Vilsack's Testimony to Ag Appropriations - 3.31.09

by: Jill Richardson

Mon Apr 13, 2009 at 06:00:00 AM PDT

For me, the most important take-away from the hearing was about a mandatory national animal ID system (NAIS). Rosa DeLauro is strongly supportive of a mandatory system. Vilsack wishes to meet with opponents of NAIS before pushing ahead.  

• He cited 3 top goals of children's health, renewable energy, and moving ag away from fossil fuels.
• Prices received by farmers was 13 percent LOWER in Feb 2009 vs. Feb 2008. (He didn't say it but my hunch is if I checked I would find that food prices to consumers were higher.)
• He's got a team implementing the stimulus that reports to him and a website where we can go see what the USDA is doing on the stimulus.
• Food stamp participation went up by 4.2 million people in the last year, bringing it up to 31.8 million.
• An average of 9 million people participate in WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) each month.
• The Food Pyramid is due for an update by the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services in 2010.
• He cites the farm safety net as "the three-legged stool of farm payments, crop insurance,
  and disaster assistance."
• Vilsack is STILL advocating for subsidy limits. He wants to cap subsidies at $250,000 (a good idea, in my opinion) and end direct payments to "the largest producers." I wouldn't mind if he REALLY was doing it to the largest producers but we haven't seen any evidence yet that those are the only people who would be affected.
• My favorite sentence in the testimony: "The Department must also create real and meaningful opportunities for farmers and ranchers to succeed.  We can do this through... other actions, including supporting independent producers and local and organic agriculture, and enforcing the Packers and Stockyards Act."
• He noted the importance of food safety and said that Obama kicked off his Food Safety Working Group on March 14. My question: Who are the members of the group besides Obama and Vilsack?

On food safety:

"It seems to me today we have competing philosophies" with the USDA focused more on prevention while the Food and Drug Administration targets mitigation due to a heavy workload and limited staffing, said Vilsack.

Fifteen federal agencies handle food safety including FDA, which handles about 80 percent of the food supply, and USDA, which is in charge of red meat, poultry and eggs.

"When you have 15 separate agencies in the federal government responsible for some part (of food safety), you've got way too many," said Vilsack, who supports a single food agency. Who do "you hold accountable when there is a problem?"

On NAIS:

In an interview, Vilsack also told The Associated Press that his agency "very shortly" plans to meet with groups opposed to a national animal identification network to address their concerns ahead of a push by members of Congress to make registering with the network mandatory.

"We're anxious to listen and learn and then try to be creative in trying to respond, but the bottom line is we have got to have a system that works," he said.

The network, proposed following the nation's first case of mad cow disease in December 2003, is designed to trace livestock movements from birth to slaughter in an effort to pinpoint a single animal's movements after a disease is discovered.

The effort is still voluntary and individual ranchers and farmers have refused to join, questioning its confidentiality and raising liability concerns.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, chairwoman of the House agriculture appropriations subcommittee, said in a phone interview Tuesday she has lost patience for a voluntary system that has registered only 35 percent of U.S. livestock facilities over five years and received $142 million in funding.

"We are tired of the foot-dragging on this issue," said DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat. "We need to move forward on this."

On school lunch:

Vilsack noted he is committed to solving USDA's civil rights issues with farmers and employees, but Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., told him that he thinks students in his district will get their civil rights only when they get an improved school lunch. Vilsack agreed to eat lunch in a school in Jackson's district and decide if the meal is up to USDA's nutrition standards, but Vilsack did not respond directly when Jackson also said school lunch meals should be served at USDA so that the staff would know what they are like.

Noting that a USDA official had told the subcommittee that if Congress reauthorizes the child nutrition programs this year, it could take three years to institute reforms in school meals to fight obesity, DeLauro told Vilsack such a wait would be "intolerable."