Agriculture
Chair: Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
- Max Baucus (D-MT)
- Michael Bennet (D-CO)
- Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
- Bob Casey (D-PA)
- Kent Conrad (D-ND)
- Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
- Tom Harkin (D-IA)
- Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
- Pat Leahy (D-VT)
- Ben Nelson (D-NE)
- Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
- Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
- Thad Cochran (R-MS)
- John Cornyn (R-TX)
- Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
- Mike Johanns (R-NE)
- Dick Lugar (R-IN)
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
- Pat Roberts (R-KS)
- John R. Thune (R-SD)
Appropriations
Chair: Daniel Inouye (D-HI) Ag Sub-Committee
Chair: Herb Kohl (D-WI)
- Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
- Dick Durbin (D-IL)
- Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
- Tom Harkin (D-IA)
- Tim Johnson (D-SD)
- Ben Nelson (D-NE)
- Jack Reed (D-RI)
- Robert Bennett (R-UT)
- Christopher Bond (R-MO)
- Sam Brownback (R-KS)
- Thad Cochran (R-MS)
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
- Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions
- Chris Dodd (D-CT)
Agriculture
Chair: B Collin Peterson (D-MN)
V. Chair: B Tim Holden (D-PA)
B Joe Baca (D-CA)
- John Boccieri (D-OH)
B* Leonard Boswell (D-IA)
- Bobby Bright (D-AL)
B* Dennis Cardoza (D-CA)
- Travis Childers (D-MS)
B Jim Costa (D-CA)
- Henry Cuellar (D-TX)
- Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA)
B Brad Ellsworth (D-IN)
- Debbie Halvorson (D-IL)
B Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD)
- Steve Kagen (D-WI)
- Larry Kissell (D-NC)
B Frank Kratovil (D-MD)
- Betsy Markey (D-CO)
B Jim Marshall (D-GA)
P Eric Massa (D-NY)
B Mike McIntyre (D-NC)
- Walt Minnick (D-ID)
B Earl Pomeroy (D-ND)
- Mark Schauer (D-MI)
- Kurt Schrader (D-OR)
B David Scott (D-GA)
B Zachary Space (D-OH)
- Timothy Walz (D-MN)
- Frank Lucas (R-OK)
- Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
- K. Michael Conaway (R-TX)
- Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE)
- Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
- Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)
- Sam Graves (R-MO)
- Timothy Johnson (R-IL)
- Steve King (R-IA)
- Robert Latta (R-OH)
- Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)
- Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)
- Jerry Moran (R-KS)
- Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)
- Phil Roe (R-TN)
- Mike Rogers (R-AL)
- Jean Schmidt (R-OH)
- Adrian Smith (R-NE)
- Glenn Thompson (R-PA) *=House Organic Caucus member B=Blue Dog Democrat
Appropriations
Chair: Dave Obey (D-WI) Ag Sub-Committee
Chair: P Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
- Sanford Bishop (D-GA)
* Allen Boyd (D-FL)
- Lincoln Davis (D-TN)
*P Sam Farr (D-CA)
*P Maurice D. Hinchey (D-NY)
P Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)
P Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
- Jack Kingston (R-GA)
- Rodney Alexander (R-LA)
- Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO)
* Tom Latham (R-IA) *=House Organic Caucus member
P=Congressional Progressive Caucus
Education and Labor
P Chair: George Miller (D-CA)
- Jason Altmire (D-PA)
- Robert Andrews (D-NJ)
- Timothy Bishop (D-NY)
P Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
- Joe Courtney (D-CT)
- Susan Davis (D-CA)
P Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
P Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
P Phil Hare (D-IL)
- Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX)
P Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
- Rush Holt (D-NJ)
- Dale Kildee (D-MI)
P Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
P Dave Loebsack (D-IA)
- Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY)
P Donald Payne (D-NJ)
- Jared Polis (D-CO)
- Robert Scott (D-VA)
- Joe Sestak (D-PA)
- Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)
P John Tierney (D-MA)
- Dina Titus (D-NV)
- Paul Tonko (D-NY)
P Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)
- David Wu (D-OR)
- Buck McKeon (R-CA)
- Judy Biggert (R-IL)
- Rob Bishop (R-UT)
- Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
- Michael Castle (R-DE)
- Vernon Ehlers (R-MI)
- Luis F Fortuno (R-PR)
- Brett Guthrie (R-KY)
- Peter Hoekstra (R-MI)
- Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA)
- John Kline (R-MN)
- Kenny Marchant (R-TX)
- Tom McClintock (R-CA)
- Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)
- Thomas Petri (R-WI)
- Phil Roe (R-TN)
- Todd Russell Platts (R-PA)
- Tom Price (R-GA)
- Mark Souder (R-IN)
- GT Thompson (R-PA)
- Joe Wilson (R-SC) P=Congressional Progressive Caucus
The Senate has been bogged down in the debate over health care reform, and Harkin said his staff is tied up working on other must-pass bills. He said he hoped to have the committee take up the bill in December, but he assured her the issue wouldn't die.
