ma'am, if i could just give you a little bit of context on that, you're right to describe -- one of my colleagues described earlier the range of -- how can i say it? experiences and, if you will ideological knowledge, varies incredibly widely. it seems to be that they are appealing, in some instances, to if there is a sense of victimization, that they are the individuals who are conquers, they're being the victimizers. they do an effective job in communicating that sense.

they couple that with an ability to present here is the idealized vision of what our religion presents. if you really want to leave the trappings of all the challenges and troubles you're having in your current life and join us, we will offer you more direction and more means. that is how they seem to be succeeding. >> so they seem to be attracting young people. are we talking about middle school age? what ages are we talking about? when we say youth, just how young are these young people? >> i would say any -- i would say we're seeing ages in the teens, probably upper teens into 20s. it's also important -- you know we deem this a new generation of terrorists, because as general taylor was saying a lot of them are extremely conversant in social media. that is the means they use to reach this generation. >> i can understand that. what i don't understand is what is enticing them?

what appeals to you when you see someone beheaded or you see these nasty threats or you see this violence? the victimization is something that i would like to carry on a little bit. one of my favorite programs was about the fbi profiler. and so i'm wondering is that a real thing? i know there is police profiling but is there such a thing as psychological profiling? are we looking at those kinds of things? are we identifying some traits that have nothing to do with ethnicity or socioeconomic or whatever, but other traits? and are we able to like identify any sort of red flags in the children and the young people in school and in college? because i just wonder whether or not we're expending enough energy and resources in trying to identify early on in

intervening. >> there is a unit dedicated to terrorists. it spends a lot of time what attracts folks. like mr. mulligan said it's a very complicated piece. quite frankly as far as a profile we've seen the lack of a profile. there's just so many reasons. we don't see disaffected. we see some disaffected. we don't see well-to-do. we see some well-to-do. younger and younger individuals are drawn into this messaging. i would say they've done an effective message versus al qaeda and they say you can come now where sharia law rules and

bring your family. they've messagened it to a wide range. >> approaches and learning devices that would be able to anticipate and deal with whatever it is that's turning them on here? >> yes, ma'am. we should and we are. it's a whole community effort. it's civic organizations as well. >> thank you, mr. chairman. at some point i would like to explore what more can be done proactively in identifying and intervening at an early age. thank you for your indulgence.

>> thank you. thank you, ranking member, for holding this hearing. we're packing in a lot in a short period of time. to mr. mulligan and ambassador taylor, talk about the community engagement exercises and engaging credible voices throughout these communities hourks do we blow that up? how do we make it bigger? how do we accelerate those projects? >> we've just been moving it out fairly slowly initially to ensure we're having a degree of success. we have had some success in that. now we're trying to train the trainer so we could get in a situation where we're propulgating it. it really is at a community level that we need to have this success. and also we need to have -- i think as the ranking member said levels between government and local. in a lot of instances,

particular ly particularly with family members, as you know, people are reluctant to engage any sort of authorities and we need to try to find that middle ground. >> i appreciate that. we need to be thinking about that in terms of weeks not years. that's the speed with which we need to counter this threat. >> it's a global phenomenon. our outreach international has been important as well. i'm leading a delegation to australia next week to further our communication with our partners about this phenomenon and how we can engage communities really across the world, to better -- so that they better understand what this risk threat is. >> in order to make the fbi's job a lot easier, this lone wolf idea, the way we're going to stop that is that extremist ideology and that's going to take a whole of government effort. who in the government is responsible for this? the cb activity?

>> it's a shared responsibility between the justice, intelligence community, and the fbi. our deputies meet regularly to formulate and implement those strategies within the u.s. >> my suggestion would be looking at unity of commands. when have you three people in charge of something nobody is in charge of it. that's something we're plagued with in the federal government on a number of occasions. my next set of questions is to mr. steinbach. on counterterrorism, terrorists are trying to do two things, kill a lot of people and elicit counterterrorism responses in a government to upset a population to form a discord. when we start talking about expansion, i get nervous because of the privacy aspect. to not get too technical.

does encryption provided by many u.s. companies prevent your ability to do attribution? >> in some cases, yes. >> but not in all cases? >> not in all cases. >> are you suggesting when you have a court order on someone connected to terrorism that there are companies that aren't cooperating with helping to get as much information as they can about that individual? >> no. what i'm suggesting is that companies have built a product that doesn't allow them to help. >> but if you're saying it doesn't prevent attribution -- the key is to find as much information to exhibit the success that we had in boston. you were able to identify someone, use other tools to track him and stop and prevent this from happening. it's a difficult task. don't get me wrong. i know how hard you guys are working, maintaining the operational pace that you all

have maintained since september 11th is unprecedented. the men and women of the fbi should be patted on the back and heralded. we also need to make sure we're protecting our civil liberties and our borders at the same time. and when you talk about the technology challenges that you are facing in can kalia expansion, you're not talking about putting a backdoor in software, are you? >> no. as i said in my statement, i'm talking about full transparency going to the companies who could help us get the unencrypted information. the attribution piece, it requires, quite frankly, a technology discussion. there are tokens used that do not allow for attribution. sometimes it's not there. i would be happy to discuss in a classified setting in more detail just exactly what we're talking about. >> i would love that.

thank you. and we've been talking a lot about the use of social media and the tools and how it makes it easier for isis to recruit people. it also gives us an opportunity to do double agent operations against them, to penetrate their ability. when chasing al qaeda ten years ago, if you were anything close to an american you would get your throat slit. now we have these new tools in order to penetrate them. i've run out of time and i yield back that to the chairman. >> if i could briefly counter, delegation on investigating foreign fighters to the middle east and europe and we found that there is a counternarrative out there. this is more foreign fighters who have left the region. some return inspired and more radicalized and some return very disillusioned from the experience. that narrative -- this may be more of a state department issue, the more we can get that narrative out there the better

off we can be. the chair recognizes miss rice. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. stein -- you know when they raise the threat level. but specifically with this online communications, how do you rate what level the communication, how it rises to something that you really are worried about? >> so i think it's a simple question with a complicated answer. there's lots of pieces. the volume. the specificity. whether or not they've identified willing sympathizers who will do something. a lot of pieces go into it. many of those factors are present now. >> so are there any difficulty -- what's the biggest difficulty in terms of being accurate when you are trying to

rate the level of a threat? >> so, as mr. hurt started previously, social media is out there. it's voluminous, but there's volume. it's trying to weed through the thousands and thousands of individuals on social media and find the -- all the noise out there, identifying the signals. it's a volume piece. you know looking at social media requires a different business process we do things with. and going from there to finding a credible threat. it's a very difficult process. >> yeah. i mean, it seems like it would be. be. >> is there any physical presence doing face-to-face recruiting here in this country? >> so i would say we don't -- we

have, of course, a number -- a small number of returned foreign fighters. we have individuals who have been overseas and returned to the u.s. where they are and who they are is probably an intelligence task force. we don't have isil sitting in the united states. we have individuals who have taken up the call to arms based on isil's messaging. >> not everyone who has gone and comes back has become a recruiter. >> correct. >> people who don't go anywhere and are on the internet are in a physical place actually doing, you know, whether in tandem with the online recruitment, actual face-to-face recruitment. >> you're talking about a classical homegrown terrorist the lone wolf. there are factors that would cause anybody to radicalize. it doesn't have to be online. it could be a friend associate. other factors may cause that person to become radicalized.

online just happens to be when you look at the spectrum by volume, the highest percentage. if you're asking do we have core al qaeda coming to the u.s. and sitting here or core isil, we look at that intelligence gap all the time. for the most part i would say no. >> thank you. i yield back my time. thank you, mr. chairman. >> mr. duncan is recognized. >> thank you mr. chairman. >> al qaeda led the way with inspire, online magazine. has isil adopted that media? is there a way to track who

visits that page who takes it and forwards that information if you can answer that for me? >> sir to answer your question, "inspire" still comes out periodically. it has been -- that model has been successfully copied by another -- by several other affiliates and other terrorist-related entities. they see that whole process of like an online magazine as being an effective model. it's been adapted by isil. they have a publication called dibiq. they put out their information. they put it out in multiple languages. to answer your question about our ability to track its propagation, we're able to do that. they put multiple links to it. once something starts to propagate on the internet, it's there, and can reside in a number of places.

