Take the failing food industry out of the school lunch programs!!

Please read and take action on this email I received recently. I will keep you updated on this important issue.

Dear Com Fooders,
As everyone knows, the Child Nutrition and WIC Act -- which encompasses school lunches -- is up for renewal this year. The time is now to make the case that the school lunch program shouldn't be owned by the food industry -- that instead school lunches are part of a robust public-education system. Making them so will require a serious investment in school kitchens, which have been hollowed out over the past decade, and an increase in the paltry budget now devoted to them.

Yet I fear that, despite the recent stimulus education, we're about to enter a period of severe fiscal austerity, forced by the gaping blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan and the ongoing meltdown of the financial sector. The Obama administration today handed the failed insurance giant AIG another $30 billion -- one top of the $150 billion it has already received. Its CEO is on record saying it will likely need more. As these payouts pile up, you can bet that "fiscal conservatives" will vigorously oppose any increase to the school lunch program, which currently get $9 billion (less than two months' mayhem in Iraq and Afghanistan).

The sustainable-food movement needs to get out ahead on this debate. I'm urging everyone to come over to Grist to participate in a debate I initiated with some prominent technocrat-ish DC political bloggers who oppose an increase on fiscal grounds.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2009/2/27/9549/79465
Check it out.
All best,
Tom

Tom Philpott
Co-founder, Maverick Farms
Food editor and columnist, Grist.org