School Food | Civil Eats

Op-ed: What It Will Take to Ban Ultra-Processed Food in School Meals

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 08:00:01 +0000

June 5, 2025 Update: The California State Assembly voted on Tuesday to pass AB 1264, a bipartisan bill that would begin phasing out “particularly harmful” ultra-processed foods (UPF) from meals served in public schools by January 2028. The bill would require the UPF products most harmful to human health to be defined by scientists by July 1, 2026. The bill is now being reviewed by the state Senate.

Last month, California moved to ban “particularly harmful” ultra-processed foods (UPF) from school meals. This initiative is a hot topic in several other states and also has a fair chance of taking hold on a federal level, given that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is clearly very opposed to UPF—and has just taken steps to phase out certain food dyes, commonly used in UPF.

I want to start by saying, I’m all for this. I run a company of chefs trying to help school food programs around the country move away from ultra-processed foods and cook more from scratch. This is my life. I wholeheartedly believe we should be doing everything we can to ensure that the meals we are serving students are as thoughtfully prepared, delicious, and nutritious as possible.

That said, what looks like a positive change is actually quite complicated. There are a lot of rules already in place around school meals—and those rules, even when made with the best of intentions, have not always led to the most positive outcomes. A UPF ban might help students eat better, but only if schools, and school kitchen staff, get the support they need to succeed with the changes.

“Will the list of banned UPF become so exhaustive that school food programs, already dealing with nutritional guidelines, become completely unable to prepare meals that students will want to eat every day?”

Let me give you an example of how hard it is for schools to handle shifts in guidelines—and explain why eliminating UPFs may not be as straightforward as it sounds.

When the National School Lunch Program Guidelines went into effect about a decade ago, it mandated many changes that, on paper, looked much better for kids: more fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, less sodium and saturated fat.

While some studies claimed that school diets improved, most people who experienced the change would argue that the meals also became less appetizing as school programs struggled to meet the nutritional guidelines within their allotted budgets. Kitchen workers saw many meals going into the trash (although USDA’s biggest study on the changes found while kids threw out vegetables more than any other foods, the level of waste was generally unchanged after the standards were implemented).

Also, from-scratch cooking became more difficult, because it got too complicated for schools to comply with the new rules. Before the guidelines, many school kitchen staff used to bake and cook proteins themselves. Now they had to follow intimidating guidelines, tracking the nutrition content of every dish and assessing levels of sodium, saturated fats, calories, types of vegetables, and much more. Then schools had to ensure that the rules were being followed, creating an extra administrative burden.

Most schools were already offering some prepackaged ultra-processed foods—a shift that had been happening for decades—but now many switched their operational models to bring in significantly more of those items. It was easier for giant food manufacturers to adapt to the new nutritional guidelines than it was for under-resourced school food programs to do so.

Some schools used the guidelines as a launchpad to move toward more scratch cooking, but many transitioned away from it, selling off their kitchen equipment. When new schools were built, their kitchen spaces were designed for heating up pre-packaged items rather than cooking meals. Slowly but surely, kitchen infrastructure across the country began to disappear. Fewer kitchen staff were needed, and now it is common to see school kitchen labor models that feature only one or two full-time positions, with the rest being parttime staff who work only during meals, to serve food.

Eliminating UPFs from school food would require a massive adjustment within programs as they figure out how to reconfigure menus, and kitchens and staffing too.

The other issue with UPFs is that they are not clearly defined. They’re generally understood as foods (and ingredients) created with industrial processes not found in a home kitchen, but interpretations vary. The proposed bill requires scientists to identify “particularly harmful” UPF based on whether they include banned or restricted additives; whether the food or its ingredients are linked to health harms like cancer, obesity and diabetes, or contribute to “food addiction;” and whether the food is high in fat, sugar, or salt.

Will the list of banned UPF become so exhaustive that school food programs, already dealing with nutritional guidelines, become completely unable to prepare meals that students will want to eat every day?

“Can we really get more schools cooking from scratch? Cooking meals that are nutritious and delicious? Meals that kids enjoy? Absolutely!”

What would happen with school breakfast, for example? Commercially made bread, pre-made baked goods and bars, pre-cooked meats like sausage and bacon, breakfast cereals, and many flavored yogurts could all be considered UP foods. Even school food programs that do a lot of scratch cooking for lunch still rely on these items for their breakfast menus, because typically the entire school needs to be fed in a 20- to 30-minute window, and prepared items fit the breakfast budget, which is roughly half of what schools receive for lunch. Not to mention, breakfast cereals are often the only foods many students will eat in the morning, even if a scratch-made option is available.

My guess is that the definition of “harmful UPF” will most likely mean the elimination of many of the prepackaged, individually wrapped items that a lot of school food programs depend on to build out their menus. School food programs would have to start relying on actual cooking.

Assuming the UPF ban passes in California and begins to take hold in other states, can we really get more schools cooking from scratch? Cooking meals that are nutritious and delicious? Meals that kids enjoy? Absolutely!

A lot of school districts are already doing this or have started to do the work to get there. Brigaid alone is working with 40 school districts, representing over 850 schools, on building their capacity to cook more meals from scratch. Our work is spread across eight states, with most of it happening in California, and each school district is at a different stage of the process—from just starting to move away from serving primarily pre-packaged UP foods to already cooking a good portion of their meals from scratch.

Based on our experience, the work needed to support this type of transition is relatively straightforward, but it will take time and cost money. A lot of time and a lot of money.

Existing kitchen infrastructure (and equipment) in school districts would need to be evaluated to determine their current capabilities and how to improve that infrastructure, both in the short and long term, to make them suitable for onsite cooking. Any new kitchens would need to be built with this vision in mind.

School foodservice staff would need to be trained so they have the ability and confidence to prepare a variety of foods. This training should happen consistently over time, and whenever new operational systems are implemented or new recipes are introduced. Beyond training, as more cooking takes place, daily hours should also increase.

And finally, school food employees should be paid an hourly wage in line with the importance of their work; right now many are paid less than fast-food workers—for preparing food that nourishes kids every day.

Most school food programs aren’t in a position to spend beyond what they need to run the operation day to day. Schools would require additional funding to enact these changes, and for a sustained period of time.

Although the USDA provides funding for school programs, state agencies disperse those funds, and can add on to them in different ways. Some states, like New York and Michigan, have incentivized school food programs to source locally by bumping up the per-meal reimbursement they receive. Similar incentives could work for UPF reduction, too: School food programs that commit to removing UPF from their menus could receive a higher per-meal reimbursement.