that model does exist. they're continuing to employ it. again it's extremely difficult, impossible to track really. >> right. for the freshmen members, and people just starting to look at this, i suggest you get that information. if there's a way to share that information, even in a classified setting, i would be interested in doing that. i'm personally interested in foreign fighters. coming off the battlefield from syria, whether they transited through turkey right before i got to brussels a foreign fighter shot up a museum and killed three people and tried to flee through france. the timeliness of my travels but this was the very beginning. you didn't hear about isis as

much. in may or june of last year, at least not as much as you hear about them the last few months. the foreign fighter that shot up the museum in brussels, germany knew about it and failed to let the bulgiane ian belgians or french know because they were suspicious of u.s. intelligence gathering through monitoring phone calls and all that has come out after snowden. what are some of the challenges of tracking these foreign fighters? you talk about core al qaeda and core isil. i'm talking about the french guy that is maybe go over get radicalized on a battlefield and say i can do this back home. how can we track those guys and how successful have we been? >> ironically that's been an incredibly unifying factor. a lot of our western partners -- they've got substantial foreign

fighter flow -- >> you get there in europe? >> yes, sir. that's something they're trying to confront in europe how do they manage this. we've been sharing a lot of information back and forth with some of the means and processes that we're trying to employ to track foreign fighters. what's also very clear to us is that it needs to be, particularly with our foreign partners, a whole of government approach. we're trying to share with them the benefits we have experienced by ensuring that the free flow of information among the inner agency, in many instances will develop an effective relationship with a foreign partner only to discover that the partner flow within their own nation is not optimized to ensure that appropriate law enforcement authorities have been alerted to that foreign fighter flow. things are trending positively in the information sharing. >> bilateral trade? >> multilateral. >> multilateral. >> we estimate there's been about 4,000 in total foreign fighters flowing from the west.

what we've seen again, foreign fighters from over 100 countries. some of our other partners closer in that region have developed effective mechanisms for tracking and developing rehabilitation programs. going back to point that is the general made earlier, we really need to do a lot of information sharing about their experiences at rehabilitation, their experiences at tracking and incorporating that into some of our own processes. >> in essence of time, north africans are trying to get across into italy and spain. once they do, they've got pretty much free travel throughout europe. how do you target those? these are migrants getting on boats and coming across. >> interestingly some of the direction that's been given lately by -- lately, over the last several months, by leadership is that they're urging these fighters to remain in place. they've been trying to establish

branches of the caliphate in other countries and they're trying to say you don't need to move across north africa. stay in libya and work with our branch there. that is another part of their strategy of how they're trying to offset that limitation. >> sir, if i might add, we're working closely with our european partners from italy and into the northern parts of europe. it is a very big concern for us. not only from a counterterrorism perspective. eventually some of these people might end up applying for visas in our country. >> thank you. i'm out of time. >> i yield back. >> let me say for the members we do have classified briefs with the fbi and homeland social

media monitoring and on encryption challenges. jttfs will be ripe. i noticed in my travels european partners don't screen eu citizens past any watch list as they fly from say, istanbul back into europe. and i think that's a big security gap. we urge them to change that. eu parliament is addressing a change in their law. >> it's been work. it's not moving as fast as we would like it to move. there are some glimmers of hope that based upon the recent activity threats, they understand the importance of pnr and other sorts of data tracking. we have some hope that there will be a light at the end of the tunnel. >> i did as well.

>> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank our panel for the testimony here today. i apologize if any of the questions i'm going to touch on have already been asked. we briefly take a call from our general in afghanistan to get a brief briefing of how things are going there in my armed services role. as some of you may know i spent a lot of time and are very concerned about cyber security issues particularly as they relate to critical infrastructure. can you tell me in your role and are respect to seeing this stepped-up effort using social media and recruitment and using cyber as a tool what you're seeing in terms of recruitment or efforts to use cyber weapons to attack critical infrastructure and can you also describe what measures, if any,

that are also different when combating the threat of a homegrown terrorist interested in cyber terrorism rather than more traditional physical attacks? >> it's a great question. we're seeing more and more blended threat. where we're at now, we do see those same counter terrorist actors or terrorist actors using cyber intrusion as a tool. and they're experimenting with it seeing how effective they are. we've seen most recently in less than a year them becoming more and more adept at using cyber intrusion activities. >> sir i would add to mr. steinbach's comments by saying this is a very high priority concern for the department of homeland security. our national programs and protection division work with

the critical infrastructure community every day across this country about the cyber threat in general and specifically about the threat from terrorist s actors so that they are prepared and understand the potential for that threat and have means of mitigating those sorts of attempts within our critical infrastructure. infrastructure. >> do you have anything to add? >> yes, sir. i mean, i would agree with those points. i would also say again it is an inevitable trend that they would move into that realm. it is a means by which they could affect damage in a very cost-efficient way. they are operating largely. they have a high degree of maneuverability in space. it seems quite logical they would attempt to pursue that and we need to be monitoring detection for those types of activity. >> have you seen those stepped-

stepped-up efforts to specifically focus on that as a tool to use to go operational? >> yes. we have seen stepped-up efforts. >> thank you. mr. mulligan, counter measuring into cve strategies and the use of public/private partnerships such as the peer-to-peer program you mentioned to ensure these messages are heard. at the same time, central to any effective counter messaging strategy though is the credibility of the messenger, which can be greatly undermined if government is involved. how can we ensure there are independent voices that can counter extremist messages without compromising the independence that gives their statements weight? >> sir that's exactly some of the outreach efforts we're trying to make with regard to the community advising piece. it is also -- i mean it's a

question of establishing processes by which people will be able to feel free that they are able to have the tools to do that kind of counter messaging. the challenges that we have again, is there are still trust deficits that need to be overcome. as you said we need to find those intermediaryies willing to take up that effort. >> thank you. before the panel and before my time runs out, social media platforms play a prominent role in all of your testimony. can you describe the relationships that each of your agencies has with the private operators of these networks? are these relationships institutional or more based on personal relationships? and what kinds of requests do you make of these companies? >> so i won't get into specifics, sir. i would say that we have relationships with every company that's in that environment because we have to. it's based on personal relationships as a starting

point. but we develop more than that. i think each company is different and i don't think it's appropriate in this setting to talk about those particulars with that company. >> sir i would add that homeland security and our cyber security role has relationships with all these companies and as mr. steinbach mentioned we probably want to have the conversation in a classified environment. >> hopefully we can perhaps follow up on that at a later date mr. chairman. >> yeah. if i could quickly follow-up why don't we employ a cyber attack to shut down these programs? once that's done they'll open up another account rather quickly. and number two, i guess our intelligence gathering capability goes down quite a bit. you don't have to comment on that.

chair now recognizes mr. ratcliff. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank the ranking member for holding this hearing and i thank all the witnesses for being here today and for all the important work you do to serve our country. this attack seems to underscore and demonstrate the unique challenges that isis is posing today. in garland we saw two dead terrorists and no civilian casualties and we saw law enforcement do exactly what they should have done, which is protect the public. and yet we're living in unprecedented times where a failed attack by isis in that regard is still spun as a win, where a failed attempt still plays into the narrative that they want to sell. as a former terrorism prosecutor who handled a number of items involving al qaeda i noticed an

important difference. i want to ask you about that. al qaeda and isis have both been encouraging lone wolf attacks but al qaeda has been doing it for years with very little success. and it seems to me that isis has been very effective in this regard in just a matter of months. we're at a situation, it appears to me that isis is sophisticated use of social media. it's become a terrorism multiplier of sorts. mr. simpson, mr. rahim can essentially use the isis brand having to join isis. it concerns me that -- it would appear to me i want to ask you each whether you think i'm

accurate in that assessment. >> congressman i think that's an excellent characterization. i would agree with you precisely. they have very effectively leveraged that capability. they have exceptional capabilities and they claim they are making maximum use of every opportunity to amplify effect. representing their victories on the battlefield in the way that they have treated their hostages. they attempt to squeeze every bit, if you will of perceptual power out of social media. >> i agree with mr. mull nen that regard. i've been doing this a long time. i've never seen a terrorist organization with a kind of

public relations savvy. >> i think my colleagues mentioned the main points. in addition to that when you look at the social media tweets in english, versus al qaeda or others they are at a much higher rate. it's a propaganda message that's focused on a western-english speaking audience. >> we're talking about the effect of the message. we want to focus more on the cause. director steinbach you and the deputy director talked about this unique narrative that one that involves a sense of community, sense of adventure, maybe the ability to find a spouse. we all know how ridiculous these claims are. but for those who are susceptible to radicalization, it seems to be an increasingly successful narrative from their

standpoint. i'm curious, since isis grew out of al qaeda and iraq why did isis suddenly become effective at crafting this message when al qaeda and other terrorist organizations really hadn't been previously? do we have any insight into that? >> i don't want to oversimplify it but i would point out the demographic. younger fighters who are much more conversant. they have occupied territory in which there was fairly advanced infrastructure that could then be leveraged. so if you think over time, as you know, al qaeda has -- whereas isis did position itself very, very well. they have a fundamental organization to action that kind of dominates a lot of their psyche and how they move.

