National Farm Animal Identification and Records Act

Mr. President, Tom Carper and I have a resolution at the desk, and I ask for its immediate consideration.

I thank the Chair. I thank the clerk for reading the resolution in its entirety.

Mr. President, my friend, our colleague, Bill Roth, died while the Senate was out of session. Otherwise, I am certain there would have been a profuse outpouring of sentiment on the floor, as when any person of consequence dies.

Bill Roth was a man of the Senate and a man of consequence. He was also, even though we were on opposite sides of the aisle, one of my closest friends in the Senate. We had the honor, as my friend and colleague, Senator Carper, and I do, of riding Amtrak together. In Bill's case and my case, we rode the train together almost every day for 28 years. Literally, for the first 24 years probably every day the Senate was in session.

You can't have that kind of proximity with a man or a woman without getting to know them pretty darn well. I got to know Bill very well. I got to know his family. I got to know his hopes, his dreams, his fears, and his concerns, as he did mine, my family, my hopes, dreams, and concerns.

An unusual thing developed: a bond of trust. I can and will say for the record that there is no person in public life I came to trust more than Bill Roth. I trusted him with my concerns. I trusted him with family issues. I trusted him with personal issues. And I trusted his judgment on political issues, even when he and I disagreed.

We would ask each other questions: What do you think would happen if I do the following? What do you think the consequence would be? Even though we were in opposing parties, neither hesitated to give our friend the best advice we could.

I once said that running against Bill Roth was like running against a wheat thrasher: big, gobbles up everything in his way, and he was very silent. Before it was all over, everything was harvested.

Bill Roth, I think, was the most underestimated man with whom I have served going into my sixth term as a Senator.

I might note for the record that Bill Roth's family is incredibly talented. His wife, Jane Roth, is one step away from the Supreme Court as a Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge. None of us

who know her ever hesitated to support her. We pushed her. She is highly regarded and, as my friend from Pennsylvania, Senator Specter, knows--and no one knows the Third Circuit better than he does; literally no one knows it better than he does--is one of the most respected jurists on that venerable circuit.

His son, Bud, is a lawyer who is an extremely talented young man, and his daughter, Katie, is a doctor. I might note that Bill finally had a namesake. Just shortly before he died, he got to see his daughter's son who they named William. Bill actually died here in Washington visiting Katie.

This is a man who lived a full life, raised a great family, and will be missed not just by his family, but by our entire State and all those who knew Bill.

I can say without equivocation that I would have been honored, quite frankly, to have any one of his senior staff members work on my staff. One of the ways I think you measure the mark of a national leader is to look at the people with whom he or she surrounds himself or herself. Look at the people who they pick to represent them. Look at the people who they choose to be their alter ego.

Without exception, Bill Roth chose administrative assistants and senior staff members out of the same mold as himself: always totally honorable, balanced, straightforward, not at all ideological.

I have close friendships, personal friendships, with Bill's former staff directors, people who still live in Delaware and, I might add--I don't want to ruin their reputations--support me politically, support me in my races. It is hard, as I said, in a State as small as ours--I see my friend from Utah, which has grown to be a very large State relative to us, but when I first arrived here, when his dad was here, with whom I served, I think we were a little bit bigger than Utah at the time.

In small States, everyone knows everyone. Everyone has a sense of who everyone else is. It is hard in a State as small as ours, when you are in close proximity to people you respect, not to let it show, and that is exactly what happened in Delaware.

We went through 28 years of serving together, and I cannot think of one single solitary time--not one single occasion--where Bill Roth had or I ever had even a negative inference asserted about the other guy. We have a tradition in Delaware of not being very negative and partisan. I can tell you with the single exception of one highly contested political race, you never heard Tom Carper, you never heard our sole Congressman and former Governor, Mike Castle, you never heard in my State any of us criticizing the other. It has been a wonderful State to represent.

Bill Roth set the pattern. He surrounded himself with people of character such as himself, and that is something that should be strived for.

