Vilsack speaks out on immigration reform, catfish inspections, country-of-origin labeling
November 14, 2013 | 09:17 PM
American agriculture is losing millions of dollars per year because it does not have the immigrant workers need to plant and harvest crops, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said today.
He spoke in the midst of two public appearances and many conversations with reporters in what appeared to be a week-long media sweep that will culminate with an appearance before the National Association of Farm Broadcasters Friday in Kansas City.
“We are not growing as much here as we could. This is costing the American economy millions of dollars,” Vilsack said after visiting immigration advocates who are fasting on the Mall in an attempt to convince the House Republican leadership to take up immigration reform legislation.
The secretary also said American business needs to put more pressure on the Republican leadership to take up the bill. Vilsack said he was concerned by statements by both House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Republican Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., that the House is unlikely to take up immigration reform legislation this year.
Noting that the Senate has passed a comprehensive bill, Vilsack added, “We haven’t seen the first step out of the House.”
Vilsack said he told the fasters that he has been an advocate for immigration since he was governor of Iowa, where he encouraged immigration as a response to population loss and set up welcome centers for immigrants. He also said there has to be a path for citizenship because many people want to work in the United States permanently, and the country needs a permanent work force.
A spokesman for Fast for Families said the campaign is run by a combination of labor unions and faith-based and community groups. See link below.
The fasters, he said, want to make “a prayerful, hopeful appeal for change.” The people fast until their doctors tell them to stop, the spokesman said. Other political figures such as Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., also visited the tented camp today.
Vilsack seeks clarity on catfish inspections
Weighing in on a battle over whether to overturn a provision in the 2008 farm bill that moves the inspection of catfish from the Food and Drug Administration to USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, Vilsack said that USDA “will do whatever Congress tells us to do, but whatever they do I would ask them to be clear about it.”
“They weren’t clear about what critters they wanted inspected,” Vilsack noted, adding that he understands that Congress did not specify the types of catfish to be inspected because “there is conflict” over the definitions of domestic and foreign catfish.
The lack of clarity, he said, has led to lengthy and expensive rule making. USDA has set up an inspection system but it has not gone into effect.
“Our system is more expensive,” Vilsack noted, because FSIS’s approach to food inspection is much more labor intensive than FDA.
FDA does not inspect the foods under its jurisdiction nearly as frequently as FSIS’s daily inspections for meat, poultry and egg products, and the U.S. catfish industry maintains that imported catfish is rarely inspected and dangerous. But importers and the catfish industry in Vietnam say that the U.S. catfish industry’s view is protectionist and that the conflict could lead to a trade war.
Country-of-Origin Labeling
Vilsack said he is opposed to efforts to repeal or otherwise change the provision in the 2008 farm bill that requires country-of-origin labeling for red meat. A World Trade Organization panel ruled that the first U.S. approach to labeling violated its rules, and USDA has issued a new ruling.
“I think it is unfortunate we have some who are wanting to inject themselves in a process” that is already ongoing, Vilsack said at a Politico Pro Agriculture event.
The WTO said “the United States has the right to label, but that we needed to be more specific about that labeling information,” Vilsack said, noting he believes the rewrite of the law will comply with the panel’s “construction and direction.”
The new rule is pending at the WTO, but Canada and Mexico have objected to it.
Food stamps and the farm bill
Vilsack also said at the Politico event that the administration is opposed to the House bill’s $40 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program over 10 years and also to an earlier House version that would have cut $20 billion from the program over 10 years.
Instead of eliminating categorical eligibility, he said, which would require states to hire additional employees to process applications, “there needs to be better coordination” in state governments between the offices that manage the SNAP programs and the worker training and employment offices. The House plan to impose a work requirement “doesn’t make sense,” Vilsack said, because a work requirement is in already in the law.
“The reason we are talking about this is that governors used the waiver opportunity that they have in the current law,” he said.
Congress should pass the farm bill because “We need certainty in the countryside,” Vilsack said after the event. The delay in passing a new bill “is stalling part of the economy that has been going well” and not allowing the Agriculture Department to use programs that can help nonagricultural rural America improve its economy,
“We’ve had enough extensions,” he concluded. “We can’t be kicking the can down the road permanently.”