Also, schools could receive an up-front lump sum for infrastructure and training, as has been the casen California over the past few years. The state has given every school participating in the National School Lunch Program multiple rounds of Kitchen, Infrastructure, and Training (KIT) funds, based on the size of the district, the need, and the number of meals served. Schools can also opt into a final lump sum if they agree to prepare 40 percent of their meals according to “freshly prepared” guidelines that emphasize whole, minimally processed ingredients.

Over the years, in an effort to make school meals healthier, we have made it harder and harder for school food programs to feed their students well. In fact, we’ve made it so hard that in many cases we’ve given the giant food manufacturers the upper hand, which has led to more UPF in school meals.

The banning of ultra-processed foods in school meals would theoretically reduce the presence of these companies in the school food space, but I’m not counting on it. Kids need to eat. Either school districts are going to cook on their own, with more help, or giant manufacturers are going to figure out how to adapt to new regulations and keep selling processed food to schools. If we don’t get behind school food programs, my money is on the giant food companies.

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Op-ed: Food and Moral Courage Are Needed to End Childhood Hunger

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 09:00:06 +0000

Last May, the United Nations (U.N.) released the first draft of a global plan to tackle antibiotic resistance that aligned with a call from world leaders’ expert advisors to take “bold and specific action.” That included a commitment to reduce the use of antibiotics used in the food and agriculture system by 30 percent by 2030.

But when those leaders meet at the U.N. on Thursday to adopt the Political Declaration on Antimicrobial Resistance, that concrete goal and others will be missing from the latest draft.

After months of negotiations and edits to the proposal, these ambitious—and likely effective—commitments have been replaced with a toothless target: to “strive to meaningfully reduce” antibiotic use in agriculture. Now, experts and advocates are concerned that this new, vague provision, among other weakened commitments, will be included in the final declaration.

“I think it’s a serious mistake,” said Andre Delattre, the senior vice president and COO for programs at the Public Interest Network, which has advocated for reducing antibiotic use on farms as a matter of public interest for years. “We’ve known for a very long time that the overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture is really problematic for public health. Saying we’re going to reduce without setting targets just shows we’re not as serious as we should be about the problem.”

The news comes at a pivotal moment. While the urgency of antibiotic resistance as a public health threat is well known, a new study released last week upped the ante. According to a systemic analysis of the problem, researchers predicted deaths directly caused by resistance will increase nearly 70 percent between 2022 and 2050, rising to around 2 million per year globally, with another 8 million deaths associated with the issue.

In the U.S., the largest volume of antibiotics are used in animal agriculture. Also, the preventive dosing of animals with medically important drugs—that is, drugs for treating humans—is still routine. This use of drugs can drive the development of resistant bacteria that then threaten human lives. Reducing or eliminating the use of medically important antibiotics in livestock would slow the development of resistant bacteria, experts say, safeguarding the efficacy of important drugs for longer.

U.S. officials were at least partially responsible for weakening the U.N. declaration’s commitments on animal agriculture. The advocacy organization U.S. Right to Know obtained a document showing that the U.S. was one of a few meat-producing countries that suggested deleting the 2030 goal. The organization also cites the fact that a Washington, D.C. trade group representing the animal drug industry objected to the goal. In response to questions about involvement in the U.N. declaration, a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) spokesperson referred Civil Eats to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA officials did not respond by press time.

Steve Roach, the Safe & Healthy Food Program Director at Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), has been tracking U.S. policy on antibiotic use in agriculture for years. He said that on the international stage, he’s seen the U.S. “actively undermining” stronger policies time and time again.

“The U.S. always seems to be aiming for something weaker,” he said. For example, he said the U.S. worked to keep targets for the reduction of antibiotic use out of international food safety standards. The U.S. was also one of five countries—all top users of antibiotics in animal agriculture— that did not sign onto an earlier global agreement, called the Muscat Ministerial Manifesto on AMR, that did include targeted reductions.

And Roach said that this approach on the global stage mirrors how federal agencies continue to approach the issue at home. “We’ve been calling for targets for years, and FDA is always saying, ‘We don’t have enough data to determine how much use is inappropriate. So, therefore, we don’t support targets,’” he said.

The FDA does track the volume of medically important antibiotics sold for use in animals, but it is still not tracking exactly how those drugs are being used on farms. Instead, it has funded small pilot projects and is now in the process of working with the meat industry on a voluntary reporting system.

The agency outlined some of those efforts in a letter sent to Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) last week. The letter was in response to concerns Booker raised in July about updates he felt would weaken guidance the FDA creates for the industry on responsible antibiotic use. Booker’s team was far from satisfied with the agency’s response and said that after more than a decade of attention, they found it incredibly troubling that basic issues of data collection and setting concrete targets were still unresolved.

“It is estimated that by 2050, as many as 10 million people globally will die annually from antibiotic-resistant infections unless the United States joins with other countries to quickly take aggressive action to address this issue. That is why I am deeply concerned that the FDA has caved under pressure from special interests for decades and failed to take any meaningful steps to address this overuse in industrial livestock production,” Booker said in an email to Civil Eats. “Not only has the FDA been unwilling to use its legal authority to reduce the massive overuse of antibiotics on factory farms in the U.S., but the agency is now actively working to block international commitments to address antimicrobial resistance.”

In 2016, the agency banned the use of medically important drugs on farms solely for the purpose of making animals get bigger, faster. That change led to a big drop in overall drug use. But pork producers and cattle feedlots still routinely add antibiotics to feed and water, often for long stretches, and drug use in those sectors has been rising over the past two years.

At the end of August, the USDA reported its recent testing even found antibiotic residue in about 20 percent of beef samples labeled “raised without antibiotics.” And over the past year, companies that once committed to moving their supply chains away from routine antibiotic use have been backtracking.

Multiple experts expressed dismay over what they said now feels like continued steps away from stronger regulations that can adequately protect public health.

“The U.S. government will do whatever it can to fight the serious public health threat of antimicrobial resistance—as long as that action has no impact on anyone whatsoever, as long as nobody has to make any changes to what they’re doing,” Roach said. “It’s really disappointing, because the U.S. could be a leader on this issue, and it just consistently chooses not to.”

In the absence of government leadership, Delattre said, watchdog groups will have to work harder.

“The commitment as it’s drafted now says it’s supposed to aim for meaningful reductions by every member country. Those numeric targets represented an idea of meaningful reduction,” he said. “Whether they’re in there or not, they’re the sort of thing we need to aim for, and it’s what we’ll be holding the U.S. farm animal industry to going forward.”