>> i think the other difference, sir, sta social media wasn't as robust when al qaeda started. and how social media was used in those events and how it's prop propagating its use since that time. >> frank is absolutely right. you look at the internet four, five, six years ago it was anonymous. still the bad guy individual living in the u.s. still had to reach to a forum, identify that forum. go into that forum. >> my time has expired and i'm hoping the chairman will indulge me to ask one additional question. i think what's important here is i want to find out about their

effective messaging and the fact that they have, essentially, created a winning brand that's drawing the disaffected and disenfranchised to them. what are we doing to counter that message? what can we do besides create a losing brand for them? part of that is kinetic military operations on the ground. from a social media standpoint is there a counter strategy? >> basically a three-prong strategy. on the battlefield because of the fact that we're trying to negate this image of the caliphate that they're successfully -- that's kind of their core. going back to what frank said range of options over the top applications they're able to employ -- going back -- what were the options available to al qaeda? not so great. now we're in another universe of

operational activity. they have vulnerabilities there and move aggressively to counter that. ideological space we talked about in terms of finding those credible voices that can contest the ideological messages. >> thank you gentlemen. i yield back. >> miss torres is recognized. >> thank you mr. chairman. >> reading that brooklyn institute study on terrorism and social media. i took a sneak peek at it while, you know, we were in this session. i understand as of october of last year 42,000 identified twitter accounts, if the report is correct. thousands have been disabled.

in some ways i kind of think that that, you know, it's good to be able to view what is being said and what is being planned. is one way that we can try to prepare and prevent. mr. taylor there's been talk about community awareness community policing. this is nothing new. we've known that there have been a lot of issues in the past that need to be addressed from a neighborhood level. but somehow we have not been able able. want to do neighborhood community awareness to actually doing it. a lot of tensions arise between local law enforcement groups or community groups. this is nothing recent. this has been ongoing.

what have we changed? versus the northern part of california. >> ma'am your question is a good question. i think community policing is community policing. it hasn't changed in 20 years that i've been involved in community policing. it's the outreach that happens with people who are from the community. so that you build partnerships. i dare say it happens in diverse communities and majority communities. it has to happen the same way. you have to build a relationship. >> a trust. >> and the trust. and part of -- secretary johnson has spoken eloquently about

this. he goes out to do his community engagements, he's met with skepticism. he receives complaints about profiling and other sorts of concerns. you have to have that discussion, too. >> right. >> to build the trust that we are talking about things that the community needs to know, that the community can do to protect themselves. >> thank you. mr. steinbach, i represent the ontario airport that is controlled and manage bid lax. i would like to hear more about the fbi's joint terrorism task force in los angeles and how they are working with my local police department in ontario to ensure that train something happening not only for those officers at lax or lapd but it's also happening for those

officers who would be the first responders should an incident happen. happen. >> very large task force. it includes all the major airports, orange county ontario. i would suggest you make an appointment to go out and tour that. i'm sure the office out there, he would be happy to provide a tour for you and give you firsthand understanding of how robust that task force is. i was out there a couple of weeks ago, meeting with the folks in his task force. i would encourage you to go out there and see firsthand. >> right. i would like to continue this conversation with you off the record here to bring to your attention my staff recently went on a tour and i was saddened to discover that while train something happening among other agencies, ontario police

department has not been invited to participate in many of that or much of that. >> i would be happy to have that conversation with you and also be happy to bring those concerns to attention. >> thank you. >> ma'am i might as well in our community outreach role in dhs, we are certainly working very hard with police training. if there's something that dhs can help with in ontario we would be happy to have that discussion and make sure that train something available to ontario. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank each one of you for being here today. i have heard from some of you in the past. i'm constantly amazed of your depth of knowledge and also your dedication to mission.

i was routinely engaged in sophisticated wiretap surveillances and other surveillances. our investigations benefited greatly as the cellular telephone developed. many technologies were introduced that we could not at first monitor. to be clear what you're talking about for those internet sites out that there are dark, if you will, you're simply talking about being able to have access to them, not to monitor them without a court order but obviously to use court orders if there's problem cause to them monitor those sites. am i correct? >> absolutely sir. >> not just talking about forcing them to go public so we

can monitor everything that's going on. if you get probable cause we go forward? >> going to the court with a court order, criminal courts or fisk. >> very good. mr. taylor, you mentioned about cve being our best defense against violent extremism reaching out to people in programs to be our best defense. i couldn't agree with you more. i was with a chairman and others when we went overseas to talk to our foreign partners and to see firsthand the issues that the foreign fighters task force. there are security gaps overseas that we can't control. it leads me to conclude that unfortunately it's not going to be overseas. at least not yet. if you could expound for a minute, what would you envision briefly as to what would be the

best way to build this program? we've got pilot programs nationwide. what would be the best way to build this program? >> you mean here in terms of community engagement here in our own country? >> yes. >> i think we've learned a lot of lessons from the pilot studies we've had in los angeles, denver boston and minneapolis. >> minneapolis, yes. >> and now that the challenge is to propagate those lessons learned to communities across the country, which we are continuing to do. we believe that the first line of defense is the family, the community and build from there. and the propagation will help us

achieve a better outcome of what we're trying to get. >> we have the jttf model from the law enforcement side. from the community outreach side, most of attorneys offices have lecc type coordinators. do you envision them playing any role in this? >> absolutely. shared responsibility between fbi, cve and justice department. it's a whole of government and local government effort. >> jtts has been the backbone of our anti-terrorism efforts and they've done a terrific job. it seems to me lately they're under more and more stress with all the additional things they have to look into on a regular basis. it seems there may be more of a reliance in getting state, local

involvement. is there staff concerns going forward? is there a concern that there's not enough federal agents involved going forward? >> i would be happy to answer that question. >> you're going to say yes because you want more money, right? >> as the head of the counterterrorism and fbi media reports last week were completely wrong. jttf is fully staffed. jttf as its backbone, as you said, relies on a robust partnership with state, local federal, tribal agencies. those resources are there. they have not waned. we are certainly not struggling to keep pace. it's a challenge. we have to prioritize our targets. targets. >> i agree completely. i happen to be commander of the

air force office exception investigation. i supported it back in the 90s and still support it today as the best law enforcement process for getting at the terrorist issues. the other thing we've done -- it's not just with the jttf. jttf relies on the 18,000 police organizations first responders and we've done a significant amount of training of those individuals, see something, say something so that they become force multipliers for the jttf as they focus on the investigation of specific cases. i can't speak for the resource part but i can speak for the part that says homeland skirt the fbi has invested a significant amount of training and effort to -- so that people understand the threat the risk

understand what to look for and report that information on a continuous basis for follow-up investigation or for intelligence to go into the ic. >> one brief question. so the takeaway is it there's a resource issue it's on the cve side and the community outregion side and that's something that if we can help you with, that would definitely help with the messaging? >> certainly would help with the messaging and with our ongoing efforts. >> thank you, gentlemen. >> mr. keating is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. two incidents this week demonstrated to me the prev lens of what this committee hearing is about today in terms of the internet and that is recruitment device. it hit really close to home. one of them was the killing of

ahmed abdu. he became radicalized. as you were aware he was on the fbi's 10 most wanted list. he also was the architect one of the major architects of what we're discussing here today where he was fashioning the internet message and in a very sophisticated way. he was killed in northern iraq during the last week. and then secondly in the area i used to represent legislature neighborhood in boston where the terrorist incident occurred. and i want to congratulate you on your fine work. that was linked -- at least

reports, public reports that was linked to this kind of ongoing recruitment through the internet. i understand the importance of information sharing on one end. what we concluded with the boston marathon bombing, the importance of both the local state and federal government working together to share that information. i want to congratulate you all on moving that forward and improving that situation. i think it's very clear. though it's not happening at this moment. incidents that have occurred. we don't have to expand that to local governments, federal government. it's just a matter of time before many of these linkages materialize in a concrete fashion.

