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Mark Bittman of the New York Times, Michael Pollan of the University of California, Berkeley, Ricardo Salvador of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Olivier De Schutter of the Catholic University of Louvain have collaborated on a new article in the Washington Post that puts forward a plan for a national food policy. For the authors, "The food system and the diet it’s created have caused incalculable damage to the health of our people and our land, water and air" and that this damage continues because "we have no food policy — no plan or agreed-upon principles — for managing American agriculture or the food system as a whole."
They put forward a set of basic tenets that could inform a national food policy adequate to our age. The priorities of this policy include healthy food for all, reducing the carbon footprint of the food industry, investing in food that is free of dangerous chemicals, and treating animals with compassion and attention to their well-being.
Such a comprehensive policy, if endorsed by the president, would make it more difficult for Congress to continue to pass laws in the interest of massive food conglomerates that do substantial damage to the health of the nation. It would also acknowledge that the state of food in America is a complex structural issue, and not a set of bounded, individual problems.
"As Obama begins the last two years of his administration facing an obstructionist Republican Congress," the authors claim, "this is an area where he can act on his own — and his legacy may depend on him doing so. For the president won’t be able to achieve his goals for health care, climate change, immigration and economic inequality — the four pillars of his second term — if he doesn’t address the food system and its negative impact on those issues."
Read the whole article HERE.
the united states needs a food policy!
Posted: November 24 2014
image via abcnews.go.com
Mark Bittman of the New York Times, Michael Pollan of the University of California, Berkeley, Ricardo Salvador of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Olivier De Schutter of the Catholic University of Louvain have collaborated on a new article in the Washington Post that puts forward a plan for a national food policy. For the authors, "The food system and the diet it’s created have caused incalculable damage to the health of our people and our land, water and air" and that this damage continues because "we have no food policy — no plan or agreed-upon principles — for managing American agriculture or the food system as a whole."
They put forward a set of basic tenets that could inform a national food policy adequate to our age. The priorities of this policy include healthy food for all, reducing the carbon footprint of the food industry, investing in food that is free of dangerous chemicals, and treating animals with compassion and attention to their well-being.
Such a comprehensive policy, if endorsed by the president, would make it more difficult for Congress to continue to pass laws in the interest of massive food conglomerates that do substantial damage to the health of the nation. It would also acknowledge that the state of food in America is a complex structural issue, and not a set of bounded, individual problems.
"As Obama begins the last two years of his administration facing an obstructionist Republican Congress," the authors claim, "this is an area where he can act on his own — and his legacy may depend on him doing so. For the president won’t be able to achieve his goals for health care, climate change, immigration and economic inequality — the four pillars of his second term — if he doesn’t address the food system and its negative impact on those issues."
Read the whole article HERE.