Bill, as I said, was known on the Senate floor, known in the country like few of us will be for the Fulbright scholarships, for the Roth IRAs. Everybody knows that Bill Roth was a man who promoted savings. He was a man who was tight with the taxpayers' money, which is a great asset. We used to kid. Every once in a while we would go to a function here in Washington and we would take a cab together. I remember once Bill leaning in to talk to the cab driver.

I said: What are you doing?

He said: I gave him a dime tip and told him to vote Democrat.

He also had a sense of humor, which most people on the floor never got a chance to see.

I don't know anybody who worked with Bill Roth who ever suggested that you could not work with Bill Roth; that he would not weigh in.

One of the things I want to mention about Senator Roth, though--and I am trying to move through this in the interests of time because I know we have the State of the Union and I know matters are going to be brought up today--is that one of the hallmarks of his career is he had a real sense of proportion, a sense of proportion that is missing today in much of public life. He fully understood that the Federal Government was both dangerous and necessary, that it is of value and sometimes part of the problem. He never had any trouble distinguishing between when it should be proactive and when it should not be active at all. He was not driven by ideology that blinded him to the needs of the people of my State, the Nation, or blinded him to civil liberties and civil rights.

He used to always surprise many of my Democratic colleagues because Bill was always so conservative on tax policy. I hope I don't get my friend from Utah in trouble, but one of the things about him is he is a man of independence. I think it surprised some of my colleagues when he voted against the constitutional amendment on the flag.

They said: Wait a minute, this guy is a conservative. It is because he is a conservative, I might add, that he did vote against it. But it would always surprise my colleagues on the Democratic caucus. They would say: Wait a minute, Bill Roth is a strong proponent of Title IX. That is the title that says you have to spread a proportionate amount of money on women in sports and colleges and universities. Bill Roth was very strong on women's rights.

To the chagrin of his colleagues and some of mine, he is in large part a reason there is no drilling in ANWR. Bill Roth is a Republican leader of the effort to see there was no drilling in ANWR. We have the Tongass Forest in Alaska, which is multiple times the size of my State, because of Bill Roth. Bill Roth had an environmental record that could easily have been associated with a liberal Democrat. Bill Roth's views on women's rights, civil rights, was moderate to liberal.

It always used to surprise people on this side of the aisle when they would say, whoa, was that Bill Roth who just voted on this, that, or the other thing?

Bill Roth was a complex man, a man who could not be pigeonholed or characterized by a single label. But he was ultimately a practical guy, a man who knew what he thought, what he believed, and very quietly and unhesitatingly never, never ceased or backed off from what he thought was a right thing to do.

On a personal note, like all of you in these cynical times--I would like you all to know that Bill Roth was anything but cynical. Bill Roth was not only an honorable man, Bill Roth was a noble man. The word ``nobility'' comes to mind, to me. When I learned of his death--and I was caught off guard as I was asked by the press about it--the first thing that came to mind was: He's a noble man. He's a noble man.

Let me explain what I mean by that. It is the way he dealt with people. It is the way he acted. Name someone for me in contemporary politics who was a winner of the Bronze Star and never once mentioned it. You cannot find a single piece of campaign literature that I am aware of. I never heard him speak of it. I never heard his campaign use it. Who, today, would not be out there talking about having been the recipient of a Bronze Star--to prove their patriotism, to prove their bravery? Bill Roth never, never mentioned it.

This is a politician who was not afraid to use gimmicks. This is a guy who rode an elephant to make a point, out here in front of the Capitol. This is a guy who talked about the $3,000 toilet seats and would hoist up toilet seats. He was a bit of a showman in that regard. But when it came to talking about himself, Bill Roth never did. He had this sense of nobility about him.

The other thing I loved about Bill Roth, in an environment where--I guess it has always been this case in politics--where money is king, campaigns cost so much money--Bill Roth was the chairman of the Finance Committee. Bill Roth could have raised more money than the Lord Almighty. But he always used to drive his chiefs of staff crazy when he wouldn't do what other people legally would do. He wouldn't call in the heads of the corporation and the business community and others who had great interest in what went on before the Finance Committee. He wouldn't do it. Bill Roth had trouble raising money. He was uncomfortable. I loved him for it. I loved the fact that he was uncomfortable doing it.

