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Floor Speech
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Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, this is a photograph of the alien from the movie ``Alien.''
This is what you could end up looking like if you eat some of the raw frozen shrimp being sent to the United States by other countries. Now, let me tell you what I am talking about.
In late August, the FDA found that raw frozen shrimp from Indonesia was being sold in Walmart--specifically, in Walmart stores in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and West Virginia--was being sold under the Walmart label called the Great Value label. If you eat it, how could you end up looking like the alien in ``Alien''? Because the shrimp was radioactive. I kid you not. It had a radioactive isotope in it called cesium-137. It will kill you. Even if it doesn't turn you into the alien if you eat this stuff, I guarantee you will grow an extra ear.
That was bad enough. Obviously, the FDA issued a recall. A few days later, it happened again. The FDA and NOAA, which I will talk about in a second, found that there were 26,460 packages of shrimp cocktail and 18,000 bags of frozen cooked shrimp being sold, once again, at Walmart and at Krogers throughout the United States containing the same radioactive isotope.
How could this happen in America? This is unconscionable. I will tell you how, because that shrimp, that shrimp from other countries, which don't abide by the same rules that we abide by in America, which, if you eat it, may turn you into an alien or, at a minimum, will cause you to grow an extra ear, is not being inspected. It is supposed to be. It is supposed to be inspected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association--we call it NOAA--as part of the Department of Commerce.
And, yes, they are inspecting some of it, about 1 percent; on a good day, 2 percent. The United Kingdom inspects 50 percent of the farmed seafood coming into its nation. Even China does a better job than the United States of America. This is unconscionable. There is no excuse for it. There is no excuse for it.
This shrimp--and I am not just picking on Indonesia; it is other countries. This shrimp is grown in conditions that you can't possibly imagine: dirty water. They shoot the shrimp full of antibiotics.
I confess, I didn't know they were shooting them full of this radioactive isotope. But the normal antibiotics that they put in these foreign shrimp are bad enough that if you eat enough of the foreign shrimp, you become resistant to certain bacteria here in America because the antibiotics don't work on it anymore because you have eaten so many shrimp that contains the antibiotics. This is unconscionable, and it should not be happening in the United States of America.
Now, I am biased. I believe in homegrown Louisiana shrimp, fresh out of the gulf, not radioactive. But I understand that some stores prefer to buy foreign shrimp because it is cheaper. Now we know why: The damn stuff is radioactive.
NOAA needs to do a better job of inspecting the shrimp that is sold from other countries that don't abide by the same standards we do to the consumers of the United States of America. Iran
This second topic, Mr. President, I want to touch on real briefly.
We haven't heard much about Iran lately. Iran has been busy, though. Just recently, Australia expelled Iran's Ambassador, and they designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is part of Iran, as a terrorist organization. Why is that? Because people connected with Iran firebombed a Melbourne synagogue, and then, a few months later, they struck a kosher deli in Sydney, Australia. Iran is still there, and it is still spreading terrorism.
Iran has also been in the news just recently. The United Kingdom and France and Germany have announced that they are going to trigger snapback sanctions on Iran. What do I mean by that? You will recall that, in 2015, President Obama made a deal with Iran. We called it the JCPOA. And the JCPOA just said to Iran: If you will stop moving toward a nuclear weapon, we--meaning the United States of America and the other countries that are part of the United Nations--will remove the sanctions that we had placed on Iran for trying to develop a nuclear weapon.
So Iran said: Pinky promise, we will stop building a nuclear weapon. You remove the sanctions.
President Obama agreed. He was naive. We removed the sanctions. The United Nations removed the sanctions. The United Kingdom, Germany, and France removed the sanctions. And, of course, the Ayatollah and Iran continued to develop a weapon.
Just because we have destroyed--``we'' meaning the United States of America--many of Iran's facilities to make that weapon does not mean that the issue has been resolved. Iran has refused to come to the table, even still, to negotiate a settlement, a new JCPOA. And as a result--and I am very proud of them--the United Kingdom and Germany and France have said: OK. We are going to reimplement those sanctions that we agreed to take off of Iran when they signed the first nuclear deal, which Iran welched on almost immediately. And, again, I want to thank our friends in Europe. They supposedly are going to reimplement those sanctions at the end of this month, and I hope they do.
Of course, my preference would be to have Iran come to the table again before then and sit down with the United States and other members of the United Nations and resolve this issue of them having a nuclear weapon, but I don't expect that to happen.
So I know I have said it, but I want to say it again. Thank you, United Kingdom and Germany and France, for doing this, but we need to talk about the rest of the story. The sanctions, which will be on Iranian banking, on Iranian shipping, oil, and arms are only part of the story. These are U.N. sanctions. But just because the sanctions have been brought back on Iran, that doesn't mean that they will be enforced.
Now, these are United Nations sanctions on shipping and banking and oil and arms, so normally there would be a United Nations committee to enforce the sanctions. I hope there is, but I doubt it because I think that Russia and China are going to block a United Nations committee to enforce the sanctions.
What is my point? My point is that just because Europe and, of course, the United States of America have agreed to reimpose those sanctions, we have still got to enforce them. We have still got to enforce them. And the United States needs to take the lead on doing that. Joining with the United Kingdom and with Germany and with France, we need to make sure that the world understands that these sanctions are real and that we, as part of the West, are going to enforce them.
This is important. I don't want to see this get lost in our discussion about the importance of the Ukraine situation and other issues of national security. I don't want this to get lost. What you allow is what will continue. What you allow is what will continue. And unless you have an opium habit, you know that is just a principle we all have to learn the hard way.
So I am hoping that the President and our friends in Europe will take the lead and not only snap back these sanctions but then enforce them. And unfortunately--I wish we didn't have to do it because I feel for the Iranian people. I don't feel any sympathy for the Ayatollah. We are just going to have to choke him to death.
I thank the Presiding Officer for his patience.
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