Some Fresh Sausages

There was a great article in the New York Times the other day discussing whether the old saying, “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made” is still true. The comparison is hilarious! My favorite was a quote by Alan Rosenthal, who said, “In a real sausage plant, everybody is on the same team, trying to produce bratwurst or knockwurst. In the legislative sausage factory, at least half the people don’t want to make sausage. Or they want to make a different kind. For the last few years, Republicans have said, ‘We won’t make sausage unless we control the recipe.’” Haha!

Fortunately, the factory was able to churn out a couple of tasty-sounding sausages, er…laws recently: one on food safety and the other on child nutrition. For those of you who are interested in food policy, these bills are a pretty big deal! Here they are:

The Food Safety Modernization Act: this bill is meant to strengthen the FDA so they can do more to prevent outbreaks like the recent scandal involving (billions) of salmonella-infected eggs. Here are some interesting facts I learned:

• this is the first time in over 70 years that the FDA food safety laws have been updated
• only about 1 in a million pounds of imported food is inspected by the FDA (!!)
• before now, the FDA could not actually demand food recalls. The could just ask for them. Hmm.
  

This next part may be of particular interest to Relay-ers who like buying local: the contentious part of this bill was the amendment that allowed certain inspection exemptions for small farmers. Some senators got their panties in a bunch saying people were just as likely to get sick from food from little family farms. I guess they’ve never seen how an industrial sausage plant might differ from a local family-owned sausage joint.

Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act: this bill sets new standards for school lunches, stipulating that they should include more fruits and vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy products. It also expands school lunch and after-school meal programs to include more children. Although the name of the bill makes it seem like a no-brainer, it also had its sticking points. One was that the money to fund this program involves cutting spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also known as food stamps) and raising the price of school lunches for families over 185% of the poverty line. A vocal dissenter, Representative Paul Broun (he’s also a physician), said, “This bill is not about child nutrition. It’s not about healthy kids. It’s about an expansion of the federal government, more and more control from Washington, borrowing more money and putting our children in greater debt. The federal government has no business setting nutritional standards and telling families what they should and should not eat.”

My personal opinion is that, since schools are funded by public dollars anyway, the government has the right to stipulate that those schools are feeding students high-quality food. Unless I’m misinterpreting the extent of this bill, it seems that the government is just trying to ensure that students are fed well in school, not trying to determine what individual families do. But I’m interested in what you all think! I know there are a lot of parents with young kids who use Relay, so how do you all feel about this?