The other thing that used to drive me crazy sometimes, to show you how he was, I remember we had a little fight on the floor here about a thing most people don't know much about but in Delaware it is a big ticket item financially for the State--escheatment. Escheatment means when somebody dies and leaves no heir and owns a security, under the rules that exist now,

that money reverts to the State of incorporation.

So let's say you owned 1,000 shares of stock of General Motors and you passed away, you had no heirs, the estate was left--the State gets the estate. But which State gets it? Historically it has been the State where you are incorporated. So if General Motors is incorporated in Delaware, even though its business is in Michigan, the money goes to Delaware. That is a big amount in their budget.

There was a suit filed in the Supreme Court but the Supreme Court said, no, it is OK to do it that way, but it is up to the Congress to change it if they wanted to.

Mr. President, 78 Senators said let's change that, and 370-some Congressmen said let's change that. I didn't think it was a good idea to change it. I have a simple rule. I say it straightforward. I think I never take personally the competition for highway funds or bridges or programs. We all compete, each of our States, for that. I take it very personally when my colleague or a colleague in the Senate decides to take an action that would benefit his State only marginally, but would do great damage to my State. I take that very personally.

Changing law on escheatment would have been marginally beneficial to 47 other States but a gigantic detriment to my State. So I went to Daniel Patrick Moynihan; New York was affected by this. I went to my friend, my friend who is no longer here, Al D'Amato--affectionately referred to as pothole Al. And I went to my friend Senator Kennedy from Massachusetts, and we said we are going to do what we can to see this doesn't change.

I will tell you the end of the story. We ended up winning. Even though over three-quarters of the Senate cosponsored the change and more than that in the House, we ended up winning in the end of the day. That was because our colleagues realized we took it personally, it didn't affect their States very positively, and they in fact saw the better part of valor here and were willing to help us.

I remember standing in the well of the Senate saying to Bill: Bill, you are chairman of the Finance Committee. Let your colleagues know this is important to you.

He said: I don't know. You tell them. You tell them.

He was even uncomfortable saying that. He was one of the most powerful men in the Senate and he wouldn't say: Hey, look, Bennett, this is important to me. Please help me. He wouldn't even do that.

Although he had all this power, the thing that was so beautiful about him, he was uncomfortable with power. I think it is always healthy when people are uncomfortable with wielding power. But he never hesitated to wield it when he thought it was absolutely clear cut.

So this was a guy who was a noble man. I just watched him. I watched him operate for over 28 years.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 3 more minutes.

Mr. President, there is a quotation engraved on the wall at Union Station. It goes like this:

Be noble, and the nobleness that lies in other men sleeping

but never dead will rise in majesty to meet thine own.

Bill Roth also brought out the humility in those who worked with him and those who were around him.

There is much more to say about him. I have said too much.

I apologize. I did not realize that time was controlled. My colleague from Delaware, a cosponsor of this resolution, Senator Carper, would like to speak. I ask whether my colleagues would object if Senator Carper is able to proceed.

Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague, Senator Biden, in offering this resolution commemorating Senator Roth. I thank Senator Specter for his willingness to let me slip in ahead of him.

I recall any number of times visiting the Senate when I was Governor. I have had the privilege of testifying before the Senate Finance Committee that Senator Roth chaired. I remember revisiting him in his office in the Hart Building from time to time.

It is not uncommon when you walk into the office of Senators that you see their pictures on the wall. There were, I am sure, a few pictures of Senator Roth and his family and others on the wall of his office. It is less common to walk into a Senate office today as a person who succeeded in a case where you ran against an incumbent, as I did against Senator Roth, and find the photograph of the Senator who was defeated, in this case in my race against Bill Roth.

We have a tradition in Delaware called ``Return Day.'' Every Thursday a few days after the election of even numbered years, winners and losers gather in our county seat in southern Delaware, Georgetown, DE, and have a great breakfast at the Delaware Technical Community College. Then the winners and losers ride together in a horse-drawn carriage throughout the streets of Georgetown. Thousands of people come from all over the State to cheer those who won. The town crier comes out on the balcony of the White House in Georgetown in the circle and calls out the results from the election 2 days earlier.

