Sign the petition below telling President Obama it’s time to issue an executive order instituting a National Food Policy. What a legacy that would be. Our food supplies and Big Ag agriculture system are broken and making people, other animals, our waters and the whole environment sick. The Union of Concerned Scientists has repeatedly demonstrated the costs of diet-related disease, the environmental toll of industrial agriculture practices, and the iron grip corporate giants have on information about what we eat. Government agencies and policies have contributed to this disaster. So far, legislative attempts to improve the situation have been disjointed and frequently made the problems worse. Recently in The Washington Post, the Union of Concerned Scientists joined prominent food leaders Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman, and Olivier de Schutter in a call to President Obama. The editorial urges the President to do something bold and necessary: ISSUE AN EXECUTIVE ORDER ESTABLISHING A NATIONAL FOOD POLICY. This won’t happen overnight. But right now it can begin—with you, with us acting in large numbers. Sign the petition today to tell President Obama that you want a National Food Policy that will transform our food system to ensure healthy, sustainably grown food for all.
Read The Washington Post article – How a national food policy could save millions of American lives. From the article: The food system and the diet it’s created have caused incalculable damage to the health of our people and our land, water and air. If a foreign power were to do such harm, we’d regard it as a threat to national security, if not an act of war, and the government would formulate a comprehensive plan and marshal resources to combat it. (The administration even named an Ebola czar to respond to a disease that threatens few Americans.) So when hundreds of thousands of annual deaths are preventable — as the deaths from the chronic diseases linked to the modern American way of eating surely are — preventing those needless deaths is a national priority. A national food policy would do that, by investing resources to guarantee that:
● All Americans have access to healthful food; ● Farm policies are designed to support our public health and environmental objectives; ● Our food supply is free of toxic bacteria, chemicals and drugs; ● Production and marketing of our food are done transparently; ● The food industry pays a fair wage to those it employs; ● Food marketing sets children up for healthful lives by instilling in them a habit of eating real food; ● Animals are treated with compassion and attention to their well-being; ● The food system’s carbon footprint is reduced, and the amount of carbon sequestered on farmland is increased; ● The food system is sufficiently resilient to withstand the effects of climate change. Only those with a vested interest in the status quo would argue against creating public policies with these goals. Sign the petition today to tell President Obama that you want a National Food Policy that will transform our food system to ensure healthy, sustainably grown food for all.
REFERENCES Bitman, M. (11/7/2014). How a national food policy could save millions of American lives. The Washington Post. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-a-national-food-policy-could-save-millions-of-american-lives/2014/11/07/89c55e16-637f-11e4-836c-83bc4f26eb67_story.html Union of Concerned Scientists. (2014). Petition to President Obama: It’s Time for a National Food Policy. See: https://secure3.convio.net/ucs/site/Advocacy;jsessionid=A6B920252EDB24A97EE04C255A21F419.app338a?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=4383&autologin=true © Copyright 2014 Joan Rothchild Hardin. All Rights Reserved.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing on this site or blog is intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
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