounty of produce from all over the world. So our concerns which used to be focused on the United States and partially on imported fruits and vegetables have expanded dramatically. Now we worry about imported fruits and vegetables from the far corners of the world. We worry about contaminations which we never heard of before which could, in fact, affect literally millions of Americans. The challenge of food inspection is changing dramatically. Let me give you another illustration about what is happening. Most of us can recall, when we were children, when mom would bake a cake or make cookies, and she finished putting it all together, and you were standing dutifully by waiting for the cookies or the cake, she would hand you the mixing bowl--and you would reach in with a spoon or spatula and taste a little bit of the dough, cake batter, whatever it might be. As you see, I did that many times; and I appreciated it very much. You know, now that is dangerous. You know why it is dangerous? Because of the raw eggs that are part of the mix. It used to be that the salmonella was traced to the shell of the egg, so if the shell fell in the batter, you would say, ``Oh, that's something we need to be concerned about.'' But, sadly, within the last few years they have found the salmonella inside the egg. So you can never be certain handing that mixing bowl to a tiny tot in the kitchen that you are not inviting a foodborne illness that could be very serious. Things are changing. We need to change with them. When President Clinton stepped forward and said, ``America's concerned about this problem and American families realize they can't protect themselves as individuals, they're counting on us to do the job,'' he challenged us to fund it. Sadly, we are not funding it in this bill. That is why the Senator from Iowa, Senator Harkin, Senator Kennedy, Senator Torricelli, and I are offering this amendment to increase the funds. What will we do with them? First, increase the number of inspectors. We clearly need more people on the borders taking at look at the process and the fresh food coming into the United States. I have been there. I have been to Nogales, Mexico, Nogales, AZ. I have seen that border crossing. I have followed the FDA inspection all the way from the trucks to the samples taken into the laboratory in Los Angeles, CA, to be tested; and I can tell you that, though it is good, it is far from perfect. In most instances, by the time they have tested that sample of fruits or sample of vegetables, and if they find anything wrong with it, it is long gone, it is already on the grocery shelves somewhere in America. Oh, they are going to be more watchful the next time around, but they cannot protect us with the resources presently available. President Clinton said we can do more, and we should do more. We also need to look into this whole question of surveillance. As we noted here, this distribution system around the Nation really calls on us to move quickly. If we find a problem at a processing plant in my home State of Illinois, we need to know very quickly whether or not it has been spread across the United States so that recalls can take place. We need more research, too, research on these foodborne illnesses, how they can be averted and avoided. I think we can achieve that, as we should. The Senator from New Jersey had the most telling statistic: 53,000 different food production sites around America, 700 inspectors. We will never have an inspector for every site. We certainly can do better than we have at the present time. Let me also say that the offset that the Senator from Iowa is offering to us is a very good one. I am personally aware of it because a large part of it represents an amendment which I have offered for several years, first in the House and then in the Senate. It answers a question which virtually all of us, as politicians--Senators and Members of Congress--face. How many times I have gone into a town meeting and someone raises their hand and says, ``Senator, let me ask you a question. If you tell us that tobacco is so dangerous, why does the Federal Government subsidize it?'' Well, I will tell you, there is not a very good answer to that question. [[Page S8302]] This amendment being offered by the Senator from Iowa finally puts to rest and answers that question. We are going to stop subsidizing the growing of tobacco in America. We are going to stop asking taxpayers across the United States to pay for a subsidy to the tobacco-growing industry. I have offered this amendment before. I have never had a better use of it than what the Senator from Iowa is offering today. Take the taxpayers' money now being invested in the cultivation and growth of this deadly product, tobacco, take that money, put it into food safety. There is a real justice to this amendment and what the Senator is offering so that we can say to people, we are not only stopping this Federal subsidy of the cultivation of tobacco, we are trying to protect children, the elderly, and those who have some health problems that may make them particularly vulnerable. So I heartily support the offset which is being offered by the Senator from Iowa. Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield? Mr. DURBIN. I am happy to yield. Mr. HARKIN. I want to make it clear for the Record that the Senator from Illinois, Senator Durbin, has been the leader in going after this aspect of the taxpayer funding of tobacco at USDA for years. So I just thank the Senator for letting me capitalize on that and use this money that he has tried so valiantly over the years to stop--to use that for this offset for the Food Safety Initiative. I appreciate the Senator's support and his willingness to let us use the offset that he has been trying to kill for years, because it really is unfair for the taxpayers of this country to spend $60 million every year in support of USDA activities that go to help grow more tobacco in this country. If they want to do it, let the tobacco companies fund it themselves. I thank the Senator for his years on this effort in this regard. Mr. DURBIN. Let me say to the Senator from Iowa, I am happy to join him in this effort. We could not think of a better investment of this money than to take it away from the promotion of a product which causes so much death and disease and put it into the kind of health initiative which the Senator from Iowa has suggested. Let me just say this: Mark my words. Within a few weeks we will read in the newspapers again of some outbreak of food contamination and food illness. We will be alarmed and saddened by the stories of the vulnerable--the children, the elderly, and those who are in a frail medical condition who have become victims because of it. Each of us, in our own way, if it affects our State will express our outrage, our disappointment; and we will promise that we will do something about it. Well, let us be honest. This is the amendment that might do something about it. We can give these speeches--and we will-- but the real question is, Are we prepared to back up our concern in front of a television camera with our votes on the floor of the U.S. Senate? The Senator from Iowa is offering us an opportunity to really be certain that the American people understand what our commitment is to this important issue. I thank him for his commitment. I am happy to join him as a cosponsor of this amendment. I yield back the remainder of my time. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. Privilege of the Floor Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that floor privileges during the debate on the agriculture appropriations bill be granted to Diane Robertson, Stacey Sachs, and Mary Reichman. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I join in thanking my friend and colleague from Iowa, Senator Harkin, and Senator Durbin, and others, for providing the leadership in what I consider to be one of the most important amendments introduced as part of this legislation. I hope that we will be successful, because it addresses a problem that has been outlined by my colleagues on the floor of the Senate about what has been happening in our food supply over recent years. What we have seen, Mr. President, over the period of the last 5 years, has been the doubling of imported food into the United States. We expect that the food that has come into the United States will double again over the next 5 years. We are finding that a third of all of the fruit, and over half of the seafood consumed in this country is being imported into the United States. And those figures are going to grow over the next 5 years. At the same time, we have seen a significant reduction in resources dedicated to inspections. Over the period of the last 5 years, there has been a 22-percent reduction of support for inspections and food safety in the Food and Drug Administration. The Department of Agriculture has primary responsibility for meat and poultry. The Food and Drug Administration has primary responsibility for inspection of all other food. The increase in imports in these other food categories--produce, seafood, etc.--inspected by FDA would be one factor which could justify the increase that is included in the Harkin amendment. But that really does not tell the whole story, Mr. President. To understand the whole story, we have to understand the very dramatic changes which have taken place in terms of our food supply. For example, let's look at E. coli, which occurs naturally in our bodies. In the last 20 years, E. coli has mutated to be more virulent and even deadly. This was illustrated today by my friend and colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin, and illustrated by the food disease outbreaks that we have seen from January to July of 1998. We are not just saying that the appropriations haven't kept up with the need, as important as that is, and that ought to justify it, but there are dramatic differences in the eating habits of the American people. More people are eating out. More people are eating products that are coming from different countries. More Americans are storing their food over longer periods of time. All of this is having an impact in terms of the increased risk from foodborne pathogens and the increased occurrence of foodborne illness. The bottom line, Mr. President, is that foodborne diseases are much, much more dangerous today than they were 3 years ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago. You are getting a change in quantity and the severity of the illnesses, the virulence of foodborne pathogens and their impact on human beings. Antimicrobial resistance contributes to this phenomenon, and those in the pharmaceutical industry see it every single day. They believe that this is one of the very significant new phenomena in the whole area of health science. It is reflected in the severity of these illnesses. They are deadly today. They don't just give you a stomach ache; they kill you. That is why I believe this amendment is of enormous importance. We need to have the kind of support that this amendment provides, to make sure that we, as Americans, are going to have the safest food supply in the world. We do. But it is threatened. For us not to understand the risk is foolishness. I believe this amendment, with its offsets, is justifiable and of enormous importance. I thank the Senator from Iowa for his leadership in this area. I commend him for his legislation and for the seriousness with which he has approached it and for his constancy in pursuit of it. We are very much in your debt. Even with this, Mr. President, I think all of us have a responsibility of watching, and watching carefully, what is happening to our food supply as we move ahead in these next months and years. Tragically, if we fail to do this, and we see the kind of tragedies that are bound to take place, we will have, once again, I think, in an important way, failed to meet our responsibilities to provide protections for the American people in the most basic and fundamental