Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Horse meat production won’t resume in the U.S. anytime soon, a victory for animal-rights advocates under the spending bill signed last week by President Donald Trump. The $1.3 trillion spending deal, which funds the government through September, renewed the country’s horse slaughter ban. Just months ago, animal-rights activists feared the ban could be in jeopardy. The measure includes language that prohibits the U.S. Department of Agriculture from spending money on inspecting horse slaughter facilities. Without inspections, horse slaughter plants can’t operate, so they’ll remain closed as they have for more than a decade. “I think we’re all kind...

Judicial Watch Files New Lawsuit on Clinton Pay-to-Play Issues McCabe Firing Only the Beginning Nearly 200 Busted in $3.7-Million Food-Stamp Fraud Operation Judicial Watch Files New Lawsuit on Clinton Pay-to-Play Issues Judicial Watch meticulously documented Hillary Clinton’s use of the State Department to take care of donors to the Clinton Foundation. She and Bill are the poster children for pay-to-play. Now we’re looking into a potential linchpin of that operation. We just sued the State Department for emails, calendar entries and other information in the electronic file of Dennis Cheng, who was deputy chief of protocol for two years...

In his big budget proposal Monday, President Trump offered a novel idea: Instead of giving needy people stamps they can redeem for food, why not just give them actual food? As you might guess, liberals were enraged by the notion. How dare Mr. Trump try to take food stamps away from hungry people and give them — of all things — food? Here’s how the liberal HuffPost saw it: “Facing a trillion-dollar deficit because of his just-passed tax cuts, President Donald Trump has an idea for how to get some of that money back: making poor people eat beans and...

The White House says the changes could save $214 billion over a decade. “The Budget proposes to combine the traditional retail-based SNAP electronic benefit with the direct provision of nutritious and 100 percent American-grown USDA Foods to participating households. This cost-effective proposal maintains our commitment to helping needy families avoid hunger while generating substantial savings,” the budget said. Households receiving $90 per month or more would get a portion in shelf-stable milk, ready to eat cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans and canned fruit, vegetables, and meat, poultry or fish. The remainder of the benefit would go onto the debit card...

For years after Michelle Obama’s ironically named Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, students at Penn-Trafford High School in Harrison City, Pennsylvania staged an accidental trash can rebellion. As in many districts, waste management companies were the only winners as students dumped lunch into the garbage. For this school year, Penn-Trafford High School instead tossed Mrs. Obama’s school lunch plan and now President Trump is doing the same on a national scale. As with any policy created by coercive utopians to control personal choices, nothing about the Obama plan made sense. Kids, parents and school districts hated it, and its...

The Trump administration is ending yet another of Michelle Obama’s hated, overly strict school lunch rules by bringing chocolate milk back to school lunch menus. The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday announced a new rule set to take effect on July 1 after the period of public comment. The new rule relaxes sodium limits and Obama’s whole-grain requirements. The rule will also allow milk with one percent fat back on the menu, ABC News reported. “Schools need flexibility in menu planning so they can serve nutritious and appealing meals,” Perdue said this week. “Schools want to offer food that...

Feds took disturbing action for displaying Scripture! The Trump administration has resolved another fight over religion that the Obama administration started against a meatpacking plant in Michigan. The Obama administration had actually threatened to close down the business of Don Vander Boon because he put an article on a table in a break room inside his own company about marriage being a special relationship between a man and a woman. After Barack Obama changed his mind about marriage, to deny traditional marriage and start promoting same-sex “marriage,” the official position of the Obama administration came into conflict with the Vander...

As a boy growing up in Butte, Bart Riley loved spending time at the family business, Riley Meats, on West Park Street. Young Bart and his siblings would help out cleaning the shop after his father was done cutting meat for the day.

A Los Angeles food services director who was invited to the White House by former First Lady Michelle Obama to share his tips for getting kids to eat healthy has been indicted for stealing $65,000 in public funds.David Binkle, a chef who served as the director of food services for Los Angeles Unified School District until he was fired in 2015, was charged last week with multiple counts of embezzlement, misappropriation of public funds, conflict of interest, forgery, and perjury, the L.A. Times reported.In 2014, Binkle traveled to the White House for a nutrition roundtable with Mrs. Obama.

Do you choose “organic” produce because it’s healthier and locally grown? Think again. A new report on how the U.S. Department of Agriculture actually markets the organic label without any standard of certification, doesn’t do any field-testing and, through its bureaucracy grew exponentially during the Obama administration, is driving up imports from China, Turkey and other countries with disastrous safety records.

