Policy
Politicians vs. Leaders
Published July 22, 2009 @ 02:35PM PT
This week, Steph continues her series on a critical piece of social infrastructure necessary for growing the small-scale farming sector, or any other part of a more localized economy that depends on small businesses: making a public health insurance option available to everyone.
When President Obama was elected, it seemed like everyone was quoting Abraham Lincoln. When I saw this quote today, though, it got me thinking about the current status of the health care reform debate:
A statesman is he who thinks in the future generations, and a politician is he who thinks in the upcoming elections. – Abraham Lincoln
It reminded me of another saying, though I can’t find who said it so maybe I’m making it up – A politician does what is popular, whereas a leader does what’s right.
In either case, the health care debate is separating Congress into statesmen and politicians, with politicians like South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint who is trying to block all health care reform in order to settle mere political quarrels on one side, and leaders like Reps. Ron Kind and Earl Pomeroy fighting to make the lives of their constituents better on the other side.
Both Reps. Kind and Pomeroy are rural Democrats, and yet they were two of the three members of the House Ways and Means Committee (one of the committees that is charged with writing the bill in the House) who voted against party lines and against the bill. Voting against their party is a mighty unpopular thing to do, but it was right to stand up for the rural communities they represent.
Rep. Kind said that he voted against the bill in part because it tied reimbursement rates for the public health insurance option to Medicare rates, which are problematically low in rural areas and providers are reimbursed for the volume of care they provide (which will inevitably be lower in rural areas due to population density). At the same time as he voted against a bill he felt would hurt his constituents, he reiterated his support for a public health insurance option.
Rep. Pomeroy also voted against the bill for similar reasons, saying that tying payment schedules of the public health insurance option to Medicare is a deal breaker for him and that the bill in its current form did not do enough for rural health care.
If you believe the reports that Mr. Obama’s poll numbers on health care are slipping, maybe it is because the President has not been as strong a leader as he could be. Reps. Kind and Pomeroy are standing up for rural America and leading the charge for health reform that works for all of us regardless of geography.
This evening at 8pm Central time, President Obama will discuss health care reform in a prime time news conference. I hope Mr. Obama’s inner statesman – and not his inner politician – is the one who shows up tonight.
Food Safety Bill in the House
Published July 19, 2009 @ 10:08PM PT
There's a food safety bill moving through the House, HR 2749 (a.k.a. The Food Safety Enhancement Act). Here's a timeline of what has happened:
- The House Energy & Commerce committee introduced the bill, which included $1000 "user fees" for "food facilities" (excluding farms and restaurants) and an increased schedule for FDA inspections from on average once a decade to as every 6-18 mos for high risk facilities, every 18 mos to 3 years for low risk facilities, and every 3-4 years for warehouses. The bill also gave the FDA the ability to quarantine foods. You can see more details on it here.
- The House Energy & Commerce committee held a hearing about the bill. For details you can see Part 1 and Part 2.
- The subcommittee within the committee marked up the bill and then passed it. During the markup, the changed the $1000 fees to $500 fees.
- The committee marked up the bill and then passed it. They removed the FDA's ability to quarantine livestock (thanks to some heavy lobbying by the meat industry) and increased the inspections for high risk facilities from every 6-18 mos to every 6-12 mos. They also added a requirement for high risk facilities to submit any positive test results for pathogens to the FDA.
- A backlash started against the bill. The meat industry was opposed to the bill from the start and the packaged food industry was actually for it. However, this backlash came from the grassroots from groups that actually care about sustainable food. On the other hand, Consumers Union strongly supports the bill. You can see their arguments for and against the bill here.
- The bill went to the House Agriculture Committee, where the committee chairman Collin Peterson threatened to prevent the bill from moving forward if it is not changed to meet his demands. Among other things, he does not want the FDA on farms.
And that's where we stand now. The groups who oppose the bill still oppose it. The groups who support it still support it. Both are trying to reach the ears of Congress. And the one with all of the power over whether the bill will move forward is Collin Peterson, whose major motivation is allowing Big Ag to continue business as usual without being bothered by pesky food safety bills. The bill is going to change before it moves out of the Ag committee, and the only questions are how it will change, and whether those changes will be good for us. I'd like to see the bill changed so that it won't affect small farmers and small businesses as much as it does now, but of course I don't want to see any of the regulations on big business watered down. I don't know what Collin Peterson's plans are, but I'll keep an eye out for interviews with him and update you if I hear anything.