On that Thursday after the election in November of 2000, I rode in a horse-drawn carriage with Senator Roth and members of his family, and some members of my own family. It was an open-air carriage. It was a beautiful day. I asked if he would like to stand. We stood. The driver and the horses were ahead of us as we started down the parade route sitting there with our hands on the seat behind the driver.

I said to him: Why don't we do something else? Let me hold your hand. I held his hand up in the air as one does at the end of a prizefight holding up the hand of a winner. We went through the entire parade that day holding up the hand of the winner who won so many elections during 34 years as if there really wasn't a loser but only a winner in this situation--a real winner. That picture of us holding hands is still in my office today. It is a great picture. It tells a lot about the spirit of politics in Delaware and about the respect for Senator Roth as well.

Senator Biden talked about some of the legislative accomplishments and the work that Senator Roth did with respect to NATO and the reorganization of the Federal Government.

While those issues are important and what he did legislatively with respect to NATO and others is important, in Delaware, a State with about 800,000 people, you also have an extraordinary opportunity to help people with problems in their lives. For folks who are trying to grapple with the IRS on issues that need to be resolved or on Social Security issues and veterans issues, you can quite literally every year change the course of about 1,000 or 2,000 families who come to your office for help.

That day as we went through Georgetown, DE, on ``Return Day'' in the parade, I am sure Senator Roth got bigger cheers than I did. They were from Democrats and Republicans and Independents. In part, those cheers were the result of the kind of staff he put around him. He hired excellent people. They set the gold standard for constituent service in our State. If you were a Democrat or Republican or Independent and you called his office for help, you got it. They did a terrific job.

Bill Roth understood that we are servants of the people. They pay our salaries. We have an obligation to give our very best effort. He made sure that was what his staff provided--and he provided it during the 34 years he served in the Congress.

I said to him after the election: You set the gold standard. The challenge for me and my staff is to try very hard

to match that standard. Maybe eventually, through new technology and training and services experience, we can even exceed it.

I have won statewide in Delaware 11 times. I have been fortunate 11 times. I have run against very good people but none more decent than Bill Roth.

At his memorial service at the University of Delaware a week after his death, we were joined by Senator Specter and others. Hundreds of thousands of people came from all over our State. One of the speakers said Bill Roth was a gentleman and a gentle man--a gentleman and a gentle man. He treated his staff, the folks who work in the cafeteria here, and the folks who run the elevators here with the same kind of respect as with his colleagues and his peers. I doubt that you can every day find that in a person who rises to the kind of power he enjoyed in this city and in this country. It says a whole lot about the man he was.

One of the persons who spoke at Senator Roth's memorial service was his former chief of staff, John Duncan, who is now Assistant Secretary of Legislative Affairs at the Department of the Treasury. I ask unanimous consent that excerpts of the very eloquent comments of John Duncan be printed in the Record. He said it certainly better than I could. It is the kind of tribute that belongs in the Congressional Record.

Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation that would strengthen consumer confidence in the safety of our nation's beef supply while expanding our understanding of the many prion diseases that affect both humans and animals. This bill, known as the BSE and Other Prion Disease Prevention and Public Health Protection Act codifies some of USDA's recent steps, requires more aggressive testing of older cattle and expands surveillance for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in deer and elk and Creutzfedt-Jacob disease (CJD) in people.

Our country has been blessed with the safest and most abundant food supply in the world, but we can do better. The events surrounding the diagnosis of the first Mad Cow case in Washington State demonstrate that improvements are possible. Had the provisions of my bill been in place in early December, the animal would never have been allowed to enter both the human food supply and the consumer product system and contaminate 2.8 million pounds of products.

Currently, only 20,000 out of 35 million cattle presented for processing are tested for BSE. How many cattle in America have BSE? We are hopeful that there was only this one isolated case but the truth is that we don't know because we test so few animals. Answering that question today is similar to trying to estimate the prevalence of HIV infection in people by only testing individuals who have symptoms of AIDS. At the current level of testing, we have no real estimate of the true prevalence rate of BSE in our country.

