Posted on 07/10/2009 8:09:07 PM PDT by Libloather
S.F. mayor orders healthy food in city
Posted on: Thursday, 9 July 2009, 19:48 CDT
All San Francisco city departments must audit unused land in the city to see if it can be turned into community gardens or farms, the mayor said.
In addition, food vendors contracting with the city must offer healthful and sustainable food, all vending machines on city property must offer healthful food options and farmers' markets must begin accepting food stamps, Mayor Gavin Newsom said, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
There also will be no more doughnut shop runs before meetings and conferences held by city workers, Newsom said. Instead, workers will have to use guidelines created by the city Health Department when ordering food for meetings, he said.
Newsom said he would send an ordinance to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors within two months mandating all food served in local jails, hospitals, homeless shelters and community centers be conducive to good health, the Chronicle reported.
The directives followed an urban-rural roundtable of food experts from across the state convened by Newsom last year.
The group's job was to find ways of increasing the amount of food grown on farms within 200 miles of San Francisco eaten by city residents, especially those who depend on government meals.
The newspaper said the idea is to cut back on imported food, reconnect people to homegrown food rather than processed food and increase food options in city neighborhoods that lack easy access to grocery stores.
It's also unclear how much land could be converted into community farms or how much the program will cost, the newspaper said
Budget committee member Ross Mirkarimi told the Chronicle he liked the idea if we're able to get this at a very low cost.
Isn't that how Charles Manson started out?
sure sounds like manson to me.... but I think manson was a real man.... evil, but authentic
I didn’t even read the story I just want to chime in and say that Gavin Newsom is a low-life scumbag.
Yet unhealthy homosexual sex continues unabated
At least SF has its priorities right
Sigh, and just what are the criteria for “healthful and sustainable” food when nobody, in government or out, can agree on the definition of “organically grown”?
“All San Francisco city departments must audit unused land in the city to see if it can be turned into community gardens or farms, the mayor said.”
Oh, lord, go to the country if that’s what you want, you idiot. People moved to San Francisco to get away from farms.
actually I needed a “bright side” look! :D
no more donut runs? now that’s a dictatorship!!!
I think the new food security act is going to hit small farms very hard, so good luck. Oh and I guess that whole budget mess is over or something?
No wonder Kimberly Guilfoyle divorced the creep.
In SF, the problem ain’t what goes in the front end, it’s what goes in the back end.
Are they talking about unused city land; or, more likely, are they just going to seize private property ? Without compensation ?
“when nobody, in government or out, can agree on the definition of ‘organically grown’”
It isn’t a precise term at all. Organic literally means carbon-based. We like to use it to mean “natural”. But of course no farming is “natural”. Not even gathering berries is strictly natural, since after time the fruits and vegetables our ancestors ate adapted to be more palatable to us (since we helped spread their seeds), which is how we got the idea for farming in the first place. The really good stuff grew where we pooped.
But I digress. All agriculture requires planning, effort, control. Therefore it is an art, i.e. unnatural. After careful study, I’m sure we can come up with judgements as to what sort of farming should be morally outlawed. There are cases to be made for and against cloning or other genetic manipulation.
At least when it comes to that sort of unnaturalness, we communicate our fears to eachother out loud. The thing with environmentalists is that they don’t say these things in the open. They use buzzwords like “sustainable” and pretend we all know what they mean. But we don’t know what they mean. Neither do they. If they mean it literally, there’s no way any of us could ever know. American food production and consumption has grown exponentially over the years. No end in sight. American health has grown as well. Obesity seems to threaten it, but to say because life expectancy has decreased for some segment of the population is, our way of life is unsustainable is premature. It has none of the cost-benefit analysis of economics, nor the finess of higher intellect.
Doesn’t a person have to bend over to weed their garden? Maybe that is what these idiots are considering. Get two jobs done at once.
Great idea. Now all the bums and vagrants (oops, I mean "homeless persons") can come and pee on your lettuce at night. And steal your tomatoes.
Maybe they can plant Quat...its like lettice....yeh that’s it....get some of those North African immigrants to help out.....its diversity come to roost.
Hope it made yor day...
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