I come to the floor today to express concerns that I have heard from many stakeholders regarding Make America Healthy Again. For short, this is called the MAHA Commission.
Their report will be coming out tomorrow.
The concerns that I have heard from food and agriculture stakeholders center around the difficulty that they have had getting meetings with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
HHS Secretary Kennedy is the chair of the MAHA Commission.
Many people fear that the contents of this report will not be based upon sound science – that it will be based on opinions and fears instead of scientific consensus.
When I met with Secretary Kennedy before his confirmation – and that’s a traditional thing to do – we discussed things like pesticides, genetically modified crops and other important components that come together to ensure the United States has the largest and safest food supply on the globe, and how all those things center on making the life of the farmer producing food as easy as possible.
Now, [Secretary] Kennedy agreed that these tools farmers use are necessary for that food supply.
The MAHA report should be based upon sound science.
I believe that Department of Agriculture’s Secretary Rollins and EPA Administrator Zeldin have had robust input on this report and that they would advocate for the two percent of the Americans that feed the other 98 percent and the tools that are used to produce the food supply that feeds America.
[We] want to remember: we have the reputation of producing food so that the expendable income of the average family in the United States spends roughly 10 or 11 percent of their discretionary money on food – the cheapest of any consumers in the world.
So, I want everybody to know that I’m watching this report closely that’s coming out tomorrow, and I hope it reflects what [Secretary] Kennedy told me when I met with him in my office, and that he stands by his word.
I hope that there is nothing in the MAHA report that jeopardizes our food supply or the livelihood of farmers or jeopardizes the food supply to emphasize for the 98 percent of the Americans that buy and depend on the food that the 2 percent of Americans that are farmers produce.
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