Free Republic

At the USDA’s annual Agricultural Outlook Forum on Thursday during a panel discussion about attracting young people to the farming industry, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack asked a panelist how she would convince an inner city “minority” child who “doesn’t even know what a tomato is.” “Emily, I want you to envision an inner city child,” Vilsack said to Emily Oakley, interim director of the National Young Farmer Coalition. “Could be African American, could be Hispanic, could be Native American, Asian, whatever, a minority. You’re talking to that child. That child doesn’t even know what a tomato is much less what...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering adopting new regulations for zoos at the request of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) that would require “humane” treatment for bears. The proposed rules would mandate the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to hire a “bear expert,” prohibit bear pits, and require rules so bears are not “stressed, frustrated, and bored.” PETA, which killed 1,792 stray cats and dogs in 2013, first petitioned the USDA to adopt its rules in 2012. The agency began accepting comments on its petition last November, and extended the comment period on Monday.

After the federal government’s school-lunch standards were overhauled in 2012 in what I’m sure was a very well-intentioned effort to institute healthier habits in America’s children and help stave off of the country’s growing childhood obesity problem, it didn’t take long for the calorie-intake and portion restrictions in the new code to crash and burn spectacularly. Healthy eating habits being the highly individualized needs and preferences that they are, kids and parents quickly began complaining that students were not able to get enough to eat at lunchtime, and in some districts, school-lunch participation began to drop as more and more...

Would you rather sip on unpasteurized milk or a cold glass of soda? Do you prefer Saturday lunch at a fast food joint or a farmers market? Regardless of your choices, your food freedom -- your right to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods you want -- is under attack. Here are ten food freedom issues to keep an eye on in 2014. 1: FDA May Ban or Restrict a Growing Number of Food Ingredients. The FDA has proposed banning oils containing trans fats, an ingredient found in foods like coffee creamers and muffins....

Organic farmer Don Kretschmann walked around his picturesque but ancient barn and stepped up to a rustic barrel root crop washer. It's a simple machine, he said, consisting of long, wooden planks that form a cylinder, which he uses to clean freshly harvested produce on his Beaver County farm. Soil-covered carrots and potatoes go in one end, the cylinder rotates, water sprays in and clean vegetables emerge. “But who knows if I'll be allowed to keep using it?” said Kretschmann, who has farmed about 15 acres since he and his wife, Becky, bought the land in 1978. “Or this barn,...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Chicken from China has officials on alert, including U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) As WCBS 880’s Jim Smith reported Sunday, Schumer said first, the U.S. Department of Agriculture only allowed chickens that had been processed in China to be sold in the U.S. Now, he said the USDA plans to green-light poultry raised and slaughtered in China.

Millions of people are in for a shock at the end of the week when their food stamp benefits will be cut across the board. There is little chance that Congress will act to avert what hunger activists call the “food stamp cliff” — a cut to benefits that will affect some 47 million beneficiaries, including children and the elderly. The cut takes effect on Nov. 1, and will bring an end to a funding increase that Democrats wrapped into President Obama’s 2009 stimulus law. For a family of four, the cut will be $36 per month, or about 20...

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced that four Chinese poultry processors have permission to begin shipping meat to the U.S. The nightmare for U.S. consumers? The Chinese-processed chicken will be labeled as ‘made in America!’ Even though the Chinese poultry processors are only allowed to ship cooked meat from U.S.-raised chickens, many in the United States are alarmed that our leaders would allow such a deal to go down in the first place. After all, China is notorious for its food safety problems. Concerns among the public are warranted when you consider that the CDC estimates 325,000 Americans...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) extolled a local elementary school in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. for making its students try broccoli gratin, Tuscan kale, and beet hummus, as an example of the department’s efforts to fight obesity. Clinton Elementary School held a “taste test” to preview food that will soon appear on the lunch menu, and was highlighted by USDA for its healthy eating efforts. The Poughkeepsie City school district received a $100,000 grant from the USDA for its “farm to school project,” which it is using to add items such as “butternut squash puree” to school menus. The funding was...

There is currently a letter floating around the internet from United States Department of Agriculture addressed to all (SNAP) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program state agency directors. The letter states in pretty plain terms the USDA is directing States to hold or delay transmission of State Electronic benefit transfer (EBT) until further notice.