Couple sues dog food manufacturer after pet death June 22, 2017 - by Erica Shaffer SEATTLE – A couple in Washington State recently filed a lawsuit against Wheeling, Illinois-based Evanger’s Dog & Cat Food Company Inc., owned by Holly and Joel Sher, after one of their dogs was poisoned by pet food tainted with pentobarbital, a euthanasia drug. Nicole and Guy Mael of Washougal, Washington, filed the lawsuit against Evanger’s and Nutripack LLC, a pet food company owned by members of the same family, in US District Court for the Western District of Washington. The couple is seeking a jury...

President Trump is making school lunches great again, or at least a lot better than they were during the Obama administration. Food service directors are applauding recent changes to federal school food regulations imposed on schools as part of Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity. […] Regulations imposed through the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act put strict limitations on calories, fat, sugar, salt, and other elements of foods served in public schools that participate in the national school lunch or breakfast programs. …

In keeping with President Donald Trump’s executive order establishing the Interagency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue launched the effort on Thursday along with representatives from 22 federal agencies that are taking on the wide-ranging initiative. The task force will work to find ways to increase jobs, housing and educational opportunities for America’s rural communities, and to remove obstacles, such as burdensome regulations, and to improve infrastructure and access to technology. advertisement The task force held its inaugural meeting in Washington, D.C., and attendees included Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, Secretary of...

The Trump administration is discontinuing a signature girls education initiative championed by former first lady Michelle Obama, according to officials. The "Let Girls Learn" program, which she and President Barack Obama started in 2015 to facilitate educational opportunities for adolescent girls in developing countries, will cease operation immediately, according to an internal document obtained by CNN. News of the program's end came the same day President Donald Trump's agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, was visiting an elementary school in suburban Virginia to announce changes to another initiative spotlighted by the former first lady, healthy school lunches. Perdue was set to unveil...

Good news! Michelle Obama’s inedible school lunches are about to be a thing of the past. Michelle Obama admittedly loves enchiladas and french fries (and her figure showed it), but she loved to lecture everyone else’s children about eating vegetables. This is what you get with an elite, overreaching government, folks; they tell your children what to eat. Via The Daily Caller: Perdue and Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts will release a new interim rule “designed to provide flexibility for school meals” at an elementary school in Leesburg, Va. Monday, a USDA press release stated. The exact nature of the...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is preparing to ease school lunch regulations created under former President Barack Obama. On Friday, the department announced its secretary, former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, will introduce an interim rule to provide "regulatory flexibility" for the National School Lunch Program at a Virginia elementary school on Monday, alongside Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. It's unclear how the regulations will be changed, or what effect it could have on school lunchrooms. The National School Lunch Program provides nutritionally balanced reduced-cost or free lunches to children. Former First Lady...

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it possesses a “limited amount” of 9mm bullets for agents in the field as well as for training purposes, and it is rationing its ammunition based on internal requests until it can award a new contract. [ ] The apparent role poor planning, or another agenda, played in the issue came to light when ICE said it would have run out of 9mm ammo by June 2017 in the absence of a modified contract with its supplier, Vista Outdoor Inc. So, the agency last month approved a $363,307 ceiling increase to contract No. HSCEMS-11-D-00002....

Let’s face it — every Irish person in New York knows someone who’s undocumented. Usually they know more than one. They also know that if weren’t for them and other immigrants half the bars, restaurants, shops and even colleges in the city would be deserted. New York has always had a special welcome for immigrants — even the undocumented ones — because it’s been the historical landing point for intending Americans since the earliest days of our national story. Welcoming immigrants is really the city’s oldest tradition. It actually makes sound financial sense. The undocumented often do the work that...

After More Than a Decade of Providing the Public With Access to Animal Welfare Records, the USDA Suddenly Pressed ‘Delete’ On Its Online Database, Which Includes Info on Whether Animals Are Being Treated Humanely At Facilities Across the Country Following USDA’s Decision, Schumer Says USDA Must Re-establish Transparency & Help Deter Future Animal Welfare Violations Schumer: Animal Advocates Should Not Have To Play Tug Of War On Transparency With New Administration’s USDA U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to reverse its decision to remove inspection reports on animal facilities and related animal cruelty information from...

Any precedence of a new administration blacking out info from an agency as what happened today with the EPA and USDA? I have been challenged to cite previous example(s) and need Freeper assistance. Please. MFO