i want to ask two questions. number one, given the fact that it's going to be four areas, not just three, of information sharing, we came back, sharing, we came back several members of this committee and understand the difficulties in particularly in the europe area with our allies and not moving forward with passenger name records which we take for granted here. when anyone makes a reservation, having border security on the exterior of european union board borders and that's not moving as quickly as it should. even the technical support we offer as a country to some of these countries as to how to deal with it is not being utilized. so, i want to ask on a couple of fronts, number one, i still think we can work together with countries, even if the european union isn't moving. i want you to comment on how we're dealing with that

information sharing, local, state, federal and with those individual countries because we also found that some countries are more receptive and moving faster than others in terms of information sharing that will make us all safer, not just here and when americans travel abroad in europe but here at home too. and the other thing is, the idea that we're doing a good job swatting mosquitos here at home when it comes to the internet, but we're not drying up the swamp as much as we can. can you comment on what we're doing for countermessaging through the internet to try to have competing messages and what you think more could be done? those are the two questions and anyone who wants to address

those. >> i'll jump in on the first piece. from a national perspective we're very consciously trying to push intelligence and knowledge that has been gleaned from our assessments down to the locals so they are more fully informed. that is definitely -- and we need to do more and keep pushing that. on the international piece you described, it does become very unwieldy when you make it a multilateral issue. so we have established a number of very close bilateral relationships in terms of information sharing that's been very, very positive. but the challenge is, if you really are going to try and address these challenges in a time efficient way, you need to ensure that a broader range is -- that you have the equipment that you can be passing information about. that's a longer term objective in that regard. in terms of the overall countermessaging, the government, our government, our federal government has an interagency process involved in

which we're moving to do countermessaging. that countermessaging works at the speed of government. it is -- as you understand, it has constraints in that i think the real secret is going to be to broaden that overall countermessaging and include those folks outside of the government to participate in that process. >> i would make two comments. first, this committee has been very clear to me in my role that the core customer for the intelligence we do is state and locals and we have worked very hard in the last year to try to transform how we approach the dissemination of data to state and local partners with our ic colleagues and with the fbi and others and nctc but specifically focusing on getting relevant information out quickly to our

state and local partners. i don't know how many joint intelligence bulletins we've done this year but i think it's a record over last year. so that is our commitment to move this information and get it into the hands of our first responders at the state and local federal tribal and private sector. when we talk about our foreign partners, you mentioned the eu, the eu is in some cases reluctant to use pnr across all the eu, we have individual dialogues where certain countries are moving forward to do that within their own country. i would think -- at the u.n. with secretary johnson we talked about resolution 1267, i think there's more pressure on those communities to do that and we'll continue to press to get those

kinds of laws passed for that kind of information. i would also emphasize that all of these waiver countries and that's most of the eu, have independent bilateral agreements with us on information sharing. that may be through the intelligence service and may be through the fbi or law enforcement, those are very robust agreements that we're continuing to press for the exchange of that kind of information. it's not a perfect scene yet but the information exchange both within our country and also with our foreign partners continues to improve on a daily basis. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you all for being here. this is -- of all of the hearings we've had, this has been one of the most productive and informative i've sat in on. one of the things that we're

going to be doing in my office in the coming weeks visiting with law enforcement and infusion centers within the district. what i'm seeing with lone wolf attacks is going to be a reliance on local law enforcement. it is a reminder to me and all of us that these attacks are not against us as citizens, their attacks by those threatened or diametrically opposed to what we are as a people and what we have which is freedom. freedom of thought and ideas and freedom of religion. and in the case of garland, texas, was the freedom of speech. that was really what was being attacked. with that in mind, it seems to be as some have said and understanding what happened with "charlie hebdo" in paris, which i was there a few weeks ago in paris, it seems to be a

potential target. first question, how far in advance of the event did our ic or counterterrorism know this event was happening? and how do we find that out? was there coordination with them or did this come from local law enforcement? >> we knew about it several weeks in advance. and more specifically i will say in this event the event in phoenix last friday, we do layout the threat and potential and we of course don't try to talk them out of it and if you do x, this may happen. we knew several weeks in advance. >> you know that these are coming and how much interface do you have with local law enforcement going into this? >> it's multifaceted, we put out

a joint intelligence bulletin which lays out -- in garland, a week in advance laid out the events and threat to the event. in this case and events like it, we push out a communication tool called the collection emphasis message, that collection emphasis message asks agencies to collect intelligence on the event and the threat. we put out tactical reports. we have many in many cases depending on the size of the event, we have preparatory meetings with state and local, identifying who's going to have lead for control control, emergency response, tactical resources, it's a multilayered approach. we take with every special event. >> we have 15 years of tracking terrorism -- terrorists and their activities and threats, all of the chatter. we kind of got to where we can filter through what's a valid threat.

how responsive are local law enforcement to the threats we're laying out, do they tend to take them seriously? >> yes, we spend a lot of time pushing that at the local level to the field offices as well as at the executive level. two weeks ago we had a video teleconference led by the director of the fbi and homeland security and we laid out again the current threat. we do that periodically, there's multiple levels of engagement. today i'll talk to major city chiefs on the same topic. >> i would add, sir, that the -- we created a network across this country whenever an event occurs, there's someone up on the net saying what's the impact on the community? that's done on the homeland security intelligence network or

law enforcement network or the fbi. our local law enforcement partners understand their primary responsibility to protect communities and understand the risks threaten their communities and they are hungry to help them prepare. that's what we've tried to design. gets that information out to them and once they get it as they did in garland take appropriate action. >> if some of this, these questions we can respond to those later because i understand and appreciate being in the intelligence community in the past. of the communications we know that happened between the attackers and other bad players, how much of that did we know before the attack versus as forensic information and how much of that played into the warning we sent to the local. >> i would be happy to answer

that, but not in this setting. >> the last one is, the reverse flow, do we have good channels of communications for intelligence gathering from local law enforcement from boots on the ground in the community? this was a national event per se because it was an organization out of new york. you may have a local event that could be a high threat target. so do we get a flow of information from the locals? >> it's a great question and again, under the direction from this committee, we worked to expand amount of local intelligence that's gathered and reported into the ic and relevant with the ic working with the fbi and independently with our fusion centers in the field, we've created a new process, what we call field activity reporting, where fusion centers working with dhs and fbi will do reports from a field -- state level perspective on threats and risks in the community.

so i think we have created that -- we're going to leave this hearing and bring you live coverage on the hearing on new menu labeling guidelines set forth by the fda requiring restaurants and food establishments to provide calorie and nutrition information to consumers. on your screen is joe pitts chair of the subcommittee looking into this legislation sponsored by a republican and democrat. they're just getting under way here on c-span3 live coverage. >> the legislation will help small business owners, franchisees as well as consumers who want easy access to accurate

new nutrition information. covered establishments will be sut to a cumbersome, rigid and costly regulatory process to avoid violations and possible criminal prosecution. hr 2017 seeks to improve and clarify the final rule promise you will sgated by the food and drug administration implementing the menu labeling requirements of section 4205 of the affordable care act. the fda issued a nearly 400 page final rule establishing a one size fits all national nutrition disclosure requirement for restaurants and similar retail food establishments. the concern is that this final rule goes well beyond what was intended by the aca. the obligations are imposed not only on chain restaurants

including delivery establishments, but also on any other chain retailer that sells nonpackaged food such as grocery store salad bars and convenience stores meals to go. small businesses that are not chain restaurants but are indeed subject to the rule will face a dramatic increase in regulatory compliance costs. consumers most assuredly will see higher food costs, perhaps fewer choices. some retailers may find it more advantageous to stop selling restaurant-type food all together. so instead of purchasing fresh sandwiches consumers may have to buy pre-packaged sandwiches since those will not require the retailer to comply with labeling requirements. fixing this burdensome regulation could benefit tense of thousand of restaurants, grocery store convenience store, small business owners that otherwise would be burdened

