A year after America voted for the change-agent they saw in Barack Obama, advocates hoping for deep improvements in our food system can point to only a few successes, while other policies that could lead to food insecurity are brewing in back rooms. Read more
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Re-prioritizing Food Safety: Getting out of Upton Sinclair’s Jungle, Again
In 1906, Upton Sinclair published his classic book The Jungle, awakening America’s consciousness to the horrors of corruption in the U.S. meatpacking industry with the story of Chicago’s stockyards. The Jungle so shook the American people’s confidence in how their meat and food was processed, that President Roosevelt created the Food and Drug Administration to quell public outcry.
Fast-forward a hundred odd years later and all evidence points to the fact that we are living in an era of food crisis that rivals the turn of the last century. Regretfully, America’s modern food system has become – The Jungle 2.0. Read more
Obama Gives Thoughts on Michael Pollan’s Times Magazine Letter
In an interview with Joe Klein of Time Magazine today, Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged the brilliant letter to the next president by Michael Pollan and said that agriculture is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, is a national security risk, and is built on cheap oil: Read more
Farm Policy in the Next Presidency
In fifteen days, Americans will make an important decision: who will take the reigns and get us out of this mess. One topic the candidates have mostly left out of their speeches on the campaign trail thus far is food. Whether they realize it or not, when either John McCain or Barack Obama sit down next January to begin the task of fixing our economy, to promote green energy in order to produce the jobs they’ve both promised, and to deal with the climate crisis and health care, food will be the unavoidable issue that keeps cropping up. Read more