WASHINGTON—Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), who continues to stand up for Florida farmers, spoke to The Floridian about his affinity for stopping Chinese garlic from flourishing in the United States. In the past, Senator Scott has criticized the product from Asia, describing it as "sewage garlic" and unhealthy for human consumption. In this exclusive interview, Sen. Scott began by sharing a rationale for staying away from the herb, and for consumers in the U.S. to buy local farm products.
"If it's made in China, it's bad, okay? So, if it's made in China, stop buying it. First off, it's probably poor quality, number one. Number two, is, they want to destroy our way of life. If you buy a product or service from China or an app, or anything like that, the third of them is their government gets part of that money. They're gonna use that to build the military to destroy us," said Sen. Scott. "They try to steal all our jobs, 76,000 people died of drugs that came from China across our southern border, the fentanyl. Those are Chinese precursors."
He continued, sharing the process of China's distribution of the garlic.
"So the garlic's made in sewer water. It's growing in sewer water, and worse, in China. When it's finished, it's black. Black. Think about it. It's black. If you buy it over in the States, it's white. You know why? They bleach it? They cut off the roots because they can't make that white. They peel it back; they get rid of all the bad parts, so it looks really nice: white. No, it was black because [of] what it was grown in, stop buying Chinese garlic," said Scott.
Sen. Scott also told The Floridian what he's done to address this problem, adding that Americans needed to refrain from buying and Chinese products, and said that he filed a measure in the National Defense Appropriations Act (NDAA) to prevent U.S. military personell from buy Chinese garlic.
"In the National Defense Authorization Act, our commissaries for our servicemen and women are not ever going to have any more Chinese garlic. But you shouldn't buy Chinese fish, Chinese garlic, Chinese any food. You should buy as much food as you can in your local market, because you know where it's produced, you know the quality of the production, you should buy all as much of your food, as you can, locally."
A year ago, Scott demanded that Chinese garlic be taken off the shelves, citing poor safety concerns and human rights violations.