with regulations that will be costly and hurt job creation. according to the office of management and budget fda's menu labeling proposal would be the third most burdensome regulation proposed in 2010. 14 million 536,183 hours to comply. the objective of this legislation is to provide clarity, flexibility and certainty for these companies. while also ensuring consumers have access to the information they need to make informed nutritional decisions. so i look forward to the testimony today. i yield the balancing of my time to representative morgan griffith. >> thank you mr. chairman. i appreciate the opportunity. i'm very pleased to introduce delegate israel o quinn. israel has been a member of the virginia house of delegates

since 2011. he in his legislative capacity serves on the committee of commerce and labor which is much akin to energy and commerce. he's a member of the legislative coal and energy commission and serves on the board of directors for the virginia public safety foundation. he's here today as a citizen legislator should be not in his role as a member of the house of dellegates delegates, but an employee at food stores known as food city supermarket chain. as you might gather they do business business in kentucky, virginia and tennessee. and he's here to talk about menu labeling as it impacts the grocery business but probably most importantly that i shouldn't leave out is that israel also attended a fine institution of higher learning when he went to college at emery and henry college which is also my alma mater.

so it is really great that you allowed me to introduce my old friend. i yield back. >> thank you. now mr. green, it five minutes for opening statement. >> thank you mr. chairman. today we're examining legislation in roll back policy designed to give people access to calorie information when ordering and consuming prepared foods. congress embraces the principal when it mandated that the nutrition information be included on packaged fooded more than 20 years ago. providing the public with calorie information allows people to make informed choices about the food they eat. the affordable care act was enacted in 2010 to improve the health of american people and strengthen our health care system. the main substance of the landmark law centered on expanding access of affordable insurance and put to end some of the worst abuses of the industry. it also contained many provisions to promote prevention measures and general wellness. we know consumers make better

health decisions when they're empowered with information. following this principle, section 4205 of the affordable care act requires chain restaurants and food establishments that sell prepared food to include calorie information on menus and menu boards. menu labels has become increasingly important in recent decades as people eat out much more often than before and the obesity epidemic has reached the crisis level. it is simple reform to ensure consumers have access to the same information regardless of whether eating at home or outside their home. as we will hear from witnesses today on how away from home foods are negatively impacted the diet and health of the american people. without easily accessible and standard calorie information it's difficult to make informed choices at the point of purchase. the legislation we're considering today may weaken that important tool. when enacted the provision built off of the thrust of the more than dozen state and local

policies, hr 2017 could undermine the compromise negotiated. as rin as written, it will have public health burdens on consumer and industry giving super markets and other food preparing establishments a blanket exemption is unwarranted and unstudented by the wealth of research on the cost of compliance and real world ed evidence. it would krael an uneven playing field for competition among the businesses. i appreciate the concerns raised by stakeholders represented here today with menu labelling requirements. while i don't support the legislation, i'm sympathetic to the concerns and timing it will take. due to lack of guideance or

understanding, i ask for an additional year for food establishments to comply. that would give industry the time to review such guideguidance and comply. again mr. chairman thank you for calling the hearing. when considering the legislation, we must also keep the priority of transforming our broken health care system into a true health care system in mind. i yield back the balance of my time. >> i'll recognize the chair of the full committee for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman. today we'll discuss important bipartisan legislation that indeed seeks to provide some balance to the recently proposed menu labeling guide lines hr 2017 the common sense nutrition disclosure act of 2015. the bipartisan effort has always been spearheaded by kathy mcmorris rodgers. a good friend member of our

leadership, active member of our committee. this bill seeks to bring much needed clarity and alleviate some of the burdensome and unnecessary requirements that the menu labeling has placed on businesses across the country. take poeks my michigan based company domino's. domino's has 34 million different potential menu combinations. a online calculator determines the particular information for your order. requiring in-store information for 34 million potential items would cost each store an average of nearly $5000 per year. and it wouldn't address the ultimate goal of informing consumers. there is no tout thedoubt the u.s. should have a uniform policy, but we need a pragmatic approach. the goal is ensuring customers

have the information that they need to make informed decisions and in order do that, we have to make sure that companies can reasonably comply with those requirements. the current situation fails to address the realistic needs of consumers and places enormous burdens on businesses. as it stands, restaurants and similar retail food establishments have until december 1 of this year to comply with the final rule yet there are still an outstanding number of questions and issues. complying will take substantial time and resource and the fda has made it harder by failing to provide more clarity. businesses need to know how to dom comply. and fda failure to provide clarity has made it impossible for those things to happen. so today we will hear from the stake holders. i hope we can discuss solutions to the problem. i want to thank the panel and i yield to the spokennsor of the bill.

>> thank you for your attention to this important issue. and also laura sanchez for co-leading this bill. our joint efforts to clarify these regulations and represent the needs of america's small business owners are critical. i'd also like to thank chairman upton and the nearly 40 other bipartisan members who have thus far agreed to co-sponsor. hr 2017 is simple. clarify the intent of this nearly 400 page regulation so that businesses can comply with it and so that consumers can have access to helpful calorie information. that is why my staff and i have met with stakeholders and other member offices on all sides of this issue more than 20 times this year and have asked how we can improve this legislation. something we've heard again and again was that the 50% revenue trigger for what defines a restaurant is not fair. i'd like to ask unanimous concept to insert into the

record a letter from the national restaurant association to congress that only discusses the 50% revenue exemption. >> without objection, so ordered. >> i'd like to say that these concerns have been heard. and i intend to fully address them as we move to committee markup. i hope that today we can move on and discuss the merits much this important legislation beyond this one point. like many other regulations good intentions don't always add up to practical policy. this regulation tries a cookie cutter approach to treat grossers and peteizzerias like outback steakhouse. estimates state this regulation could cost more than a billion to comply.

requiring domino's franchise's to post every potential topping combination, as the chairman already said more than 34 million possible outcomes, when more than 90% of their orders take place on the phone or internet just doesn't make sense. this is common accepts legislation which provides access to calorie information in a practice and flexible manner by clarifying not significantly altering this complicated regulation. we've been requesting comments from stakeholders since january and we have heard several on the revenue trigger which we've agreed to address and hope that we can move on now to the step of -- the next step in the process. this bill is ready to move, mr. chairman and i thank the chairman and yield back. >> now recognize the ranking member of the full committee, from mr. pallone.

>> i'd ask unanimous consent to put in the record a letter addressed to you and mr. green. >> without objection so ordered. >> increasing access to nutrition information can play an important role in fighting our nation's battle against obesity and diet related disease. obesity is far too common affecting nearly 78 million adults and 13 million children. it's also a serious and costly public health problem with obesity related conditions such as heart disease, stroke type two diabetes and others being some of the leading causes of preventable death. while there are many factors that hey contribute we know overconsumption of calories is one of the primary causes and that's why i've supported efforts to provide access to nutrition information to consumers. thanks to new trigs labeling and education act of which i was a co-sponsor, this info has long been available on packaged food items that you find on the shelves of your grocery store. but it's not always been available to american families

when's thing out away from home. this is a critical gap when you consider that american families are eating out device astwice as often as they have in the past. congress sought to address this gap when it pass the labeling requirements in 2010. under the law restaurants and retail food establishments with 20 or more locations doing business under the same name and offering the same menu items are required to put calorie information on their menus and offer more detailed nutritional information upon request. the availability of this information will help consumers make informed choices about the food they're purchasing for themselves or for their families. this was not a new idea. prior to the passage of federal menu labeling requirements, more than 20 states and localities have passed some type of menu labels requirements including california, new york city, and even here in the montgomery county, maryland. these efforts and widespread support from consumers for

access to this information led the restaurant industry to work closely with congress to draft a strong federal menu labeling policy that would provide for consistent requirements for restaurants and retail food establishments and clear information to consumers. after much discussion, fda issued final regulations in december last year and i know this was a challenging issue for the agency and i want to acknowledge -- i want to thank fda for following the intent of the law while also taking into consideration the concerns raised in the more than 1,000 comments received. we hear from our witnesses that there are areas where there is additional guidance warranted. i'm sympathetic to the concerns and agree that further clarification is needed particularly for establishments without prior menu labeling experience such as grocery stores or convenience stores. however, i do not believe