way. Every day, more Americans are stricken with food poisoning. Children and the elderly are especially at risk. Outbreaks of foodborne illness are increasing. The toxicity of bacteria is increasing. Yet resources to combat these festering problems are decreasing. Without additional resources, FDA and the Department of Agriculture cannot act effectively to prevent these illnesses. The American public deserves better. [[Page S8303]] In the last two months: over 400 people became ill and 74 were hospitalized in 21 states from Salmonella in dry cereal; 6,500 people in Illinois became ill from salad contaminated with E. coli; 40 people became ill and almost half were hospitalized because of an outbreak of E. coli in cheese; and over 300 people became ill in six states from bacteria in oysters. These cases are a small sample. According to the Congressional General Accounting Office, foodborne illnesses affect up to 80 million citizens a year and cause 9,000 deaths. Medical costs and lost productivity are estimated at $30 billion. This is not a problem that we can ignore. Michael Osterholm, state epidemiologist for the Minnesota Department of Health, condemned the lack of action after a recent outbreak in the state. He said that, ``If we don't do better, and we don't give the FDA more money, more events like this are going to happen. Right now, we don't seem to have the resources or the will to keep something like this from happening again. As long as we don't, we will have other outbreaks.'' The old wisdom does not apply. You can't just cook your food more thoroughly to avoid these illnesses. Harmful bacteria are appearing in virtually all food products--juice, lettuce, even cereal. Our amendment will provide $73 million in additional funds to support greater monitoring, education, research, and enforcement to address this growing problem. We have the ability to prevent most foodborne illnesses. Improved monitoring allows earlier detection and an earlier response to outbreaks. Increased food inspections are needed to keep unsafe food out of our stores and off our dining room tables. Expanded research is needed to detect and identify dangerous organisms likely to contaminate food. The need is especially great with respect to imports of fresh produce and vegetables. Our amendment will provide the resources needed to perform these essential activities. It will mean 150 new inspectors for FDA to focus on food imports, which have more than doubled since 1992. Yet during that same period, FDA resources devoted to imported foods dropped by 22 percent. As a result, FDA now inspects less than 2 percent of imported food. Clearly, we have to do better. Our amendment would also provide funds to enhance ``early warning'' and monitoring systems needed to detect and respond to outbreaks. These systems will also provide information to prevent future outbreaks. Early detection and control are essential to ensure the safety of every American. In addition, our amendment will fund research essential to understand dangerous organisms in food. Many cannot be identified today. Others have developed resistance to traditional methods of preserving food. Still others have developed resistance to antibiotics. Clearly, additional research is needed to protect the food supply. We have broad support for this amendment. The food industry, consumer groups and the public all favor increased funding. Food safety affects every American every day. Without additional resources, we will continue to see the escalation of these outbreaks. Congress must act to ensure the safety of the food supply for all Americans. The American people deserve to know that the food they eat is safe, no matter where it is grown, processed, or packaged. I thank the Senator and urge our colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. HARKIN. I want to thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his kind words. But more than that, I want to thank him for his efforts through the years to make sure we had a Food and Drug Administration that was on the side of consumers in this country, a strong Food and Drug Administration that made sure that we could have confidence when we went to the drugstore or to the grocery store to get our food, drugs and medicine, that they would indeed be safe. I want to thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his leadership in that area and thank him for his kind and generous support of this amendment. Everything he said is right on mark. It is not just the consumers, I say to my friend from Massachusetts. I earlier had some comments from people representing the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the Cattlemen's Beef Association, the Broiler Council, the National Food Processors Association, all of whom basically said we need better surveillance, we need better risk assessment, we need better education out there. That is what this amendment does. It is the processors, the wholesalers--everyone recognizes that this is a new phenomenon, as the Senator from Massachusetts said, something new we have not experienced in the past. Everyone recognizes the need to get on top of this. Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield? Biologically, we have E. coli in our bodies, and humankind has always had E. coli, but it was not the deadly strain we are seeing today. Twenty years ago we were not even aware of the E. coli O157:H7 strain that is deadly, and we increasingly see this deadly strain. How many more outbreaks do we have to have before we act? This is why I think this amendment is so important, because of the increased danger that these outbreaks pose for our people. Particularly vulnerable are the children and the seniors. With the offset that you have proposed, I cannot understand the reluctance to protect the consumer, rather than taking our chances. I find it difficult to understand why we wouldn't have it accepted. Mr. HARKIN. You are right about E. coli. I counted up in June of this year, this last month, and we had six E. coli outbreaks of food poisoning in this country, of a strain of E. coli that didn't exist 20 years ago. It wasn't there. And now it is here. It is not only making people sick, but killing kids. There are new pathogens that become more virulent. The surveillance systems we have in place and the risk assessment and the other inspection systems we have--the FDA, as the Senator knows, only on average inspects our food processing plants once every 10 years. Mr. KENNEDY. It is less than 2 percent of the imported products that are being inspected; 2 percent. We are seeing a doubling of the imported foods that are coming into this country and from a greater number of countries around the world. We are looking at less than 2 percent and the number of imports will be doubling. Mr. HARKIN. I wonder how many consumers know that only 2 percent of all the produce they eat that comes from outside this country is ever inspected--2 percent. The rest of it, who knows what is on that stuff when it comes to this country. The consumers don't know this. And as the Senator said, it will go up in the future. We will get more and more of that produce from other countries. That is why this is really needed. I thank the Senator for his support and his comments on this. Mr. President, there is an editorial that appeared in today's Los Angeles Times that I was just made aware, calling on us to do something about food safety. Obviously, they probably didn't know about my amendment. But they did say. . . . the U.S. Senate can take a big step to combat food contamination by restoring all or most of the $101-million initiative the Clinton administration has proposed to improve food safety. The money would go to hire new safety inspectors, upgrade technologies, and bring coherence to disjointed oversight. So far, The Senate has allocated only a piddling $2.6 million for the initiative at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and nothing at all at the Food and Drug Administration. The editorial went on to say that we needed more funding. I will quote the last paragraph of the editorial: Food safety is an unassailable cause. There are some things that only government can do, and guaranteeing the wholesomeness of our food supply is one of them. I ask unanimous consent that the editorial from the Los Angeles Times of this morning, Thursday, July 16, 1998, be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Starving Food Safety Americans now enjoying their summer picnics may suffer a glimmer of anxiety over recent outbreaks of food-borne illness: 6,500 people became sick in Illinois last month after eating commercial potato salad, and E. coli bacterial contamination occurred in fruit juice and lettuce that originated in California. Today, the U.S. Senate can take [[Page S8304]] a big step to combat food contamination by restoring all or most of the $101-million initiative the Clinton administration has proposed to improve food safety. The money would go to hire new safety inspectors, upgrade technologies and bring coherence to disjointed oversight. So far, the Senate has allocated only a piddling $2.6 million for the initiative at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and nothing at all at the Food and Drug Administration. The shame of this penny-pinching is that it comes when lawmakers are spending like drunken sailors elsewhere, for instance in the pork-laden transportation bill. The need for better food safety oversight could not be stronger. The Centers for Disease Control estimated that this year 9,000 Americans will die and millions will fall seriously ill because of tainted foods, numbers that have been growing. CDC officials aren't sure why those statistics are rising, though they suspect part of the reason may be improved detection and the increase in imported foods bearing bacteria and other pathogens to which Americans have little resistance. Food imports have doubled in the last seven years and are expected to increase by one-third in the next three years. The administration's Food Safety Initiative would get at this problem first by hiring new inspectors. Less than 2% of imported food is inspected now because the FDA's budget has not grown along with imports. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), the chairman of the Senate committee that decided not to fund the initiative at the FDA, suggested that some of the FDA's duties be delegated to states and local governments, but the increasing movement of food across state lines and national borders argues for just the opposite: a coordinated national strategy. National planning, for instance, is the only way to successfully deploy new technologies like DNA fingerprinting, which within hours allows federal inspectors to trace the genetic signature of, say, a dangerous bacterium on apples marketed in the West back to the farm where the fruit was harvested in Maine. Funding the initiative would enable federal agencies to continue efforts to install such technology in sites around the country and train workers to quickly identify and track food pathogens. And Congress needs to consider pending bills to give the FDA and the USDA the power to recall food and to create a single food safety agency to consolidate scattered oversight. Food safety in an unassilable cause. There are some things that only government can do, and guaranteeing the wholesomeness of our food supply is one of them. Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, one other thing. I listened to the comments made by the Senator from Illinois, Senator Durbin, when he very poignantly told the story of the young child who died in Illinois. I just point out again that these outbreaks are growing with rapidity and showing up in the oddest of places. For example, last month, dozens of children got sick--again, with this E. coli 0157H7--in Atlanta after swimming in a public pool. Many of these children spent time on dialysis for kidney failure. This was just last month. Now, the infection they got was the s