| The Child Nutrition Reauthorization is one step closer to passage as of today. Today, Blanche Lincoln's Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 passed the Senate Ag Committee unanimously. There are two bits of good news along with a lot of bad. (I recognize that the bill does a lot to make sure hungry kids eat - which is great - but while eating bad food is better than starvation, it's certainly not the solution we need.)
First, the bill went forward with $40 million for Farm to School. And second, Sherrod Brown is helping school lunch go organic:
An amendment by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) was accepted by voice vote with no opposition to authorize an organic food pilot program that would provide competitively-awarded grants to school authorities to create pilot efforts to buy more organic foods for the school meal programs. The measure would still need to be funded by Agricultural Appropriations for the program to get off the ground.
The bill still only provides $4.5 billion in new money over 10 years (less than half of what Obama called for). Here's how they came up with the money:
The child nutrition reauthorization bill as reported out of Committee today also includes three funding cuts to offset the additional $4.5 billion being invested in school meals and nutrition programs. In addition to cuts to SNAP Ed, as the food stamp education program is now known, and the bonus commodity program, the bill cuts $2.8 billion in farm bill mandatory spending budget authority for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) over the next ten years.
It seems that this would only give about $.06 extra to each kid's school lunch, raising the reimbursement rate from $2.68 to $2.74. The School Nutrition Association is asking for an extra $.35, which I believe is what is needed to help schools pay for the current (often crappy) school lunches they now serve. In other words, anything over $.35 goes to improve school lunch quality, and anything less means no improvement at all. We need an extra $1 per lunch to make school lunches really healthy. From everything I've seen about school lunch, I believe that it all REALLY does come down to money. So there are some good bits in the bill, but it's just not acceptable unless we get over $.35 added to the reimbursement rate.
The next step for this bill is the Senate floor. After it passes the full Senate, it will go to the House. |
