YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Coons

lines on the record: 27
first: 2023-09-14
most recent: 2023-09-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And the Department of Agriculture for what they do to help make sure that poultry growers aren't driven out of business by these outbreaks, that they're identified, that they're managed properly, they're contained, and then we're able to go back to enjoying America's most affordable, most ecologically sustainable, highest quality food protein, which is chicken.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're done growing. And so that eggs can hatch safely. That's a key input. And so the cost of maintaining poultry houses successfully is a big deal. One of the other things that we're trying to do is to make sure that we continue to have commercial flocks that are viable even though there are detections of high pathogenic avian influenza. Last year we spent nearly a billion dollars on this, but to be clear, we are out of the woods. The last detection in the United States was now back in April, and ongoing surveillance testing of the wild bird population, which is where HPAI comes from, indicates that the virus has subsided for now. So I do want to say just how grateful I am and many of us are for APHIS.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, their concerns are making sure that they continue to have strong market access. In fact, one of the larger egg producers in Delaware just got a grant. I think we announced it a few days ago to put rooftop solar on their chicken houses because energy costs are a big part of egg production and poultry growing. One of the real challenges that is a result of these heat waves we're seeing that I believe are caused by climate change is that maintaining the temperature in a chicken house so that the chickens don't all broil before”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This particular legislation has tremendous support. I'm really grateful for the ways in which we have a dozen co-sponsors that are bipartisan, the United Egg producers, the farm bureaus in 18 states, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Chicken Council have all supported it. And it would be added to the Farm Bill as an amendment if Senators Stabenow and Bozeman endorse it and accept it. It would go into what's called a manager's package as the bill is taken up on the floor or possibly as it comes through committee. But look, if you've got broad bipartisan support for a common sense solution to a problem that could impact poultry growers in 30 states, that's exactly the sort of thing that ends up getting done without there being a floor vote just by having it added as an amendment to the bill.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Payments to poultry growers don't just help sustain our poultry economy, don't just help sustain farmers in the United States, but helps sustain us as the reserve provider of nutrition to a lot of the world.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Literally plumpy nut. And if you want to do a show on Plumpy Nut, I would be excited. It has the technical term RUTF or ready to use therapeutic food, an acronym only a bureaucrat could love. But Johnny was very passionate about clumpy nut. I first heard about it from him because Georgia peanut farmers are so supportive of this critical life-saving paste. And I got to visit a pediatric ward in a clinic at this refugee camp where tragically children on the edge of starvation were being nursed back to health through medical interventions. But when Plumpy Nut is available and it is in that refugee camp available, it can help revive children and adults who've been severely and acutely malnourished. So I think it's important for us to recognize that some of the interventions we're providing like the”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nairobi, where they're manufacturing something that really was initially piloted here in the United States in factories in Georgia and in Rhode Island that takes peanuts and milk solids and vegetable oil and micronutrients and makes a nearly miraculous paste called clumpy nut that can take children.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“America and 4H financing, access to credit, infrastructure, investments in hybrids, developing new seeds and new strains. Our support federally for agriculture is really remarkable. And that's why we have the safest, most secure, most productive agricultural system in the world. And it's why we not only have enough to feed every American, but we send commodity agricultural products from the United States to feed the hungry and the starving around the world. Just a few weeks ago, I was with a bipartisan delegation through the Aspen Institute in Kenya, and we visited both a refugee camp in the far northwest, a remote and difficult and harsh place where there's a quarter million refugees from Sudan being sustained and fed through the World Food Program. And I got to visit a new factory in”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tracy, your question presumes that we don't provide billions in subsidies for coastlines that frankly we have to pay out every time there's a hurricane season or that we don't provide billions in disaster relief every time there's a tornado or a wildfire or a drought and the reality is that we do. Farming is very difficult. It is unpredictable. It is dependent on the weather, it's dependent on the markets and as you well know We have the most productive agricultural sector on the planet. And as I have spent time in the developing world in the global south visiting with smallholder farmers whose yields are a tenth of what ours are, I have come to appreciate the broad and the deep history and the infrastructure here around supporting agriculture. Crop insurance, programs for youth like future farmers.