Sunflower State News

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. joined AgriTalk on Farm Journal on June 21 discuss his new legislation that would protect American agriculture from radical, anti-agriculture regulations pushed by the state of California. Senator Marshall also emphasized the positive wins for American agriculture in his legislation, the Innovative FEED Act, which made progress in the Senate last week, and shared his thoughts on strained U.S.-China relations and international trade.

You may click HERE or on the image above to hear Senator Marshall’s full interview. 

Highlights from Senator Marshall’s interview include:

On California’s Proposition 12 ruling and his EATS Act:

“Basically Proposition 12 was legislation from California that would say they can tell people in Kansas or Iowa or Minnesota or Nebraska how to grow hogs. And the Supreme Court unfortunately ruled in their favor 5 to 4 recently. So what this law [the EATS Act] would do… put power back in the state we live in, and tell California you can’t tell us how to grow chickens, how to grow cattle as well.”

“So that’s what this law does is it pushes back on that, it promotes interstate commerce. That’s one of the goals of the federal government is to promote interstate commerce. So we’re here fighting for agriculture once again.”

“And again, no one knows better than the farmers and ranchers, frankly, in the Midwest, and there’s great farmers and ranchers on the coast..but we certainly don’t want the West Coast states to tell us in the Midwest how to raise animals.”

“I think this is why it’s so important that our farmers and ranchers go out and tell our stories…I mean, go to a 4H meeting, go to an FFA meeting and let those kids talk about how much they care for their animals and that we want to make sure that they’re treated humanely.”

“The way we’re doing it is actually the most humane way. I see a lot of attacks on the way we’re doing chickens but I know the people that protected their chicken flocks who were not as impacted as severely by the bird flu as well. No one cares more than farmers and ranchers do about the environment and about their livestock, so we need to get out there and keep telling our story.”

On the Innovative FEED Act:

“This is something I’m really excited about. As you mentioned, I’m a physician and I really love biochemistry and nutrition, and the agriculture communities with such incredible advances in nutrition, and we want to free them up to do more.”

“So think about food additives, feed additives, in this case, maybe it’s probiotics, maybe it’s different vitamins, but we want to get those out of the direct supervision of the FDA. Right now the FDA is treating these as drugs. So it drives up the cost and the time to get these to market.”

On U.S.-China Relations and International Trade:

“I understand the importance of the market for China, it’s something we’ve tried to open up. We’ve worked so hard with President Trump on that Phase One of the trade deal. Very good for agriculture, of course China never lived up to it. 

“I think China’s a bully, and you don’t deal with a bully by going over with your hat in hand and begging for their support.”

“I think when you’re dealing with a bully, you have to stand up to them…There’s other markets we should be working on, but this administration refuses to work on any other markets. They’ve done zero when it comes to trade agreements. I don’t feel like they’re pushing hard enough on the USMCA agreement to make sure that it’s being followed as well. So I think those are the challenges in front of it. China is a bully, we got to hit her in the nose.”

Original source can be found here.