"We're going to get it done," he said.
Recent food scares linked to peanut butter and other products have spurred interest in Congress in increasing the FDA's authority. Michael Taylor, a senior adviser at the FDA, told the victims and their families that the agency was poised to tighten its regulation of foods if Congress would just pass the legislation. "The forces have come together," he said. "Society is finally ready to deal with this problem."
Harkin said he expected the committee's bill to be a modified version of legislation introduced by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. Like the House bill, Durbin's legislation would give the Food and Drug Administration more authority over the 80 percent of the food supply - everything but meat and poultry - that the agency regulates. The administration would be required to inspect processors more often, and processors in turn would face new regulations for controlling against pathogens.
But the Durbin bill omits a key feature of the House-passed bill: a $500 fee on processors to offset the cost of increasing the administration's budget.
Scott Faber, a lobbyist for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, told Philip Brasher of the Des Moines Register that he thinks this bill has less than a 50/50 chance of getting through Congress. The Grocery Manufacturers Association supported the food safety bill the House approved in June, but Faber observed, "As we get closer and closer to the [2010] election it makes it harder to move legislation."
A coincidence of bad luck and politics may move the food safety bill forward in the Senate. Linda Rivera is fighting for her life in a Nevada hospital. She was sickened by E. coli in Nestle Tollhouse cookie dough. Linda's future is uncertain, but one thing IS certain - Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, is her Senator and he's paying attention. Reid wrote to Rivera's family, saying that passing food safety legislation in the Senate is a priority for him. From Food Safety News:
H.B. 2749 is now in the U.S. Senate, assigned to the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. The HELP Committee is now taking up both H.B. 2749 and S. 501 introduced by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL).
Senior Democratic staff to the HELP Committee last month said with the focus on health care reform, it was unlikely the committee would get to food safety legislation this fall. Durbin, who is Majority Whip, does not want to wait that long and from Reid's letter, it appears the Majority Leader now agrees with him.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) is the new HELP Committee chairman. He says he wants to take up a "modified" version of Durbin's bill.
H.R. 2749 is the food safety bill that passed the House. Durbin's bill, S. 501, is the Senate version of H.R. 875, the Food Safety Modernization Act. A major difference between the two bills is that H.R. 2749 assesses fees to food facilities to fund increased inspections by the USDA. I had assumed that the Senate was moving slowly on food safety because they are so focused on health care, but it looks like food safety may happen after all. I am looking out for good talking points for us, but for now it would suffice to write your Senators, saying that you wish to have safe food but not at the expense of sustainable agriculture and small farmers. Ask your Senators to make sure the bill that moves forward protects the needs of small farmers and sustainable/organic agriculture.
Food Safety News is a new site by internationally recognized food safety lawyer Bill Marler.