Poultry Implosion. According to a lawsuit filed today, an ambitious plan to create a poultry company dedicated to slower-growing chickens involved rapid company growth that led to its downfall—and ultimately harmed farmers raising its birds. Although Cooks’ Venture set out to raise healthier birds under better farm conditions, it replicated the contract system used by bigger industry players like Tyson and Perdue, placing financial risk on the shoulders of producers.

In the legal complaint, farmers say the company’s leadership misled them by misrepresenting the financial health of the operation. As a result, many took on debt to house and care for the chickens in anticipation of a long-term payoff. When the company went out of business without notice, it left farmers in the lurch. The lawsuit also alleges the individuals in charge of the company conspired with the Arkansas Department of Agriculture to kill more than a million chickens after the company folded—so they wouldn’t have to process them or pay farmers for the flocks—and left farmers to clean up the mess.

The lawsuit will be one of the first brought under new rules finalized by the Biden administration intended to better enforce the Packers & Stockyards Act.

Food-and-Climate Funding. As companies, advocates, and investors gather in New York City for Climate Week, multiple organizations are calling attention to the flow of capital toward food and agriculture systems that accelerate climate change—and how to redirect those funds.

Given meat’s outsized climate impacts, the global meat industry is at the top of the list. A group of 105 food and environmental organizations sent a letter to the world’s biggest private banks demanding they halt new funding for industrial livestock production and require meat and dairy clients to report emissions reduction targets. Meanwhile, Tilt Collective, a new nonprofit promoting a rapid shift toward plant-based diets, released a report highlighting investment opportunities. According to its analysis, investments in transitioning to a plant-based food system could reduce energy emissions far more than investments in renewable energy or electric vehicles, while also delivering other benefits, like reduced water use and biodiversity loss.

Nonprofits that work directly with the biggest food and agriculture companies are also in on the action. The Environmental Defense Fund released a report for investors on how they can play a role in reducing methane from livestock, while Ceres updated its investor-focused reporting on the 50 biggest food companies’ greenhouse gas emissions reporting and reductions. Their data showed that only 11 of the 50 companies reduced their overall greenhouse gas emissions compared to their base years, while 12 increased emissions. Lack of progress on emissions reductions was largely linked to the food companies’ supply chains. So while many companies did cut emissions from their own operations by shifting to renewable energy, for example, they struggled to reduce those that happened in farm fields and feedlots, which typically represent about 90 percent of a food company’s overall emissions.

Fresh Cafeteria Fare. A lengthy progress report on California’s farm-to-school grant program—the largest in the nation—found the state’s efforts are paying off. More local food is getting into schools while supporting farmers. Between 2020 and 2022, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) distributed about $100 million to increase locally farmed food served in school cafeterias. The results of this program—which includes farm-fresh meals and nutrition education efforts—disproportionately benefitted students from lower-income families who were eligible for free or reduced-price meals. At the same time, the funding went primarily to small- and mid-size farms, more than half of which were owned by women; more than 40 percent were owned by producers of color.

Participating farms were also much more likely to be organic or transitioning to organic production compared to the state average. They were also likely to be implementing and/or expanding other environmentally friendly practices.

Still, despite California’s advantages over other states—namely a super-long growing season that overlaps with the school year and a plethora of farms selling fruit, vegetables, meat, and dairy—the total money spent by school grantees on local food represented just 1 percent of total food budgets. And schools cited many challenges common across the farm-to-school landscape: price constraints, processing capacity, and staffing. “The challenges around changing a complex school food system are substantial,” said Dr. Gail Feenstra, one of the researchers involved in the report, in a press release. “Fortunately, the state’s strategic and innovative investments in the entire farm to school supply chain—meaning funding for school districts, farmers, and also their regional partners, combined with support from CDFA’s regional staff—are beginning to address those long-standing challenges.”

The post The US Weakens a UN Declaration on Antibiotic Resistance appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> Are These Corporations Pocketing Your Kid’s Lunch Money? https://civileats.com/2024/09/09/are-these-corporations-pocketing-your-kids-lunch-money/ Mon, 09 Sep 2024 09:00:34 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57534 November 4, 2024 Update: On November 1, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a new policy that will no longer allow companies to charge students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches processing fees. The requirement does not officially kick in until the 2027-2028 school year, but the agency is encouraging schools to implement it as soon as […]

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Hunger Doesn’t Take a Summer Break. Neither Do School Food Professionals.

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 09:00:58 +0000

At the end of May, Samantha Figueroa sat at her desk counting the number of sites where Caroline County Public Schools would distribute free food to children this summer. Behind her, color-coded meal plans filled the wall.

“People think, ‘It’s almost summertime; you must get a vacation!’” said Figueroa, the food operations manager for the small district in eastern Maryland. “But I am running around like a maniac.”

That’s because while cafeteria workers serve meals in nine Caroline County schools during the school year, they would be operating 24 sites between June and August. In addition to serving meals at camps and other places children gather during the summer, at 17 of those, her team would be sending applesauce cups, baked ziti, and milk cartons out into communities in a whole new way. Other districts and nonprofits all over the country are doing the same thing this summer.

Vegetables like baby carrots have to be packaged into individual serving sizes before they’re added to meal bags. (Photo credit: Colin Marshall)

Driving it all is a policy change members of Congress, led by Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) and John Boozman (R-Arkansas), quietly tucked into a December 2022 spending bill. In addition to authorizing a program that would put extra funds into low-income parents’ pockets for summer groceries, the lawmakers changed a longstanding provision that required schools to serve summer meals communally, eliminating the requirement for rural areas.

While it may seem like a tiny detail, school food professionals and child hunger organizations have long argued that in the past, requiring children to show up and sit down to eat had prevented them from reaching many food-insecure households during the summer months. That was especially true in rural areas, where families are spread out and transportation options can be limited. In low-income districts like Caroline County—where all kids eat free during the school year—they argued, kids were likely going hungry as a result.

This summer, then, marks a turning point.

“It truly is a historic moment. We have the opportunity to do something that folks have been trying to do for a very long time,” said U.S. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Xochitl Torres Small at No Kid Hungry’s Summer Nutrition Summit in January. “By giving kids the nutrition they need, we’re giving them a foundation of well-being that can—without exaggeration—change the trajectory of their lives.”

But while the policy tweak may be simple, the 400 professionals at the conference were there to talk about the hard part: logistics. It’s profoundly complicated to find hungry kids who are out of school, prepare, pack, and deliver meals to them—and to do it all while following U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) rules that come with unwieldy paperwork. In short, they were laying the foundation for what Figueroa and countless other school food professionals are now working on every week this summer.

Packing Meals to Go

By early July, on a morning when hot air hung heavy over the crisp, browned grass outside Lockerman Middle School, Figueroa had worked through many of those details.