legislative action is necessary. fda has worked minimize the cost of burden for covered establishments and worked closely with industry to address their areas of concern. i have no reason to believe nor any evidence that the agency whether not continue to work with these stakeholders to address these concerns. further we know fda is currently working on a guidance document to clarify some of the outstanding issues that we'll hear about today. it is for these reasons that i don't support hr 2017 and instead would support providing covered establishments additional time to comply with the final menu labeling rule. i thank our witnesses for the work on this issue and look forward to hearing more about the legislation. i yield the rest of my time to miss mansui. >> thank you. we all agree that the rise in rates of obesity and resulting chronic health conditions constitute a health crisis in our country and we all agree access to nutrition information is an important step in

addressing the obesity epidemic. the affordable care act took great strides toward addressing this epidemic by requiring nutrition labeling at restaurants and other places where people purchase food. the f sdchltda has been work to go provide guidance to stakeholders who has legitimate concerns. however to the extent additional guidance is not supplied well in advance of december 1, additional time is warranted. i look forward to working with the fda and stake holders to ensure this is successfully implemented to benefit consumers without imposing overly burden burdensome or impractice compliances. i look forward to hearing from the witnesses today and i yield back. >> that concludes the opening statements as usual any members

written opening statements will be made a part of the record. and one uc request i'd like to submit following document for the record. statement from the food marketing institute. without objection, so ordered. we have one panel before us today. and i'll introduce them in the order of their presentation. first miss sonia yates hubbard on behalf of the national association of convenience stores. secondly, mr. israel o quinn that congressman griffith introduced director food city on behalf the food marketing institute and national grocers association. third miss lynn o'dell executive vice president communications investor relations of domino's on behalf of american pizza community.

next miss karen rascoff, dunkin brands, inc. and finally miss margo wooten director of nutrition policy center for science in the public interests. thank you each for coming today. you'll each be given five minutes to summarize your written testimony. written testimony will be entered into the record. there is a series of lights on your desk. when it hits red, we ask that you please conclude. i have to run a tight gavel today. we're scheduled a vote between 11:00 and 11:30. so we'll go as long as we can, hope to get through the members' questions. so at this point miss hubbard you're recognized for five minutes for your summary. >> chairman pitts, ranking member green members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. my name is sonia hubbard and i

am the ceo of easy mart stores. easy mart owns and operates nearly 300 convenience stores in texas, oklahoma, arkansas and louisiana. all of which offer foods that are subject to the fda's current menu labeling regulations. i'm testifying today on max of the national association of convenience stores. although more than 60% of our members operate single store, many of these single store owners do business under the name of a major oil company or franchisees of larger businesses that are thus covered by the menu labeling requirements as are subject of the hearing today. the convenience store industry strongly supports hr 2017. the common sense nutrition disclosure act. and the efforts to provide customers and consumers with nutrition information that they want and need. indeed most of the food sold in convenience stores is pre-packaged and already providing this information.

if congress enacts 2017, consumers would receive more nutrition information than they do today and they would receive it in a way that is more useful to them. the food operations of the convenience stores are very different than that of chain restaurants. yet the fda's final ruling was geared toward the chain restaurant model. many chain restaurants sell the same food offerings prepared in the same way and disclosed on the same menu at all of their locations. that is not true for the convenience store industry. convenience stores even those that are part of the same chain sell different foods based upon the different locations and different market demands. even stores that do sell the same items may offer those item this is different ways in stores that are configured differently. at easy mart, we have different foods in different locations which would in turn require different menus. even when different stores have the same foods, they might have a different calorie count because the supplier that provides the components are

different. easy mart deals with more than 50 food suppliers. and it has proved difficult getting the nutrition information we need from them. we expect that some won't get us that information by the december 1 dead line. and there isn't much we can do about it. nothing in the law or regulations requires suppliers to give us the information that we need. the responsibility is ours alone. the food we offer changes frequently. at any given time we may be testing 15 or 20 different new ducts and some of them will become long term permanent fixtures and others may change and be only temporary. this only adds to the difficulty of complying. hr 2017 does not roll back the regulations but instead gives us the flexibility we need do this. for example, the legislation would allow us to have one menu board in our locations rather than a scattering of confusing

signs throughout the stores that repeat the same information. basic wall of words. it would allow us more flexibility to display calories in ranges and averages rather than trying to come up with exact salary countsalorie counts. the bill would give us more flexibility for food we're testing. it should not be a felony if a store doesn't prepare the food exactly the same way as another store on the exact same day it one of my clerks makes a mistake. we need some recognition of the good faith efforts to comply. and no mistake in this area should be serious enough to charge one of our store managers with a felony. finally, we need more time to comply. once new regulations are issued. this is a complex regulatory regime and we must analyze each and every one of our locations differently. we need time to work with our

suppliers. the bottom line is that hr 2017 is good sensible legislation that will improve fda's rules by helping businesses actually comply. and that will mean more good useful information to consumers. i thank you again for the opportunity to testify and i look forward to answering any questions you may have. >> the chair thanks the gentle lady and now recognizes mr. o quinn. >> good morning chairman pitts, ranking member green and subcommittee members. i'm director of strategic initiatives. our company operates 105 supermarkets primarily under the food city banner in kentucky, virginia and tennessee. beers an associate owned esop company and that's something that we all take a lot of pride in. additionally we're members of the food marketing institute and national grocers association. we really appreciate the work that you're doing to consider the impact of the fda's menu

labeling regulations on grocery stores and the need for hr 2017. more than 90% of the foods in our grocery store have not only calorie information, but the full nutrition facts panel listing fat, sodium and sugar content among other things. many of the remaining items that we offer actually source from within the store. if a cantaloupe or a fruit or vegetable gets ripe, we cut it up and put it in the salad bar. many actually prepare foods that may be specific to a single store based on regional tastes and preferences. throughout our stores and across our company, we have a team of quality a assurance personnel that is focused on food safety.

we also have our own safety and quality standards that go well beyond these laws because i can promise you the last thin weg we want is someone to get sick from our food. you height ask how this is related to what we're talking about today. these are all areas that are a priority of the supermarket industry specifically and where we devote a lot of time and resources. they're also regulation not applied to chain restaurants. 0 so so when the fda stretches regulations out to grocery stores on top of all the other laws we abide by the glove simply doesn't fit. we are wholly committed to aiding our customers making healthy choices. i'll highlight three things. we have a healthy initiatives department that helps our customers make more informed decisions about healthy eating.

something that is the right thing to do. we've also invested significant resources in the new val scoringeing system. we're also involved in a large locally grown produce initiative. most of the farmers in this initiative were formally tobacco tarm farmers and now growing the best tasting fruits and vegetables that you can find anywhere. over a 14 year span, we've gone from purchasing $750,000 this product to nearly $6 million last year alone. we're now able to offer premium produce at a very affordable price and you can know the specific farm from which that product came. we were doing locally grown a long time before it was actually cool. in closing, you may or may not be aware that grocery stores operate on a profit margin that averages about 1%. there is very little room for us to absorb costs such as the ones presented by menu labelling. when you operate on a razor thin

profit margin, you don't have the lxry of spending money on things that bring little to no value. costs are ultimately passed along to the consumer. and consumers can't afford to be paying more and getting very little in return. now, our industry has asked a lot of questions and attempted a lot of meetings with fda throughout this process and we've had very few meetings and very few answers. so we believe hr 2017 is a huge step in the right direction. we thank you very much for your time and attention. >> chair thanks the gentleman. now recognizes miss o'dell five minutes for opening statement. >> good morning ladies and gentlemen. i'm honored to have the privilege to speak on behalf of the 20,000 pizzerias across the u.s. who make up our coalition and for 900 domino's small business owners. i appreciate you giving us this

chance to discuss how calorie information is best presented to our customers. our requests are simple modern practical solutions that will inform consumers in a better way and relieve a cost burden from small business. i believe that you will find them more than reasonable. at domino's, there are 34 million ways to make a single pizza based on all the crust types, sauces and toppings. pizza hut has published they now have 2 billion. so our first point is that you can't possibly fit all the iterations of a pizza on a typical member uhe board like you can for burgers for example. fda did understand that, too, so they said just put ranges. but if you put ranges for a whole pie, that's a range of up to 2,000 calories. if you do it by the slice it's still a range of hundreds of calories. we think that the calories should be disclosed more precisely so that our customers actually know what they're eating. our solution is to put the information where our customers go, online. right now about half of all