Yesterday I wrote about a study that proved organic CAN feed the world using the current amount of land already dedicated to agriculture - and organic agriculture can even feed a population higher than the current one without increasing the landbase. Also, there isn't a nitrogen shortage to fertilize the crops grown on that land if we were to feed the entire world using organic methods. Some people pointed out that we'd need more labor if we were to go all-organic. Well, OK. Let's put that another way: organic farming provides jobs. The point is, we aren't going to starve to death due to lack of yield if we all go organic. We'll still need to find a way to fix the other problems in our world (war, poverty, education, women's rights, AIDS) but we WILL have enough food to eat.
Who doesn't want us to believe that organics can feed the world? All the people who would lose money if we went organic: oil companies, biotech companies, pesticide companies, and fertilizer companies. And who funds The Chicago Council on Global Affairs? Archer Daniels Midland, Kraft Foods, Monsanto, Caterpillar, BP, McDonalds... you get it.
The Chicago Council released a report funded by the Gates Foundation that outlined a plan to feed the world. They then presented that report in testimony at a Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing earlier this year. In a Washington Times op ed (where I always get my news), they summarize the findings of the report, calling for a Second Green Revolution. On their side is Dick Lugar, who co-authored another Washington Times op-ed with Norman Borlaug (father of the first Green Revolution) who say we need higher yields and GMOs in the developing world if we are to fight hunger. Lugar has co-sponsored a bill that the Chicago Council sees as a vehicle to enact their plan, but now it seems that a new effort is afoot and Hillary Clinton is leading it (as her department will be the ones carrying out the bill).
Meanwhile, our government is entirely ignoring an alternative viewpoint to feeding the world, one presented by the IAASTD report (from the World Bank and UN), which specifically rejects GMOs as tools to help the developing world, saying they are poorly suited to meet the needs of poor and subsistence farmers. They call for agroecological approaches to farming as the best tool to feed the world. And, because the crop inputs used in the developed world are so expensive and thus often unavailable to poor farmers - the very people we are trying to help - those farmers achieve higher yields using organic (agroecological) methods.
Yesterday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved S.384 The Global Food Security Act of 2009, which was sponsored by Dick Lugar (R-IN), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Bob Casey (D-PA). In my view, this is not good news. The bill specifies that the U.S. MUST fund GMOs and biotechnology. Additionally, the hearing about the bill was so heinous that the bill's intent is crystal clear - and it's not good.
UPDATE: In light of some of the very funny foodie April Fools jokes going around, I would like to clarify that this post is NOT an April Fools.
UPDATE #2: Elanor Starmer on The Ethicurean weighs in on this issue here. I recommend you check it out!
Dick Durbin is on the agriculture appropriations sub-committee, so he's an important person to win over to our side of the issues if we want money. He's a long time champion of food safety.
Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Dick is a 2nd term Senator who won his last election with 60% of the vote. He was born in East St. Louis on November 21, 1944. He is Catholic. He received his law degree from Georgetown in 1969. Before he was elected, he was an attorney. He is married and his wife's name is Loretta.
Contact Information DC Office: 202-224-2152 (phone); 202-228-0400 (fax)
District Offices: 312-353-952 (Chicago); 217-492-4062 (Springfield); 618-998-8812 (Marion)
Chief of Staff: Pat Souders
Appointment Secretary: Claire Dickhut
Legislative Director: Dena Morris
Communications Director: Joe Shoemaker
In 2004, the Senate formed a bipartisan Senate Hunger Caucus to call attention to the issue of hunger. One of the co-founders is Blanche Lincoln (D-AR). Her website lists the entire membership - which basically includes 1/3 of the Senate. If these Senators are really so concerned about hunger, then why isn't the problem solved yet?
The other chairs besides Blanche Lincoln are Dick Durbin (D-IL), Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), and Gordon Smith (R-OR).