A similar situation exists with respect to CWD, in deer and elk, or CJD in humans. The bill that I am introducing provides for more testing of all ruminants intended for human consumption as well as expanded surveillance for the human prion diseases.

Better surveillance: The bill requires the use of rapid BSE tests for all cattle and bison over 30 months of age and for all sheep, goats, deer and elk over 12 months of age. Rapid tests can provide results the same day that they are taken instead of the current five to seven days. Although most sampling and testing for BSE will occur through USDA inspectors at slaughterhouses, the bill also provides for on-farm sampling of non-ambulatory animals. In addition, all ruminants of any age exhibiting neurological symptoms would be tested.

All tested animals would be held until the results of the test are known rather than being released into the food supply and consumer product system, as was the case in Washington. An expensive and time- consuming recall of products would be avoided.

The bill also requires the development of a mandatory ruminant identification program to allow for trace back of diseased animals to their farm of origin within 48 hrs after diagnosis. This is significant not only for BSE but for other reportable illnesses such as brucellosis, tuberculosis and foot and mouth disease.

There are also provisions that require expanded coordination of testing for CWD in farm-raised and wild deer and elk. To support expanded ruminant testing for prion diseases, the bill calls for the expansion of the national animal health laboratory network to include state and university veterinary diagnostic laboratories.

Similarly, the bill expands the sampling of suspected cases of human CJD through the National Prion Disease Pathology Research Center at Case Western Reserve University.

Targeting Risk Materials: The bill updates and expands the definition of BSE specified risk materials and bans the use of such materials from cattle over 30 months of age for any use.

Importation of ruminant-based products: The bill expands the list of ruminant derived products that must be labeled for contents and country of origin and bans imported products containing ruminant-derived materials from countries identified as at-risk for BSE transmission.

Feed Ban: The bill closes loopholes in the USDA rules on recycling pet food and poultry litter back into ruminant feed. The legislation requires FDA to develop a database for handlers of livestock, renderers and feed mills and feed blenders.

We currently have only a limited understanding of prions and the diseases that they cause. To understand how these significant and challenging misfolded bits of protein can affect us, we need better data. We need data on which to base sound policy for our public health, for our animal health and for the safety of our food supply.

While we are accumulating that data, we need to take every reasonable step to ensure that we do not introduce infective material through importation or through feeding our ruminant animals contaminated feed. An expanded testing program will demonstrate to our trading partners that they have nothing to fear in buying our meat products.

I urge my colleagues to join me in this effort to strengthen consumer confidence in the safety of our food supply. The BSE and Other Prion Disease Prevention and Public Health Protection Act can provide the public with the confidence that our beef and venison is safe to eat and can assure our trading partners that we are aggressively addressing BSE surveillance in the United States.

Mr. President, today as my first legislative action of the new session, I am introducing important legislation that would require a higher standard for the science used in administering the Endangered Species Act. The Sound Science for Endangered Species Act Planning Act of 2004 would require independent scientific peer review of certain actions taken by the regulatory agencies under the Endangered Species Act. In addition, it would require the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Commerce to give greater weight to scientific or commercial data that is empirical or has been field-tested or peer- reviewed.

In recent years, we in the northwest have experienced a number of situations in which Federal agency scientists either demanded actions not supported by scientific data, or actually fabricated the data itself. In December 2001, it was revealed that Federal employees had submitted hairs from a captive Canada lynx as though they had been recovered during field surveys in several national forests to determine the range and habitat of this threatened species.

It was also revealed in an Oregon newspaper that a Forest Service biologist criticized his own agency for shoddy work. This employee called into question much of the information collected over 18 years on one national forest, claiming that determinations for projects were based on sketchy information that was not accomplished according to protocol, or not collected at all. Rather than denying these charges, the Forest Service acknowledged that they had some validity, and launched an investigation.