A sign advertising low-interest housing loans at the Crescent Shores Subdivision in Lincoln, Delaware. The government shut-down has halted the processing of these loans, which are aimed at low- and moderate-income buyers. The week-old federal government shutdown is a disaster on many levels. For rural America, one major impact is in the area of housing. For the near future, low- and moderate-income homebuyers who have applied for mortgages guaranteed or made directly by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Housing Service are out of luck. So are very low-income homeowners seeking repair grants or loans.

"......Feeding South Florida is just one of 202 food banks in the country hit hard by the Washington, D.C., stalemate. With 47 employees, it’s the largest of nine in Florida, responsible for 30 percent of statewide distribution. The agency distributes 35 million pounds of food a year from its 70,000-square-foot warehouse, everything from bananas and pears, to turkeys and hams, to soups and nuts, even baby formula. The USDA funding accounts for more than one-third of Feeding South Florida’s supply chain. On Thursday, its six open loading bays were filled with volunteers heaving food into U-Hauls and other trucks. The...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has turned off its entire website in response to the government shutdown, leaving farmers, reporters and others with no way to access any of the agency’s information online. A visit to usda.gov sends readers to a “funding lapse” page that reads, “Due to the lapse in federal government funding, this website is not available. After funding has been restored, please allow some time for this website to become available again.” USDA’s total website shutdown goes far beyond the response of other federal agencies, and seems to be part of an effort to make people feel...

The Agriculture Department says 524 schools—out of about 100,000—have dropped out of the federally subsidized national school lunch program since the government introduced new standards for healthier foods last year. The new standards have been met with grumbling from school nutrition officials who say they are difficult and expensive to follow, conservatives who say the government shouldn’t be dictating what kids eat and—unsurprisingly—from some children who say the less-greasy food doesn’t taste as good. But USDA says the vast majority of schools are serving healthier food, with some success. Data the department is planning to release Monday shows that 80...

In my work, I see more people who want to focus on losing weight rather than gaining weight, so I don’t often stop to think about the problem of hunger. It’s easy to overlook the fact that hunger is still a big problem in in the United States. According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2011 about 50 million Americans were living with food insecurity — 33.5 million adults and 16.7 million children. What is food insecurity? It’s the inability to provide adequate food on a consistent basis. For adults, not getting enough food can have harmful...

The detection of a small amount of genetically modified material in a Washington state farmer's non-GMO alfalfa crop constitutes a "commercial issue" only and does not warrant any government action, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Tuesday. The Washington state farmer had complained in late August to state agricultural officials that his alfalfa hay had been rejected for export sale because of the presence of a genetically modified trait that makes the crop resistant to herbicide. The event triggered a wave of concern from consumer and agricultural groups who have fought the government for nearly a decade to keep...

A meat inspection program that the Agriculture Department plans to roll out in pork plants nationwide has repeatedly failed to stop the production of contaminated meat at American and foreign plants that have already adopted the approach, documents and interviews show. The program allows meat producers to increase the speed of processing lines by as much as 20 percent and cuts the number of USDA safety inspectors at each plant in half, replacing them with private inspectors EMPLOYED BY MEAT COMPANIES. The approach has been used for more than a decade by five American hog plants under a pilot program....

A Florida Christian ministry that has been distributing food to the needy for the past 31 years said it will drop all connections with the federal USDA agriculture bureaucracy rather than bow to orders that it must remove Christian symbols from its facility. Fox News reported that officials from the Christian Service Center of Lake City (CSC), Florida, were told by the state agriculture department that in order to continue to receive food from the USDA they would have to remove portraits of Christ and a 10 Commandments display from their facility and stop giving Bibles to those who came...

Americans know the importance of forests to our communities and our economy. They provide jobs and recreational opportunities, filter our air and water, and make up essential habitat for wildlife and natural resources. But increasingly, we’re also recognizing that forests play an important role in mitigating climate change. Recently, President Obama announced a Climate Action Plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare for the impacts of climate change on our communities and economy, and lead international efforts to combat global climate change. This plan recognizes that America’s forests play a critical role in addressing carbon pollution, absorbing as much as 14...