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Producers or the Dope Marva Chicken Association, they're enthusiastically in support of this legislation. At the end of the day, each of us has senators comes here to advance the interests and concerns of our constituents and comes here with some ideological or philosophical bent. I have enjoyed and benefited from finding core concerns of my constituents like the vibrancy of our poultry industry that really”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, Joe, there is. And frankly, that's one of the reasons I was attracted to forming the Chicken Caucus with Johnny and to continuing to sustain it and lead it is that it's something that helps pull together senators from across the country and from different backgrounds. And look, that's part of the history of the Farm Bill is that the Farm Bill has long been broadly bipartisan. The Farm Bill in 2018 got 87 votes. And my hope is that Chair Stabenow and Ranking Member Bozeman will get that strong a support with this legislation this year. And adding this piece, the HPAI Act to the Farm Bill, would help secure some additional support from around the country. Within my own state, I'm really struck at how organizations that don't necessarily or always support every legislative initiative I take, like the American Farm Bureau Federation or EG.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. That's a concern with any vaccine that if it's not sufficiently efficacious, if it doesn't have the impact of stomping out the infection, it can simply lead to it spreading more broadly, not being noticed because the carriers are asymptomatic. And then the long-term public health consequences can be significant. I think it's important that the current vaccine trials that USDA is undergoing be allowed to be thorough and complete. It would be a big change in our policy to deal with HPAI through vaccination. And if that comes to pass, we want to make sure that it's medically sound, that it's sound as a matter of public health, and that it's sound as a matter of its potential impact on our poultry industry.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, ironically, less for the chicken meat than for the paws. It's something that often surprises audiences when I tell them that in some way the most profitable part of chicken grown in Delaware is the export of their paws to the Chinese market. That's been shut off to us for a number of years under the flimsy excuse that HBAI, if there are outbreaks in other parts of the United States, justifies barring exports from Delaware. We've tried to get regionalization understood and accepted. If there's an HBII outbreak in Washington state, for example, to use that as an excuse to prevent Del Marvichicken from being exported into a market around the world, I think is unjustified. But we also have some countries that have said if you begin vaccinations, we will bar your chickens from being exported into our country on that.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. So there are countries that I think are inappropriately using HPAI as an excuse to stop importing American chicken. We have long been barred from the Chinese market, for example, which had been one of our largest, most profitable markets”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that is something that the USDA is currently considering. They are running HPAI vaccine trials. But there are no currently approved HPAI vaccines. And we have to be careful with this and make sure that there is a global decision about whether or not to move forward with vaccination as the means of addressing HPAI because it's a truly global market and it's a significant portion of Delaware's chicken production and of our US chicken production is for the global market. So the EU, for example, is slated to start vaccinations for poultry soon, whereas the UK prohibits vaccinations of poultry. And I think it's critical that efforts to vaccinate American flocks don't have the unintended adverse impact of shutting off key export markets for us around the world.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know that. I don't think so, but I also frankly, within the scope of the USDA budget, would expect this would be a relatively small line item.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, the integrated model where you have large processors like Tysons or Purdue and then hundreds and hundreds of farmers who are on contract with particular processors has worked fairly well in Del Marva. We've got a system where the growers have options. They can switch between the five big companies in our region if they want and the integrators are responsible for the larger”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's why part of the focus of this bill is on the economic harm of not being able to have more flocks come through your houses, but there are hundreds of Delawarians who own one, two, or three chicken houses. And these are assets that are $30,000, $50,000. So this is really aimed at them. It is really aimed at reducing the economic harm suffered by lots of middle class working families who are chicken farmers, but who often also have other income, but where the impact to them and their family of being shut down for months at a time can be significant.