Inside the school, which had been transformed into the district’s summer meal command center, staff members worked in an assembly line packing plastic bags. They opened up boxes of breakfast burritos, Pop-Tarts, and personal pizzas. They reached for individually packed bags of fresh broccoli, cherry tomatoes, and loose oranges. There were chicken patty and potato wedge platters packaged to be easily microwaved, and plenty of milk. Cardboard boxes filled with roasted chickpea snacks, Craisins, and Blueberry Chex were stacked throughout the cafeteria.

A produce delivery arrives at Lockerman Middle School. (Photo credit: Colin Marshall)

It might have felt more chaotic if they hadn’t done this before, but they had. “We have PTSD from COVID,” Figueroa said, “but we learned the rhythm and the way to set this up and make it efficient.”

The USDA calls this kind of meal service—which doesn’t involve kids sitting down next to each other with trays—“non-congregate.” While hunger groups had been advocating for the approach for many years, the pandemic provided the test case for the power of the practice. With emergency waivers in hand, schools and nonprofits were freed up to feed students—now learning in their homes all over the place—however they could manage it.

Figueroa’s team sprang into action in 2020, with bus drivers delivering meals, Parks & Recreation employees donating vehicles, and volunteers from the community helping out. While it was born of necessity, it showed them the possibilities and where, exactly, the need was.

The team of women who unload boxes, prep meals, preserve vegetables, and package bags of meals to be distributed all summer long in Caroline County. (Photo credit: Colin Marshall)

“We were going into neighborhoods, apartment complexes, mobile-home sites,” she said. “Those are the places we went during COVID, where there was a need. Now, we know where those kids will be.”

At Feeding Southwest Virginia, a nonprofit that runs summer meal programs in multiple counties, Director of Children’s Programs Brandon Comer said she saw the scramble to get food to families during the pandemic as a sort of pilot program for non-congregate meal service. Plus, the challenges her team handled during that time made her feel like now they could do anything.

“It couldn’t get any worse than that. Literally, in 2021, USDA made a decision to approve some of the waivers, and we were already halfway through the summer, but we made it work,” Comer said. “COVID just about killed me, but we made sure we fed kids.”

At the peak of her pandemic service, she had 42 meal sites running. This summer, she has 67, 35 of which are adopting the non-congregate option. Many sites are in the arrowhead-shaped span of far southwest Virginia that juts between Kentucky and Tennessee, where rural poverty runs deep.

And now that the change has become law, the USDA issued more specific rules around it, one of which has had huge implications for Comer’s operations. In January, the agency tweaked how it defines “rural,” a change that more than doubled how many Virginia schools qualified this year—up to 120 from 50 last year.

“Some of the areas we were feeding congregate before, but now we can turn them into non-congregate, which enables us to get more kids fed because we’re not spending an hour and a half at a feeding site and then driving 45 minutes and spending an hour and a half at a feeding site and then having to come back,” she said. “We can do three, four, or five in a day now.”

In Craig County on the state’s western edge, for example, a librarian called to propose distributing meals last year, but the area did not meet the definition of rural. This year, it did. When Comer added the site to her routes, the library estimated they’d feed 150 kids. Once word got out, she began upping the number, which is now around 350 kids a week.

Meeting the Need

Back on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Figueroa didn’t have to worry about that change. “We’re 100 percent rural, so we’re going everywhere,” she said.

Samantha Figueroa checks her timeline of multiple meal delivery routes while boxes of incoming produce are stacked behind her. (Photo credit: Colin Marshall)

While her team fed plenty of kids last summer, the biggest difference this year is “it’s a lot more food,” said Liz Alley, a member of Figueroa’s team who runs the Lockerman operation. Alley pointed to print-outs she had taped to an easel, where below the different locations and routes planned for each day, she was tallying meal counts. By the end of the day, they’d send out 1,400 meals.

Mid-morning, van driver Meghan Hewitt pulled up with her helper, a high-school student fulfilling community service hours. As the two rearranged bins filled with bags of food so that cartons of milk jugs wouldn’t fall over in transit, a tractor trailer pulled in. “Produce is here!” one of the cafeteria employees yelled, as a delivery worker began moving pallets of grapes, apples, peaches, and honeydew melons from his truck into a stationary refrigerated truck used for storage.

Meghan Hewitt drives the van slowly through the neighborhood, tapping her horn to alert families of the arriving meals. (Photo credit: Colin Marshall)

In the meantime, Hewitt set out, and after a quick distribution at a small condo complex, she drove north.

The van, decorated with colorful images of fruits and vegetables, passed a warehouse where zucchini, squash, and green beans from local farms was stored. The Lockerman cafeteria team has recently blanched and vacuum-sealed the vegetables to be used for lunch service during the upcoming school year . It passed corn and soybean fields stretching out on either side of the highway.

Then, Hewitt arrived at the destination: a mobile home park that housed many of the immigrant families who harvest the fruits and vegetables grown in the county’s fields.

New School Meal Standards Could Put More Local Food on Students’ Lunch Trays

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 09:00:25 +0000

Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) finalized long-anticipated changes to the nutrition standards that regulate school meals. Among the changes that attracted the most attention were the first-ever limits on added sugar and a scaled-down plan to reduce salt.

But another small tweak has big implications for the increasing number of schools working to get more fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats produced by nearby farmers onto students’ trays. Starting July 1, when districts put out a call for an unprocessed or minimally processed food—whether it’s tomatoes, taco meat, or tuna—they’ll be able to specify that they’d like it to be “locally grown, locally raised, or locally caught.”

“We’re . . . freeing up schools to continue to look for ways in which they can partner with producers and with local and regional food systems,” agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack said during a press conference last week, “so that we create additional market opportunities for farmers and ranchers in the area, but also create a better connection between those who produce the food and those who consume it.”

Two days later, Vilsack landed in Michigan, where his travel schedule attempted to trace that connection, with a first stop at a Detroit middle school followed by a visit to Williamston to talk about helping farmers access “new and better markets.”

Karen Spangler, the policy director for the National Farm to School Network, said the change has long been a priority for the group because it often hears how the shift will simplify the process for school nutrition directors while also making it possible for more farmers to get involved in the first place. In addition to funding institutes and expanding farm-to-school efforts to early childcare centers, she sees as one piece of the USDA’s current focus on “integrating farm-to-school and local purchasing to a degree that hasn’t been seen before,” she said.

