(Promoting organics is the only way to a clean environment...and health. - promoted by Asinus Asinum Fricat)
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack is suddenly adopting the progressive rhetoric of food activists like Michael Pollan and Nicholas Kristof, who've both called for big changes in the USDA. In an interview with the Washington Post, Vilsack just announced a previously unheard-of concept for the USDA: That it should also represent people who eat food, not just the people who grow food, which both Pollan and Kristof have been busily promoting.
"This [USDA] is a department that intersects the lives of Americans two to three times a day. Every single American," Vilsack told Wa Po. "So I absolutely see the constituency of this department as broader than those who produce our food -- it extends to those who consume it."
Given USDA's historic stance as a walled castle of agribusiness, it's amazing that Vilsack is going on the record with such a progressive statement. Even better, Vilsack currently has a huge opportunity to really put words in to action for change, by appointing Chuck Hassebrook as his deputy secretary, something Kristof also supported in an op-ed piece. The director of the Center for Rural Affairs, Hassebrook is not only a visionary in terms of reforming the way government deals with agriculture, but he's also got huge grassroots traction. A petition supporting his candidacy from Food Democracy Now! has gotten almost 85,000 signatures.
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