An Eater's Bill for the Future

You Are What You Grow
Will this year’s farm bill make us fatter and sicker?

Sunday’s piece by Michael Pollan in the New York Times Magazine is a stark indictment of the state of US agribusiness farm policy and its literally widening effect on the human body. The less discretionary income Americans have to spend on food, the more likely they are to eat from the middle, from the center grocery aisles stacked to the rafters with sugar-laden, calorie-dense, processed foods.

Subsidized overproduction of corn — forget ethanol, the long money is in high-fructose corn syrup — soybeans, the staggeringly high percentage of which is processed into hooved animal feedlot and drylot rations, as well as wheat and, to a lesser extent, rice, provides US growers with a steady income from maximum bushels per acre rather than a fair market price, an artificially-introduced sweetness in every school lunch menu, and a dumping ground on the open market for the surplus.

Pollan’s prescription for the decades of debacle that cloak US food production is to bring this year’s bill into alignment with sound public health, environmental, fiscal, and international trade policies, not another bill that rides the backs of fruit and vegetable producers to the tune of a 40% increase in the real price you pay at checkout while the cost of Coke and Pepsi drop 23%.

Last year’s Washington Post series Harvesting Cash is an excellent read, too. Get through it all if you possibly can. It’s truly a follow-the-money-trail adventure. Best interactive graphic in the series: Raising Cash.

This just in: Trucks are vehicles!

HSUS Factory Farming Campaign

In an animal welfare victory affecting more than 50 million farm animals, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reversed its longstanding position of excluding farm animals from protection during long-distance truck transport.

Professional photographer Saverio Truglia documented his horror at seeing a truckload of slaughter-bound pigs while on a trip from LA to Chicago. Compassion Over Killing’s in-depth investigation into farm animal suffering and death on interstate highways includes video, investigator’s notes, and interviews with livestock transport drivers.

Still pending determination: poultry, rabbits, and fish are actually animals.

Changes to WIC benefit needy vegan families

Des Moines Register

A substantial update to WIC, the federal program that provides supplemental, nutrition assistance to at-risk pregnant women, mothers and their children, is nearing reality. For the first time since the program’s inception, fresh and/or frozen fruits and vegetables, soy milk and tofu will be available for purchase with WIC vouchers. And the USDA, which operates WIC, is proposing a reduction in the allotment of dairy products and eggs that program participants can purchase with vouchers. Did the magnetic poles reverse?! What did we miss?!

Public comments on the proposed rule changes are still open! Get yours in before Nov. 6, 2006. All who are eligible for assistance through federally funded, food assistance programs should have the choice of nutritionally complete foods that don't derive from animal sources.

Read what others have already said in the published comments from the Advance Notice period. We liked two submitted comments so much that we’re making them available without a need for search: PCRM’s and 20–year RD/MPH Carol Allwine’s.

Turn that frown upside down

Late last evening PFW received our first request of the season to do what we do almost best: digging and rooting. Apparently, via judicious review of volumes of government wonk-ese and terabytes of published policy declarations, comes word that the USDA "frowns upon" surface water in pig wallows. Hmm...

We've read some bizarro position statements from the 4-letter acronym feds before, like 28-hour law transport loopholes and how hip-pocket, horse meat trade lobbyists can beat up your Congress, but wallow-water prohibition roused our interest enough to shift weight to the other white meat hoof.

Wipe the smile off Dr. McGlone’s face and let him know the USDA "frowns upon" the practices and conclusions of his research group. And for pete's sake, stop publishing those pig wallow management papers for all the young, impressionable world to see. It's just a fool-hardy attempt to glamorize blatant disregard of USDA policy with a lot of big words and statistics and stuff. Los Angeles Pierce College knows better, so don't fall for the pseudo-scientific ramblings of fringe elements in academia.

Spare a minute to let the USDA itself know that by partially funding SARE and ATTRA programs that condone managed wallows for pigs, it's disregarding its own directives and should cease inspecting facilities that process thousands of pounds of wallow-water tainted pork butts year after exponential growth year.

Now stop loitering in this heat and go back to class. PFW is sweatin’ like a pig out here.