From the start of the Biden administration, Vilsack announced a priority on nutrition security and building regional markets for farmers, and farm-to-school efforts happened to sit right at the nexus. Since the release of the latest Agricultural Census in February showed small- and mid-size farms continue to disappear as consolidation in agriculture accelerates, Vilsack has been beating the drum of saving smaller farms by supporting markets they can sell into even more intensely. In addition to the shift to local purchasing, the nutrition standards also strengthen the “Buy America” provision already in place for school meals.

But forging a stronger connection between fields and cafeterias goes back to 2010, when Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act championed by Michelle Obama. It was the first Child Nutrition Reauthorization to push nutrition to the forefront of school meal programs, and it included the first federal farm-to-school grants. Since then, the federal government has supported the efforts in additional ways, alongside numerous state incentives and grant programs as well as work done by nonprofit organizations. During the 2018–19 school year, about 77 percent of school food authorities (districts or individual schools) reported serving some local food, spending a total of $1.26 billion.

However, that number is still a small sliver of total school meal spending, and buying local can be more complicated for districts and schools than just making up a funding gap. In addition to delivery, packaging, and labor challenges, school food procurement involves a complicated bid process with many rules attached. That’s where this change comes in.

Spangler explained that right now, schools can list a “geographic preference” as one factor to be evaluated alongside others such as price, volume, and other criteria. For example, if a New York district wants to buy apples grown in-state today, they would have to evaluate bids from in-state orchards alongside bids from out-of-state distributors, many of which are likely to come in with a much lower price. “It discourages local producers from participating in the process because they can be drastically undercut,” Spangler said.

With this change, if the district is confident that plenty of in-state orchards have enough Macintosh and Granny Smiths to satisfy their students’ appetites, it could specify up-front that it only wants bids from in-state orchards.

Alongside the National Farm to School Network, groups including the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, National Farmers Union, and FoodCorps have been pushing for the change for years. In its summary of the new standards, USDA officials said the agency received close to 400 comments on the proposed change.

“Commentors noted that expanding the geographic preference option to allow local as a specification will broaden opportunities for CNP [Child Nutrition Program] operators to purchase directly from local farmers, reinforce local food systems, and ease procurement challenges for operators interested in sourcing food from local producers,” they wrote.

Previously, Representative Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) attempted to go the Congressional route to make it happen, introducing the Kids Eat Local Act multiple times with bipartisan support. But the bill never went anywhere because the overall Child Nutrition Reauthorization process is now nine years overdue.

Pingree celebrated the USDA for moving forward with the change in the meantime, and she plans to continue to reintroduce the bill so that it will eventually be set in law and therefore be more likely to stick. “Our children deserve healthy, nutritious school meals that are made with locally-sourced ingredients—not highly processed foods,” she said in a press release applauding the agency.

At Morgan Hill Unified School District in California, Michael Jochner said he’s ready to make that happen. Jochner has been working to improve meal quality by forging relationships with organic farmers in his area and growing his own lettuces using hydroponic shipping container systems for several years.

“As a district going out to bid across all food items for next school year, we’re very excited to have the flexibility to use ‘local’ as a bid specification,” he told Civil Eats. “We feel this will allow us to prioritize our local farmers, ranchers, and fisherman, and in turn help the local economy.”

Pesticide Ban Moves Forward. California legislators advanced a state bill proposed to ban the herbicide paraquat, sending it to another committee for consideration. Paraquat has been linked to Parkinson’s disease and is banned in dozens of other countries due to its health risks, including the United Kingdom, throughout the European Union, and in China. Over the past few months, the Environmental Working Group has been supporting the campaign to ban paraquat in California, releasing reports that show it is sprayed disproportionately in counties home to low-income communities of color and that the top users in the state include the Wonderful Company, which sprays it to produce pomegranates, pistachios, and almonds. The legislation comes at a time when the pesticide industry is fighting on several fronts to prevent states from passing laws that regulate farm chemicals.

Confronting Poultry Problems. As avian influenza continues to spread in dairy cattle herds in nine states, the USDA announced it will now require mandatory reporting of infections in cattle and testing before moving cattle to other states. Some states, meanwhile, had already closed their borders to incoming cattle. And on Thursday, Colombia became the first country to restrict beef imports from the U.S. based on the situation. While beef cattle have not tested positive for the virus to date, retired dairy cows are generally processed into beef at the end of their lives.

Prior to the crossover into cattle, the virus had been circulating in poultry since early 2022 and is still is, primarily affecting egg-laying hens and turkeys. One dairy worker, whose only symptoms were conjunctivitis, remains the only reported infection in humans, and while particles of the virus have been found in milk, officials from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) say the milk is still safe to drink, since pasteurization kills the virus.

Meanwhile, the FDA also finalized a food safety rule that will allow the agency to enforce limits on Salmonella in some chicken products for the first time. The rule only applies to “frozen, breaded, and stuffed” chicken products, but in those products, if salmonella is found to exceed the limit, the products will be considered adulterated and will not be able to be sold. It’s a major change for the agency and is one piece of a larger plan to reduce illnesses from the common bacteria.

Farmworker Rights. On Friday, the Department of Labor finalized new regulations intended to increase protections for workers employed on farms through the H-2A guestworker program. Under the new rules, workers have more tools to advocate for their rights and obtain legal assistance, foreign recruiters are required to provide new documentation to increase transparency, and new procedures are in place to kick out farms that break the rules.

“With these new rules, the power of the federal government has sided with farm workers—both those who are born here and those from other countries—who for too long have been exploited, silenced, displaced, or harmed by the H-2A program,” United Farm Workers (UFW) President Teresa Romero said in a press release.

The news came days after the UFW Foundation released a new documentary video series showcasing the impacts of climate change on farmworkers. As the effects of climate change worsen, workers in the field increasingly face and lack adequate protection from hazards including dangerous heat, flooding, and wildfire smoke.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/04/30/new-school-meal-standards-could-put-more-local-food-on-students-lunch-trays/feed/ 1 How Do School Meals in the US Stack Up Against Other Countries? https://civileats.com/2023/10/03/how-do-school-meals-in-the-us-stack-up-against-those-in-other-countries/ Tue, 03 Oct 2023 08:00:35 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=53623 A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox. In 2021, the Global Child Nutrition Foundation (GCNF), a nonprofit that provides global monitoring and advocacy to support the development of school feeding programs, ran a survey to capture the […]

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Without Federal School-Meal Support, Lunch Shaming May Be Back on the Menu

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 08:00:06 +0000

A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox. “The kids knew what they were taking home to their parents and the reaction they were going to get. They knew,” Santamour said. “I had kids who left them in […]

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California Leads the Way in Low-Carbon School Meals

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 08:00:57 +0000

This article was produced as a radio story by our media partner Public News Service, reaching millions of listeners. Take a listen here. The IPCC assessment “was pretty unforgiving,” says the director of nutrition services for Southern California’s Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD), in making “strong connections between our food systems and climate change.” […]

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Photo Essay: How DC Central Kitchen Tackles Hunger, From Food Trucks to Training Programs

Wed, 30 Aug 2023 08:00:45 +0000

In late July, as the temperature and humidity rose to dangerous levels, and wildfire smoke lingered in the atmosphere, I got off the M6 Metrobus outside the Atlantic Gardens in Washington, D.C.’s Highlands neighborhood. There, a food truck was offering summer meals to students who might not otherwise have enough to eat.