domino's orders address those of pizza hut and papa john's come there on theline. five minutes from now, there will be more since the industry is moving there at warn speed. the rest of our customers who don't order online pick up the phone to order. this means that very few people and our figures show less than 10% walk into a store, look at a menu board and make their ordering decision in that way. think about your own ordering habits. what do you do when you order pizza? to illustrate this point with a specific example we spent an average day in a domino's store in michigan. out of the 324 orders we witnessed, 91% were placed remotely, either online or by phone. about 7% were placed in store and not even 2% of customers that's five out of 324, used the menu board to place an order. to us, it makes no sense to retrofit this information on a menu board which the vast majority don't even use. my second point is about imposing an unneeded and somewhat bizarre expense on small business people. most people think of domino's or

papa john's for example as big business, but we're actually a collection of small business owners or franchisees. nearly half of domino's franchisees only own one store. and our average is just five stores per franchisee. this is the common model for pizza. so why make these small local business people who live work and hire in your districts pay thousands of dollars a year for something that nobody uses. there are also other provisions of the final rules from fda that we find pretty frightening. they define menus very broadly which are force businesses to calorie label anything a customer could possibly order from. the original law defined a menu as the primary writing of the restaurant. i'm a simple mid westerner but i think primary means first and foremost, not all. in our business, we send lots of advertising flyers out top boxes with flyers and put posters up in stores. none of these were ever intended as menus and complaintan't all be

considered primary. this stands across many restaurant types. fda claims to have recognized this point but the definitions in the final rule don't differentiate these properly. lastly, the final fda regulations require that you have to certify at both the corporate and individual store levels that you have listed all the correct calories and places and that can face criminal penalties should you do this wrong. and what about class action lawsuits if a teenaged pizza maker is a little heavy handed with the cheese and the slice doesn't match the listed calories? we believe that a business should be required to show that it hasde reasonable efforts to depicture calorie information and i hope we can all agree inadvertently putting too many toppings on a pizza should not include threats of jail time. even with all the fixes we've proposed, we think it's worth it. people do have a right to know what they're eating which is why we have been voluntarily disclosing calorie information

in one form or another for 14 years. but to get ready commuter programming, material design nutritional research and race al systems will need to be put in operation. so we've asked for more time to get it done. but let me be clear. in no way do we see a delay in the rules as a solution. we must have a legislative fix. this closing, i cannot say it too many times we are not seeking an exemption. we want to com lie. in a way that provides the information in the clearest way. we ask you to support and ultimately vote for hr 2017 for the sake of all these important constituencies. chairman pitts and members of the subcommittee thank you for listening to me and thank you for your leadership on this issue. >> the chair thanks the gentle lady and recognizes miss rascoff five minutes for an opening statement. >> thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today.

i serve as chief communications officer for dunkin brands. it's the parent company of two of america's most beloved brands done kinunkin donuts and baskin-robbins. they are both owned by franchisee franchisees. they are small business people. dunkin brands has proudly supported national uniform menu labeling for many years. and we continue to believe a national standard for providing nutrition information on all restaurant type foods is critical. over the past several years, dunkin brands and many others in the restaurant industry have worked proactively with congress

and the administration to help reform what had previously been a complex highly localized approach on menu labeling. before this federal solution, labelling laws were being pass order a state by state, city by city basis and in some cases counties were competing with cities to pass such laws. competing state and local menu labeling laws were difficult and disruptive for businesses as well as lacking in consistency for customers. a national approach to labeling was an important and necessary step for our franchisees, our industry and most importantly for consumers. it's been long overdue and remains critically important. we acknowledge that today's food service industry is large and complex. however, though we continue to have some specific questions in regards to how to efficiently and effectively implement certain sections of the regulation, we appreciate fda's commitment to working with stakeholders. we believe fda generally followed the intent of the law

and did so in a manner to largely minimize cost and burden to the food service industry. while some may argue that there is expense and inefficiency in regards to implementation, after having complieded with both individual state laws as well as completing much of the work to meet the year end deadline, i can assure you fdi has worked to address most of the significant and potential costly issues to us. likewise, the new labeling regulation is intended to benefit both businesses and consumers by focusing on all establishments that serve restaurant type food, not just a select few. for this reason, the regulation specifically includes not only restaurant chains, but also other food service retailers with 20 or more locations including convenience stores, grocery stores and others. hr 2017 includes a provision that imposes a percentage revenue threshold exempting

grocery and convenience stores from having to label their restaurant type food. we strongly disagree with this. the benefits of nutrition labeling are important no matter the size of the menu or the percentage of sales there food. i hope congress will maintain the labeling regulation as it was written. grocery and convenience stores are increasingly competing against our restaurants. while we welcome the competition, we believe that restaurant type food that grocery and convenience stores sell should be held to the same standards as the food that have a decisiontraditional restaurants sell. is this about the type of tood, not the business format. a final point, there have been many concerns expressed in regards to the expense. to be clear, the regulation states that food service operators need only use reasonable means to calculate

nutrition information. lab testing is not required. there are multiple ways to determine nutritional values. many of them at minimal cost. and very importantly, the regulation does not require menu boards. the regulation how companies choose to communicate nutritional information is a business decision, not a legislative one. and from high tech to low tech there are many communications options available to retailers. for these reasons we do not support the language in hr 2017 that clarifies this point. and to be clear, we do not believe any additional legislation is necessary. all krar guying information can be handled through fda guidance. thank you for the opportunity to testify. >> now recognizes dr. wooten. five minutes opening statement pmt. >> good morning. i'm director of nutrition policy

at the center for science for public interest and i appreciate the opportunity on share the consumer view this morning. cspi supports the senate's bipartisan request to the fda to give industry more time to comply with menu labeling. but we strongly oppose hr 2017. the common sense nutrition disclosure act supports neither common sense nor nutrition information disclosure. common sense would be to side with the american people who are afflicted by high rates of obesity over domino's which is hardly in need of congressional protection given its almost $2 billion in annual sales. at a time when two thirds of americans are either overweight or obese half of our food dollars are spent on away from home foods and studies clearly link eating out to obesity. common sense would suggest that congress support americans' ability to make educated choices from the widest range of food

service establishments provided under the law. i admire the gutsiness of some of my fellow witnesses. it's politically astute and clever to focus on the fixes that hr 2017 would supposedly provide them while failing to mention that the bill would totally exempt them from providing calorie information for their prepared foods. this bill most definitely would not make it easier for people to access meaningful easily accessible nutrition information. that's why over 115 health experts and organizations oppose this bill. supermarkets say that they're willing to give customers what they want. but fail to mention that over 80% of americans want supermarkets to provide calorie information for their prepared foods like fried chicken sapd sandwiches and soups. and more than a quarter want

calorie labeling for hot dogs, pizzas nachos and other foods sold at convenience stores. how are people supposed to make informed choices if congress, supermarkets, convenience stores, pizza chains and movie theaters withhold nutrition information from them? supermarket and convenience store exaggerations about the cost of menu labeling remind me of concerns in the early days when i was first working on menu labeling. but those did not turn out to be true. menu labeling software is inexpensive. many supermarkets already have dietitians on staff who can conduct calorie analysis. and restaurants have shown that calorie labeling is affordable and feasible. in the dozens of injures are s arejurisdictions already in effect. it's also does his ingenuous for supermarkets and veefrns stores to promote themselves to customers as alternatives to restaurants while at the same

time lobbying congress about how different they are. super market bakeries, buffet, salad bars are like those in restaurants. and many supermarkets now have tables where people can eat. 7 lech-eleven 7-eleven, sheetz are some of the top and some belong to the restaurant association. it's mard to understand why pizza restaurants need a special exemption. while other people -- while many people do order pizza by phone or computer, similarly many do not enter fast food restaurants and order instead through the drive-through. yet fast food restaurants aren't opposing having to provide their customers with nutrition information on each of their menus. likewise pizza restaurants should not deny nutrition