Bill Establishes Farm-to-School Program in Texas
Published July 15, 2009 @ 09:56AM PT
Hello Sustainable Food people, remember me? I'll be doing my best to help Melissa with content for this blog while Natasha is away. Looking forward to getting back into the farm and food discussion over the next couple weeks.)
Last month, Texas Senate Bill 1027 passed through the state's Legislature and was signed into law by Governor Rick Perry on June 19, 2009. The bill, sponsored by state Senator Kirk Watson, provides for the establishment of an inter-agency farm-to-school coordination task force in order to increase the ability of schools in the state to purchase locally produced foods to feed students.
First off, yay! I'm happy to see that government officials in Texas are taking a proactive role in increasing the amount of healthy foods available to state schools.
With the recent documentation that a full 20 percent of pre-schoolers in the U.S. are obese (yes, not just overweight, but obese), this legislation could not come at a better time.
Among the various tasks the bill requires the task force to accomplish (with my comments italicized):
- Offer assistance in identifying funding sources and grants that allow schools and school districts to recover the costs associated with purchasing locally grown food products. (I can't tell you how important this provision is. The greatest barrier to getting more fresh and local food into schools is cost, and if government can help defray that cost, schools will be much more willing to shell out the extra money for fresh food.)
- Provide technical assistance to school food service agencies to establish procedures, recipes, menu rotations, and other internal processes that accommodate the use of locally grown foods in public schools. (It's easy to throw a bunch of frozen french fries in the deep frier, but it's quite another to figure out how to incorporate beets, leeks and other fresh veggies into meals--and get kids to actually eat them.)
- Identify, design, or make available training programs to enable local farmers and ranchers to market their products to schools and school districts. (Making it easier, and of course profitable, for farmers to sell their products to schools helps to remove another barrier in making more locally produced good available.)
Second, I'm even more pleased to see the emphasis the legislation places on nutritional and experiential food education. More than simply making it easier for schools to source locally grown food, the task force is designed to encourage kids to learn to appreciate and understand the value of diets that include lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.
The earlier you teach children about the joys of enjoying fresh food, the more likely they'll take these eating habits with them as they grow older.
It won't be until the winter of 2010 until this task force is actually set up and ready to make recommendations on how to increase local foods in schools. As we've seen before, just because a government program is set up, it does not mean it's going to be effective.
I'm hoping that this task force will keep in mind the health and well-being of the state's children as they're working toward a stronger statewide food system.
(Photo credit: Bonzo McGrue on Flickr)
Nation's Food Policy Pro-Pus, Pro-E. Coli, Pro-Bribery, Pro-GMOs
Published July 10, 2009 @ 05:19PM PT
Practices that were infuriating to me under Republicans have simply become disheartening under Democrats. I will explain.
Pro-Pus
So Michael Taylor, Monsanto's former lawyer and a fan of adding extra pus to the nation's milk supply by way of giving all our dairy cows chronic mastitis from rBST/rBGH, has indeed been hired to the newly created position of Deputy Commissioner of Food with the Food Safety Working Group at the FDA.
In theory, Taylor might not be as bad as all that, he shilled for rBST as a young, impressionable executive and he seems to have grown as a person.
Though adding insult to injury, Pennsylvania's Dennis Wolff is a finalist for Undersecretary of Food Safety. A willing and enthusiastic participant in Monsanto's campaign to prevent rBST-free labeling on milk, Wolff tried to sneak a 2008 ban on the labels under the noses of Pennsylvania citizens who were outraged and forced the governor to overturn the policy.
But really, two, TWO people appointed or being considered to head food safety in the Obama administration who opposed the public's right to know when their milk came from cows being treated with a hormone that gives them chronically inflamed and infected udders!?
(BTW, people would have heard about the bovine growth hormone controversy more widely as of the year 2000, perhaps, if Monsanto hadn't instigated the firing of two journalists who tried to expose rBST/rBGH for the carcinogenic, bovine mastitis-causing health disaster that it is. Though also, and this is funny, ha-ha, as part of the resolution of the ensuing litigation, a judge ruled that it wasn't illegal for a news station to lie. F*ers!)
So, I think we can safely say that there are those in our national food safety leadership who don't consider pus a worrying contaminant in the milk supply. Even if they don't hire Wolff, that this didn't immediately disqualify him, that they'd consider adding to the shame of hiring Taylor, is a mark of some serious concern.