The truck, emblazoned with photos of fresh fruits and vegetables, is a project of DC Central Kitchen (DCCK), the longstanding anti-hunger and job-training nonprofit. DCCK operates two mobile meal trucks, an outgrowth of the organization’s Healthy School Foods program, which began in 2010 and has evolved over time: Today, DCCK is the food service provider for 19 D.C.-area schools.

Children at these schools rely on those meals during the academic year, since they may be their only nutritious meal in a day. But when schools close for summer vacation, they lose that meal option, and their families may struggle to shoulder the added costs of feeding kids at home all summer.

“We really strongly believe that a hungry child is not learning,” explained Sami Reilly, director of contract meals and nutrition at DCCK. But once the school year ends, she adds, the students don’t just go away. “We were like, ‘We were just feeding 5,000 meals a day and now we just go to zero?’”

In response, DCCK began a summer feeding program to support students when they’re out of school. The first step was to ask the community what they needed. Among the first things they realized was just how immense the need was—especially when school is not in session: DCCK currently cooks 10,000 meals a day in the summer and is planning to expand to 25,000 in the near future.

Preparing the meals is just one aspect of the challenge—they must also make sure D.C. residents can access the meals. DCCK has eliminated the need for families to register for the meals, which does away with the potential stigma associated with receiving food assistance.

“To know that they have access to food, regardless of age or any other factors and that they don’t need to be enrolled to get access shows that it’s all-inclusive,” Reilly said.

For families that receive free school meals during the year, the added expense of providing meals and snacks during the summer can be overwhelming.

Ja’Sent Brown, the chief impact officer at DCCK and a mother herself, said that when you factor in inflation, “the cost [becomes] astronomical.”

For Many Kids, a Boost to Summer School Meals Is a ‘Game Changer’

Wed, 05 Jul 2023 08:00:34 +0000

Instead of being able to offer take-away meals at several locations in the area, Urick was required to serve meals at two designated locations where kids had to come in and eat their meals on site. (In the school nutrition world, this is known as a “congregate” setting.) Participation dropped to half of what it […]

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What Cuts to the Food Safety Net Mean for People’s Lives

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 08:01:23 +0000

A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox. See the related feature article about the large-scale impacts of benefits cuts. To shed light on the problem we spoke with four people—two food-assistance recipients, a farmworker, and a […]

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States Are Fighting to Bring Back Free School Meals

Wed, 31 May 2023 08:00:06 +0000

Update: In August 2023, Massachusetts lawmakers agreed on a plan to make universal free school meals permanent. “There was confusion about that,” Stueber recalls. Many low-income families didn’t realize they had to submit a school meal application to obtain free and reduced-price meals. Others were suddenly faced with a new financial constraint. Stueber recalls a […]

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School Food Chefs Learn to Plot Healthier Menus With a New Fellowship

Mon, 06 Mar 2023 09:00:09 +0000

Zena Martinez, a food-program specialist with the Glendale Union High School District in Glendale, Arizona, calls the spicy chicken patty she serves for lunch the “bane of her existence.” The students love it, and, yes, it meets U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutritional standards, but she is tired of serving a heavily processed sandwich that comes frozen and in bulk quantities.

Martinez is so tired of serving this kind of processed meal, in fact, that a few years ago she went searching for information about what her district used to serve kids, hoping that she’d find old recipes for scratch-cooked meals tucked away somewhere. She flipped through heavy binders full of menus dating back to 2010 and found only disappointment: Hamburgers, pizza, chicken patties, the very meals she was rotating through every week had been staples for years, probably decades.

“You don’t see passion in these menus,” says Martinez. “You see the status quo.”

Zena Martinez. (Photo courtesy of the Chef Ann Foundation)

Since then, Martinez, who oversees school food in nine high schools, began offering at least one meal every week that required more than reheating. Entrees like baked ziti and a chicken and rice bowl began popping up as lunch specials. Now, at least 10 percent of her menu involves what those in school food call “speed scratch” cooking, meaning she uses fully cooked ingredients such as chicken breasts and tomatoes, to produce a dish that’s less processed than frozen patties on a bun. A diet heavy in processed food is linked to less physical fitness in kids as well as a wide range of health problems including diabetes and cardiovascular disease in adults.

Martinez wants to boost her speed scratch cooking to 40 percent by next year, and she dreams of cooking only meals with raw, fresh ingredients two years after that.

“I believe that it’s fully achievable,” she says.

Her determination is exactly what the Chef Ann Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting scratch-cooking in schools, was looking for when it created the Healthy School Food Pathways Fellowship, a year-long program that aims to create a new generation of school food leaders eager to abandon the heat-and-serve model. Martinez was among the 24 inaugural fellows selected out of about 60 applicants from districts around the country.

“What do their choices mean for the nutrition of a child and the impact on the environment—and for the food system?”

Mara Fleishman, Chef Ann Foundation’s chief executive officer, says she conceived of the fellowship after noticing the same small group of people showing up at events promoting scratch cooking in schools, including founder Chef Ann Cooper, the foundation’s founder. Fleishman says the fellowship was intentionally advertised to mid-level managers, with the hope that after completing the fellowship, the fellows would stick around their districts, ascend into leadership roles, and establish lasting change.

“We can put them through a comprehensive 12-month program where we’re helping them understand the tenets of scratch cooking. Not just how to lead a scratch-cook program, but what does it mean?” she says. “What do their choices mean for the nutrition of a child and the impact on the environment—and for the food system?”

The fellowship aligns with a larger movement to include more fresh ingredients in school food. According to the USDA’s latest farm-to-school census from 2019, about 43 million children participate in farm-to-school programs every year, and nearly 68,000 schools feature local foods on their menu.

Still, the fellows face unique challenges rippling outward from the pandemic. Labor shortages persist, of course; but also, during the early days of COVID, the federal government made lunch free to all 50.6 million public school students nationwide. Last fall, the universal meal program expired in most states. A recent School Nutrition Association (SNA) survey of more than 1,000 school meal program directors found that among programs that must now charge for meals, there was an a 23 percent drop in breakfast participation on average and a 13 percent decline in lunch.