information to their in-store customers. and pizza is a real problem in americans' diets. it's the fifth largest source of calories. it's the second biggest source of saturated fat. and it's the third biggest source of sodium. if any restaurants need comprehensive nutrition labeling it's pizza restaurants. the variability of pizza with its different customers and toppings is no different than the variabilities of subway sandwiches with different breads and meats and toppings and spreads or ice cream sundayes or burritos. calories are being provided for commonly ordered standard builds. finally, hr 2017's roigs to allow restaurants and other food service establishments to arbitrarily choose to label items for only a fraction of the menu item is a recipe for

confusion. it would be deceptive for consumers and make it very difficult for them to order. i urge the committee to oppose hr 2017. your con statistic uheit uatistic uheyukon statistic you eent ooet health depend on it. >> thank you for the testimony. we'll now begin questioning. i'll recognize myself for that purpose. with the implementation date of december 1, there still a lot of outstanding questions for the fda. considering the short amount of time for compliance and the lack of guidance from fda, would you all agree that there should at least be a delay for implementation is this

implementation? just yes or no. we can go down the line. >> yes, sir. >> yes. >> yes. >> we're willing to agree to a delay. >> yes we believe that's reasonable. >> thank you. i'll go to mrs. hubbard -- miss hubbard. what are the biggest issues your businesses are facing and what do you anticipate the cost will be for implementing these regulations? >> i think the biggest challenge we face is the diversity in not just the industry but within my own chain, our own stores we're 45 years old. we've acquired a lot of stores. they all have different ages and different products in the way they're laid out. if you will envision one store we walk in and the food service is on this end that offers fountain as a bundled piece with something you purchased. the fountain dispensers are down on this end. coffee bar somewhere else as is the hot dog and pastry case. the way we interpret this, we

have to have all the postings of all of the calorie count adjacent to those products and repeated, it would be duplicative throughout the store. it literally would be a wall of words for the consumer to try to interpret to find what the calorie count is. and how we display that. if somebody were to move that piece -- that displays the calorie count, then is this now a felony. we're very concerned about i think the punitive damages of this and the practicality of trying to implement and have all these in different stores. we truly would have 300 different compliance plans. >> mr. quinn, could you answer that question, what are your biggest -- the biggest issues you're facing with this? >> i think certainly some of the biggest issues come in how you actually label these products in the grocery store. if you take a salad bar area for instance, we've looked at multiple ways to do that, whether it be putting something on the spoon itself, but should

perhaps my 10-year-old cousin come through and move all the spoons around, you're subject to fda punitive penalties. if you put it up on the -- label penalties. if you label everything. someone comes through cleans that, you know the alcohol based cleaner makes one fall off, you know where do you -- how do you account for that? and then you know, we've looked at electronic boards and how often do things have to cycle through on them? how big do they have to be? the labels is certainly one of the biggest challenges that we're going to face and how you make it consistent and the same every day? >> would you please respond to that question? the biggest issues your businesses are facing and the cost? >> the biggest head scratcher for us is why we would put unclear range information on a menu board for those very few people who look at a menu board.

we think a better solution for the few people who walk into a store would be to put a comprehensive booklet perhaps on the countertop, or maybe even an ipad. but to put ranges on a static menu board that won't help consumers make a decision doesn't seem like a good idea. secondly, even though we are a big company with revenues we are a conglomeration of small business people. half of our guys only own one store. so we're going to make them pay for something that people are not looking at. that us is just beyond the the challenge. it really makes no sense at all. >> miss hub bard you said you would support a delay. if congress should unilaterally enact the delay does that solve

the problem or would we be back a year from now debating testimony? should we put hr-2017 on a fast track to the white house? >> i absolutely do not think a delay solves our problem. we still have the shoes on how do we communicate this to the consumer? if the intent is to provide consumers with choices, don't we nood to do that in a way they can find it? i think we've all walked into a quick serve restaurant and be overwhelmed by the menu board? can you now imagine that 50 times worse tw the configuration configurations of the so dada? >> my time has expired. i'll have to send my questions to you in writing. thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to remind the panel the affordable care act was passeded in 2010. it's take tennessee fda a while to do it.

here we are five years later, and we still have a problem with obesity in our country and some of the suggestions here are not going to stop people from eating what they want to. i'm going to go to domino's or dunkin. the bottom line is we want people concerned about their obesity, their children's obesity and parent's obesity and ult may will end the diabetes. so i would like to see what we could do to be workable. but again you're right. i've been to a lot of convenience stores. t we do have folks complying with it. but we still need to make sure the consumers have the information. maybe we need to present it in another way. nobody is going to leaf through a booklet while they're waiting for their hamburger.

but, i want to thank dunkin doughnuts and the restaurant industry for the leadership on the issue and your work on the final law. consistency in menu labeling requirements is not only critical for us but also the consumers. much of the discussion on this issue has been focused on types of restaurant, retail restaurant, food restaurant should be covered by these labeling requirements. it seems to many our focus should be on types of food and consumer demand for ready to eat and prepared food continues to grow. in your testimony you note the similarity between supermarkets and restaurants. you've heard the supermarkets would be up to a billion dollars in initial cost, due to the items undergone in nutrition. i have not heard that from restaurants. can you explain what the cost of

compliance with fda's final menu labeling rule would be for the ddunkin brand's restaurants? >> we've spent the last year looking at -- we've spent the last yeek looking at this to ensure that we were able to comply with this by the end of this year. we too have a very complex business. if you look at all the ways you can order coffee, 15,000 different ways. and ice cream sundaes, 80,000 different ways. we understand this is a complex business. we have been able to figure out a way to do this with our menus. the cost of this for us is going to be baskin robbins shop about $400 per restaurants. for dunkin donuts the cost for them will be to label the drive-thrus. that's about $600 to $700 a restaurant. if it's not digital, it's about

$1200 a restaurant. so it does not require menu boards. so there's a multitude of inexpensive ways people can label for nutritional value whatever type of business format they have. >> dr. wootin, there's been a lot of discussion on your labeling requirements and at similar restaurant establishments. the content of the law was not to define the law solely to restaurant establishments, but rather than to apply broadly to entities that sell food to consumers. this was a decision based largely on americans spending food items prepared outside the home. doctor, as one that were involved in the drafting of the original legislations that cleared the law was intended to broadly cover restaurant type food. >> absolutely. when the law was written it

included not only restaurants, but also other food service establishments, and that was meant to cover the broad range of food service establishments that provide prepared foods. in fact, i remember the supermarket industry trying to get an amendment to strike that particle. they were not successful in that effort. they knew they were going to be included. they should have been prepared for this and getting ready, as the restaurant industry has been. >> can you discuss what you think the impact from having certain food establishments excepted? >> not having nutrition information in supermarkets and convenience stores will really limit people's access to information. they are increasingly competing with restaurants and people are just stopping off at the grocery store and buying fried chicken or meatloaf with side dishes, just as they do at restaurants. and so more and more, people are turning to supermarkets for

prepared foods like they do for carry-out from restaurants. and at pizza restaurants while many order the phone, those people that do walk into the restaurant want nutrition information. you really need to look at this from the the consumer perspective. it's from where the consumer is ordering that matters and where they need the information. the law does not require a pizza chain to put up a menu board. if they don't think enough people are going into the restaurant that they feel they need to have a menu board, they don't think they have to have one. if they think enough people are coming in that they're putting up the menu board and listing the pizzas and the prices then next to the price they also need to post the calories. >> thank you. >> i now recognize the gentleman from illinois. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i was almost going to sneak out from the hearing. i understand there's some people who want to see the information.

if you did national polling people say sure, i would like to have it on. i don't think i've ever in my life read a menu label. i don't think i've ever looked for calorie numbers on anything i've consumed. and i bet, i bet you i'm in the majority of americans. so i just throw that out this. i really struggle with this. this is the perfect example of a nanny statement. of a national government telling individual citizens and and saying what is best for them. and directing and pushing private sector individuals to push people to consume things that they feel that it is.

and it's unfortunate but we are here. and so we have issues to address. and i was here when we passed the health care law. all we passed was the senate version o f a bill. obamacare that passed the health care law was a senate bill. that we passed on the floor without any additional debate or oversight for a year and a half later. so the -- i want to go to miss hub hubbard. here's the example. i have sons that i love very much. so they go and get a drink at one of the convenience stores. they have personally title edd --.