The most egregious example of decisions not based on scientific evidence, however, occurred in the Klamath Basin in 2001. As many of you may recall, I have come to the floor of the Senate on many occasions over the last several years to plead the case of the farmers and ranchers in the Klamath Basin. In 2001, field-level biologists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service developed two separate biological opinions on the operation of the Klamath Project, as it related to suckers and coho salmon, respectively.

Taken together, these two biological opinions sought to both raise the lake of level of Upper Klamath Lake and increase flows in the Klamath River, at the time the basin was experiencing a severe drought. On April 6, 2001, the Bureau of Reclamation announced that the agency would deliver no water to most of the agricultural lands that had received irrigation water from the Federal project for almost 100 years.

I cannot begin to describe the human toll that these biological opinions exacted on the farmers and ranchers in the Klamath Basin. Those who still have their farms lost most of their farm income that year. Many depleted their life savings just to hold onto their land. Ranchers were forced to sell off livestock herds that year. Stable farm worker communities were decimated as families moved to find work.

The real tragedy is that none of this had to occur. Late last year, scientists with the National Research Council found that the two key decisions regarding the operation of the Klamath Project that deprived farmers of their water lacked ``substantial scientific support.''

This situation should never be repeated. Decisions of this magnitude under the Endangered Species Act must be peer reviewed, and some standard for the science used in these decisions must be established.

I was in Klamath Falls the day after the decision was made to cut off water to the farmers. I will never forget the anguish on the faces of the people I met with that day. Many were World War II veterans who received homesteads in this Basin after the war or their children, none of whom could believe that this action was being taken by a government ``of the people, for the people, and by the people.''

Our constituents deserve better from their Government. They will get it if this bill is enacted. There is an identical bill in the House that has bipartisan support, and 63 cosponsors. I urge my colleagues to join me in cosponsoring this reasonable bill to help restore sound science to agency decisionmaking.

Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce the National Farm Animal Identification and Records Act or the FAIR Act, with my friend and colleague Senator Specter. This legislation would establish a uniform national electronic animal identification program to trace animals from birth to slaughter, within 48 hours, in order to combat animal disease outbreaks.

As the recent discovery of a cow infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE, or mad cow disease, in Washington State demonstrated, a verifiable nationwide animal identification system is urgently needed to enhance the speed and accuracy of USDA's response to disease outbreaks. Unfortunately to date only, 23 of the 81 cows that came from Canada with the infected mad cow have been able to be located because of inadequate records. The National Farm Animal Identification and Records Act FAIR Act would require the Department of Agriculture to establish a national animal identification program for individual animals that could trace an animal's history within 48 hours.

As a senior member of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, I have long advocated for the establishment of a national animal identification system. For the last 5 years I have worked with the Holstein Association in Brattleboro, Vermont to begin the process of creating a national animal identification program. The Holstein Association's pilot program, a precursor to this national animal identification program legislation, electronically identifies individual animals and tracks their movements from birth to slaughter within 48 hours. To date Holstein's pilot program has close to a million bovines enrolled from over 7000 farms in 42 States and has proven its electronic animal tracking capabilities.

The Holstein project demonstrates electronically tracing individual animals immediately is achievable. The technology and expertise developed by the Holstein Association is a prime example of how the Department could immediately begin tracking individual newborn animals electronically with a system similar to National FAIR. The Holstein Association could be an important partner with USDA in reducing the impact of future animal diseases.

I would also like to applaud Secretary Veneman's announcement last month of additional mad cow safeguards, including moving toward a national animal identification system. I believe this was a positive step toward protecting American farmers and consumers. Unfortunately USDA's current plans do not call for individual animal identification to be completed until mid 2006. The FAIR Act would require the Department to begin implementation of a national system within months of passage. In addition, it is clear USDA will need additional resources to carry out a national animal identification program, thus our legislation will provide additional funding for USDA to begin this work immediately. Furthermore to ensure producers are not hurt by the potential costs of a national system, our bill will provide financial assistance for producers to carry out a national identification system.

It is time for the United States to take serious steps to combat animal diseases, like BSE, that have broad public health implications for our Nation. A national animal identification program is long overdue. I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.