In Martinez’ district, the drop has been even more dramatic. “We have probably lost 38 percent participation [for lunch],” she says, adding that at one high school where last year they were serving 1,900 daily lunches, “now, we’re lucky to serve 800.” According to the SNA survey, about 60 percent of school meal program directors said that they were now charging students not eligible for free lunch.

And of those charging for meals, nearly all have experienced an increase in unpaid meal charges or debt, a burden on school district budgets, not to mention families struggling to keep up. Lower participation combined with unpaid meal debt means less money available for school food programs, limiting meal program directors’ ability to experiment with more labor-intensive or expensive approaches to meals.

For all these reasons, it may seem like bad timing to launch new, healthier school menus. But the 24 fellows, including Martinez, plan to do just that.

Fellows Can’t Fix It All

When Martinez tried replacing the spicy chicken patty with a less-processed alternative, she was met with resistance from students and the cafeteria managers she oversees. “A third of my managers are like, ‘Yes, this is what we’ve been waiting for.’ I have another third of my managers who are like, ‘No way, I’m gonna buck the system and throw a spicy chicken patty at my kids,’” Martinez said during the first meeting of the Chef Ann Foundation fellows in January. And it was an experience shared by other fellows.

Nick Vedia, the district sous chef at Virginia Beach City Public Schools, oversees 82 kitchens and says a speed scratch recipe might taste great at one site, but another site might not get it right, and kids wind up snubbing the meal. “That is my challenge,” he says, “making sure I’m getting as close to a consistent product to our children.”

“It’s a brain trust of folks that can hopefully be the future leaders of school nutrition and spread this message of scratch cooking.”

As another aspect of its work to address the need for skilled cooks, the Healthy School Food Pathway program includes a separate but related apprenticeship that recruits and trains cooks specifically in cafeteria-scale scratch cooking. California invested $45 million in the program and is the only state where it’s currently up and running, though Colorado and Virginia are exploring adopting it as well.

California also invested in 12 of the fellows, while funding for the other 12, who work in districts ranging from Virginia to Arizona, came from the Whole Kids Foundation. Over the next year, the fellows will visit districts that have incorporated scratch cooking into their menus, take classes, and receive $5,000 to implement a project in their home district that will steer menus toward healthier offerings.

Martinez also wants her project to focus on building community in the cafeteria. “I want to offer meals reflective of all students,” she says. “We have students from Sudan and Cambodia. I want parents to submit recipes and we can sample them at school.”

Other fellows are contemplating how to add salad bars that kids will look forward to, following their inspiration to try hydroponic farming, devising 10 scratch-cooked recipes that can be taught to their staff over the summer, and more.

Indigenous Foodways Are the Focus in a Growing Number of Classrooms

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 09:00:52 +0000

In early December, a group of about 25 high school students from Great Falls, Montana, traveled to a ranch in the foothills of the Rocky Mountain Front in biting, minus-9 degree temperatures.

After the ranch manager, Chris Bechtold, killed and bled out one of the estimated 700 bison in the herd, the students approached the carcass to participate in the traditional process of breaking down the animal. It was bitter cold out, but the organizer stoked a big bonfire to keep everyone warm.

Dugan Coburn, Indian Education for All and Indigenous Education director for Great Falls Public Schools, guts every organ from a bison for native and non-native students and school staff. The abdominal cavity includes four stomachs and the nutrient-rich large and small intestines. (Photo credit: Great Falls Public Schools)

Dugan Coburn, the director of the district’s Indian Education for All (IEFA) program, led a sage-burning ceremony and then a ritual pipe ceremony to clear bad energy and release negativity. “We use it to honor the animal who gave up its life,” said Coburn, a Blackfoot. “We do it so everybody there understands that every life is important and that taking one has to be done with seriousness and respect.”

He talked about how people in the prairie tribes relied on bison for food, clothes, tools, and shelter when 30 million buffalo roamed the Great Plains. Then Bechtold described the interactive agricultural cycle in which bison help the prairie recover–boosting the water supply, grass health, and survival rates of mice and other animals.

“I’m asking (the students) to take it in—and remember all these things that we’re teaching them,” Coburn told KRTV, a local news station in Great Falls. “One day, I won’t be here, and that knowledge needs to be passed on to the next group of kids.”

“We use it to honor the animal who gave up its life. We do it so everybody there understands that every life is important and that taking one has to be done with seriousness and respect.”

This kind of Indigenous knowledge transfer is rare within a public school district, but advocates in the state see it as a crucial element for both Native and non-Native students. The Great Falls district enrolls nearly 1,700 students who self-identify as Indian. They hail from at least 60 different Native American communities, which include members of the Chippewa Cree, Assiniboine, Little Shell, and Blackfeet tribes, among others.

Montana’s Indian Education For All, a program that employs a director, three full-time Indian education specialists, and others at the district level, including Coburn, is based on policy that has existed since 1999. It stands out in a national landscape in which Native people and their cultures often go unseen. The Reclaiming Native Truth (RNT) project found that 72 percent of Americans rarely encounter information about Native Americans, and 87 percent of state history standards do not mention Native American history after 1900. Montana is one of a handful of states serving as models for others looking to bring Native food traditions and other traditional practices into the classroom.

A Hands-On Harvest

On the ranch, Coburn skinned the bison, allowing students to touch the thick hide, then passed around the organs. Students could hold the large liver, spleen, lungs, and intestines. Coburn held up the animal’s shockingly big heart, which he planned to cook and share at school. He also offered students a chance to taste a raw kidney and take a drink of bison blood, which he says historically allowed Native people to take in much-needed iron. “Blood soup was a common dish a thousand years ago,” he added.

“The kids walk up to the bison and feel how big it is,” said Coburn after the fact. “It’s still warm . . . the kidneys, intestines, and fat [will be used] for cooking and finishing stonework.”

Similar to a federal surplus program in South Dakota and Nebraska, where tribal, family, and public land grant management continues to help bring bison back from near extinction, the Diamond 4D Ranch in Montana teams with Indian Education leaders to reintroduce bison to their native range in a “perfect ecosystem.” The ranch creates a setting beneficial to both wildlife and agriculture by integrating progressive management practices and natural processes. The goal is to allow bison to “express their innate abilities” while preserving and restoring native prairie ecosystems.

The Field Report: FDA Data Shows a Worrisome Increase in Antibiotic Use in Animal Agriculture

Tue, 13 Dec 2022 09:00:03 +0000

Seven years after the federal government created a National Action Plan to fight antibiotic resistance, sales of medically important antibiotics in animal agriculture are still trending in the wrong direction.

