By Michele J. Kuhn
COLTS NECK – Christopher D’Urso’s testimony last week before a Congressional committee in Washington, D.C., all started because he ate his grandmother’s pignoli cookies at Christmastime.
D’Urso, 17, who graduated Tuesday, June 24, as valedictorian of the Colts Neck High School Class of 2014, testified before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China about food safety and country of origin labeling (COOL).
“It was truly an amazing experience. It was one of those times that you have to pinch yourself to be sure it’s really happening,” D’Urso said of the experience of sitting at a table before the members of the Congressional commission. “It was really personally gratifying for me because I had been researching country of origin labeling laws and the inadequacies of those laws.”
D’Urso, who will be heading to the University of Pennsylvania, decided to begin his research after becoming curious about food safety and COOL after eating his family’s traditional holiday cookies in 2011. “I had eaten the pignoli cookies and for a few days after, I had this bitter metallic taste in my mouth. So I looked it up and found it was called ‘pine mouth,’ caused when a cheaper, inedible species of pine nut is sometimes substituted” by food producers, including those in China, he said.
When he was unable to find the country of origin on the label, he began to think about how come some labels have country of origin and others don’t.
He began delving into his research in 2012 and found there were a number of loopholes in the laws regarding COOL. The laws “allow processed food to be exempt from those laws but then the law never really defines what a processed food is,” he said. “The agencies that enforce the laws have come up with very broad definitions and that allows for a large portion of imported foods to be exempt from country of origin labeling.
He also found that the two agencies that regulated food importations, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “use contradictory definitions” of what is required.
While researching his subject, D’Urso recalls at one point thinking he would “love to be up there (before Congress) testifying about it.”
That came true after he brought his concerns last year to his congressman, Rep. Chris Smith, R-4th, whose district includes Colts Neck and who is the co-chairman of the Commission on China, which involved members of the House and Senate. After listening to him, Smith told him about the possibility of testifying.
Smith asked D’Urso to come to Washington, D.C. last July. The student met with Smith and various staff members plus the deputy staff director of the Commission on China and the staff director of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee. A hearing date was then established for June 17.
About two weeks before the hearing, D’Urso had a conference call with a variety of staffers from Smith’s office and the commission to ensure “how I would be most effective.” He wrote a draft on what he planned to testify and then wrote a longer report for the committee.
While he was a bit nervous as he waited to testify, he calmed down after listening to others who were invited to address the panel. “I’ve been working on this. I know my stuff,” he thought to himself. “When the time came, I was just sharing my information with others.”
The experience was “hard to believe” for the teenager. “My hard work had come to this point,” he said.
After testifying, D’Urso met with Smith who told him he was interesting in incorporating his concerns in a bill to put before the House.
D’Urso, a high achieving student who has been a student at the Law and Public Safety Learning Center at Colts Neck High School, did some of his research last summer as a Yale Young Global Scholar.
He hopes to double major at Penn in international relations and economics, go to law school, become a federal prosecutor and then go into politics, the same path taken by a number of politicians, including Gov. Chris Christie and New York City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani.
He laughed when asked if he wanted Smith’s job.
“I wouldn’t want to take it from him,” he said, “but, if he wanted to endorse me when he retires, I wouldn’t be upset about it.”