Pro-E. coli
As reported, again at ObamaFoodorama, this is another of goals of the Obama administration's food policy:
Inventing Controversy
Published July 10, 2009 @ 11:34AM PT
There's nothing the media loves more than a good horse race. A little controversy - or a lot of it - sparks readers' interest and drives up sales. In the absence of actual controversy, though, the media sometimes has to invent some.
The debate over health care reform is a great example.
72% of Americans support a public health insurance option that competes with private insurers, according to a recent poll done by New York Times/CBS News. The poll was taken in mid-June and showed that people of all political stripes support health reform that, in the words of President Obama, "keep[s] insurance companies honest." Almost half of people identifying as Republicans supported the idea of a public health insurance option, as well as over 70% of independents and nearly 90% of Democrats.
Another recent survey of small business owners in Nebraska and Iowa found strikingly similar numbers. Done by the Small Business Majority, 69% of Iowa small business owners and 70% of Nebraska small business owners support the choice of a private or public health insurance plan.
I would hardly call this controversy.
It appears that the Democratic leadership in the Senate, where it's likely much of this debate will take place, is beginning to think that those numbers don't really constitute much controversy either. In an article from the newspaper Roll Call, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) that he should stop trying to put forward a bill that doesn't include a public health insurance option or that taxes health benefits, because doing so could lose the votes of 10 to 15 Senate Democrats.
So why, then, is there the appearance of controversy? Ezra Klein puts it well:
Every interview with members of the administration involved in health-care reform goes the same way: A reporter asks if they support the public plan. They do. Then the intrepid reporters asks if it's non-negotiable. And, like everything else in health-care reform "except for success," the public plan turns out to be negotiable. And that's the headline.
In the U.S. Senate, however, there seems to be actual controversy over whether the average American should have the choice of a public health insurance plan. When asked about the New York Times/CBS News poll showing such overwhelming support of a public health insurance option, Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) quipped, "Poll numbers, as you know, are here today and gone tomorrow. What's going to decide what passes here are votes [of Senators]."
One only needs to follow the money to see where the appearance of controversy in the Senate might be coming from - the $1.4 million dollars per day that the health care industry is spending on lobbying Congress. And it's not enough to have just anyone lobbying for the industry on Capitol Hill - the Washington Post reports:
The nation's largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records...Nearly half of the insiders previously worked for the key committees and lawmakers, including Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa)...At least 10 others have been members of Congress, such as former House majority leaders Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) and Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.)
When a legislator is hearing from scores more well-heeled and well-funded lobbyists than constituents, they may start to think that there is controversy where there largely isn't.
That's why your members of Congress need to hear from you. Right now.
You are the expert in the reasons why you need affordable health insurance, your community needs access to quality medical care, and why a public health insurance option creates competition that will help keep the health insurance companies from exploiting the elderly, the sick, and the self-employed.
Even if you've called before, even if your members of Congress have spoken in support of a public health insurance option before, they need to hear it again. We need to remind members of Congress what rural Americans need. Hearing from you helps them do the right thing and stand up against health industry lobbyists.
We may not have millions of dollars, but rural Americans know how to make a racket. Let's remind Congress who they represent and what we need: Health reform that works for all of us.
Food Safety Working Group Accepting Comments
Published July 06, 2009 @ 12:06PM PT
So the White House's Food Safety Working Group is on Twitter, and they said they were open for comments. Here's what I wrote them:
Mike Taylor for Food Safety Coordinator
Published July 02, 2009 @ 09:59PM PT
Obama's considering appointing a former Monsanto vice president, Mike Taylor, to head the Food Safety Working Group at the FDA.
As Jill Richardson writes at LaVidaLocavore at the link above, Taylor thinks the FDA wastes too much time on food safety inspections at meat packing plants. Further, he believes that one of their main problems is that they have to slow down their line speed too much.
Everyone who's read anything about the horrendous working conditions at US meatpacking plants knows that incomplete kills before slaughter and worker injuries increase dramatically when line speeds increase.
As also noted at the Ethicurean, Taylor is the reason milk from rBGH/rBST cows doesn't have to be labeled. Bovine growth hormone is perfectly safe, after all. Except for cows, or humans who drink its breakdown products in milk.
So yes, Mike Taylor is the person we have to thank for putting pus from mastitis-infected cows into the milk supply, and exposing milk-drinking Americans by the millions to greater cancer risks.
This guy is heading up a food safety working group.
I'm just swimming in the changeiness.
