Congress Launches Stealth Assault on Progressive Food Policy

Tucked into the massive $1.1 trillion spending bill recently passed by both the House and the Senate are a number of retrograde measures—intended to mollify Big Ag and its allies while throwing up a bunch of roadblocks against progressives trying to move the country toward a saner food policy. First on the list: a “congressional directive” that instructs the Obama administration to ignore any environmental factors as it works to issue a new set of national dietary guidelines next year. Never before has any administration taken into account the impact of its dietary recommendations on the environment; this year marked the first time that the government-appointed panel of nutrition experts decided to consider the environmental ramifications of their proposed guidelines. Not only that, but the spending bill also prohibits the government from requiring farmers to report “greenhouse gas emissions form manure management systems,” according to The New York Times, or from requiring ranchers to obtain greenhouse gas permits from methane released from their operations. This despite that agriculture is the primary source of methane emissions—and methane is a greenhouse gas that’s 20 times more potent than carbon...more