Discussions on agriculture ran
rampant through the halls of Capitol Hill this week, with several high-profile
Cabinet officials meetings with legislators. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
fielded questions from Senate and House agriculture and appropriations
committees on issues ranging from nutrition assistance to disaster aid, rural
broadband funding, the Environmental Protection Agency's pesticide regulation
and foreign ownership of U.S. farmland.
Just this morning,
reauthorization of the Animal Drug User Fee Act (ADUFA) kicked off with a
hearing in the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, with the
subcommittee chair calling for the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for
Veterinary Medicine (CVM) to “modernize its review process, so sponsors can
continue to bring safe and effective animal drugs to the market” and confirmed
the committee’s commitment to reauthorizing these critical user fee programs
before the Sept. 30 expiration date.
In other news, we finally received word on the administration’s trade agenda, or lack thereof, late last week when U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai testified before both the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees. Tai told the committee that lawmakers who have urged her office to return to negotiating traditional free trade agreements, “Needed to wake up to the realities of the new economic order,” and that “we live in a very different world” where “we can't keep doing things the same way.” In addition, she noted the administration would continue pressing Mexico on its biotech corn ban and would not “let this go on indefinitely.”