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Briefly, no, and let me briefly be clear, the integrated business model for growers is quite different. So the vast majority of the farmers in Delaware who are raising chicken have other jobs and they have one or two or three chicken houses on their property. And a company like Purdue or Tyson's brings the chicks to the farm, provides them with feed, with antibiotics, with support and monitoring. And then whenever they've grown fast enough to then be taken back to be processed, they come to the farm and take them away. And so as the poultry grower, as the chicken farmer, what you really own is the house and you provide the supervision, the labor, the active maintenance of the house, and you tend the flock.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What this last HPAI outbreak meant for growers in Delaware and what this legislation would do for us and for all the chicken industry in the country. I am hopeful that with Senator Bozeman's leadership, it will get included in the Farm Bill later this year.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It essentially says if you undergo the same financial struggles because of the Department of Agriculture, animal and plant inspection service, the APHIS rules in terms of how you deal with HPAI, you'll get the same compensation if you're within that six mile radius and your economic activity is harmed, then you would if you actually had a positive outbreak if you had an infection in your flock. It also simplifies the way that you calculate the indemnate payments so that growers have greater security. And I'm very excited about Senator John Bozeman, the most senior Republican on the Agriculture Committee, coming to visit us in Delaware two Fridays from now. He's going to spend the day visit with some of our producers and growers and talk to leaders in our ag industry. And we're going to be talking through exactly”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we had some significant losses. There were poultry growers who weren't able to earn the same kind of income they historically had. We did manage to get quick and effective control of the outbreak. The University of Delaware's agriculture school has dedicated programs and trained extension agents, the Del Marva Chicken Association, and our farm bureau have worked very closely together to make sure that everyone in our agricultural community is well aware of the risks of HPAI and how to deal with it. And it can have a real impact, both directly in terms of the loss of chickens and revenue and indirectly in terms of socializing people visiting from one farm to another. But we've got it well underhand. We have a very talented state secretary of agriculture who is well grounded in our poultry industry.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Defined agriculture in Delaware. And in fact, this year we're celebrating the century of the broiler chicken industry in Delaware, which began with an accident, a Mrs. Cecile Steele ordered a small number of chickens through a mail order company and got hundreds of them and then ended up actually discovering that because we are so close. New York and Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington that she could really make a successful business out of raising thousands of chickens a year and now there are millions in Delaware and around the country. I view it as in many ways the most important animal protein in our country and the chicken caucus focuses on the opportunities and challenges for export and domestically of the American chicken industry.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The chicken caucus recognizes that chicken is a really important agricultural product for all of the United States. It's critical to my home state of Delaware, but across the country, there's 300,000 people who work in the poultry industry. It generates about $45 billion a year. And there's major operations in about 30 states. But instead of our having a common and cohesive voice in the Senate, when I got here 13 years ago, there really wasn't that. And so my dear friend, our late colleague, Senator Johnny Isaacson of Georgia, Johnny and I launched the chicken caucus in 2013. Part of this is just good old home state interests for me. Delaware has 200 times more chickens than people. It generates about $7 billion a year in economic activity for my state.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, my sense is that growers undergo significant financial struggles, but there is a real gap between those who have a positive HPI case and those who aren't compensated in the same area. And I am optimistic that working with my friend and partner, Senator Wicker, and the other 15 members from across the country of our bipartisan Senate Chicken Caucus that were going to be successful in adding additional compensation through the Farm Bill this year.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For that. But now I can't have any more turns in my chicken house. I can't bring in any more new flocks and be compensated. That's the current situation.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the good news and the bad news is that as a country, we're very good at identifying high pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks or HPAI outbreaks. And what happens, frankly, is that the farmer whose flock is infected promptly gets a control order, has to depopulate, has to destroy his entire flock, and is then compensated by USDA for that. However, under current policy, All the other poultry farms in a six-mile radius or 10 kilometer radius around that HPAI case are not allowed to bring new flocks until the virus is deemed fully contained. So let's say you're a poultry farmer and I live two, three miles away and I'm a poultry farmer and you tragically have an HPAI infection. You destroy your whole flock. You get compensated.”
2023-09-14 · Odd Lots · Senator Chris Coons on How to Fix Our Response to Avian Flu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source