Rather than a steady decline year over year, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) data released yesterday shows that while overall antibiotic sales for livestock decreased about 1 percent across the board in 2021 compared to 2020, significant increases occurred in the systems that produce Americans’ favorite meats.

Globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) has pointed to antibiotic resistance as one of the biggest existing threats to public health and food security, and in the U.S., antibiotic-resistant bacteria cause about 2.8 million infections and 35,000 deaths annually. Animal agriculture is key to addressing the problem, since the industry uses far more antibiotics than human healthcare does.

“It’s just another nail in the coffin of a failed FDA approach to stewardship of antibiotics in the livestock sector,” said David Wallinga, a senior health officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) who has been closely tracking the issue for years. “Every data point underscores how clearly it has failed, especially since 2017.”

After a peak in 2016, regulatory changes and a consumer-driven shift away from the use of medically important antibiotics in chicken production led to a 28 percent drop in livestock antibiotic sales overall, but sales in cattle and pork have mostly stayed steady or increased slightly since (aside from a slight drop between 2019 and 2020). Somewhat surprisingly, this year’s data shows antibiotic sales for use in chicken shot up 12 percent, while sales for cattle were up 1 percent and sales for pork were up 3 percent.

But Wallinga said chicken is not the issue, given the differences in volume. For example, nearly 2.5 million kilograms (kg) of antibiotics were sold for use in cattle, compared to about 158,000 kg for chicken. And the bigger uptick in chicken only resulted in an increase in 17,000 kg, compared to an increase of 78,000 kg in pork. Plus, he said, the problem is rooted in the overall volume.

“If you’re looking across food production as a whole, that’s what really matters,” he said. “Overall numbers are what drive selection for resistant bacteria.”

In the past, industry officials have attributed increases in sales data to increases in the number and size of animals produced. But data from 2021 shows production of both pork and chicken actually went down in 2021 compared to the previous year, suggesting that more antibiotics were sold for use in fewer animals.

That squares with an NRDC issue brief published last month. In it, Wallinga and his team found that in 2020, the U.S. rate of antibiotic use was nearly twice as high as the overall rate reported in the European Union. And between 2017 and 2020, intensity of use went up in cattle, pig, and turkeys. Only in chicken did it go down.

Europe has also been more successful in reducing overall antibiotic use in animal agriculture, achieving a nearly 43 percent decline in overall sales between 2011 and 2020, compared to 27 percent in the U.S. To follow Europe’s lead, NRDC researchers say that the U.S. should begin more closely tracking antibiotic use on farms and set ambitious, measurable targets to reduce use. And advocates have long pushed for a policy change that would ban the routine use of medically important antibiotics for disease prevention in healthy animals, arguing that use should be restricted to disease treatment as it is in most cases in human medicine.

At the end of the day, Wallinga said another development last week points to the fact that the agency is dragging its feet and doesn’t want to “get into these issues.” The Reagan-Udall Foundation released its outside evaluation of the FDA’s food programs, which FDA Commissioner Robert Califf commissioned in July. But despite urging from NRDC and other groups, the evaluation did not include assessing the division within the FDA tasked with monitoring antibiotic use in livestock. “These are food animals, but somehow they’re not part of the food supply?” he asked.

Grading the FDA (on other fronts). In that report on FDA’s food programs, the expert panel concluded that issues with culture, structure, and a lack of adequate resources seriously hinder “the ability of the Human Foods Program to carry out its mission efficiently and effectively.” FDA Commissioner Califf commissioned the report after the agency was criticized for failing to prevent and efficiently address the infant formula crisis, which killed two infants and has resulted in ongoing shortages that affected millions of families. An April Politico investigation also found that the agency has been failing to maintain food safety and nutrition standards due to dysfunction within and inattention to the food side of its operations.

While the evaluation was presented as an outside audit, the Reagan-Udall Foundation is set up as independent organization but is closely linked to and partially funded by the FDA and receives funding from many of the country’s largest food, formula, and pharmaceutical companies, including Nestlé USA, Kellogg, and Pfizer.

To fix the problems identified in the report, the panel recommended multiple options to change the agency’s structure, from creating an entirely different agency for food separate from drugs, to streamlining divisions that currently handle different aspects of the food program, to appointing a new leader to run the entire food program. It also provided a list of specific ways that Congress could expand FDA’s authorities, including requiring companies to notify the agency when food shortages are anticipated, conducting a routine assessment of ingredients that qualify for the controversial GRAS (generally recognized as safe) designation, and monitoring the use and impacts of the term “healthy” on food labels.

Advocacy groups that have long pushed for changes to how FDA regulates food applauded the report’s release as an important first step and urged the agency to respond with fast action. “We need strengthened leadership and accountability at the FDA to implement a culture of prevention, respond more quickly to problems as they arise, and take timely action on proposed food safety rules and initiatives,” said Brian Ronholm, Consumer Reports’ director of food policy, in a press release.

Climate-Smart Commodities, Part 2. On Monday, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack visited Tuskegee University in Alabama to announce the second round of awards in the USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program. While the first investments announced in September were all large projects awarded $5 to $100 million each for a total of $2.8 billion, the second batch consisted of 71 projects with funding ranging from $250,000 up to $5 million each, for a total of $325 million in funding.

Vilsack described the follow-up as serving small-sized family farms and historically underserved producers, to “ensure full participation in this historic opportunity to transform American agriculture.” Projects highlighted at the event included a Texas initiative to help Hispanic farmers adopt agrivoltaic systems, a tribal project focused on buffalo production, and a Tuskegee-led effort to help small, underserved Southern farms implement agroforestry practices. In total, Vilsack said the climate-smart commodities program now includes 141 projects totaling $3.1 billion. The agency estimates 60,000 farmers will be involved and that the projects could lead to “60 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent reduced,” although how they came to that estimate is unclear.

The announcement came on the heels of an analysis posted by researchers at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) that pointed to a lack of transparency associated with the first round of investments. Since those larger projects each had multiple partners, UCS researchers said it will be impossible to tell who is actually receiving the allocated taxpayer dollars. That information is critical, they said, especially given the fact that many of the partners are wealthy corporations, including Coca-Cola, JBS, and Tyson. The researchers also said the USDA has not provided enough information on how it is defining “climate-smart,” the specific practices employed in each project, or how the agency will measure whether the projects result in real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Some of UCS’ criticisms echoed those of incoming House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn “GT” Thompson, Jr. (R-Pennsylvania), who has demanded more information from the USDA as to how the money is being spent.

Farm State Shake-Up. Another recent development has implications for farm-and-climate policy. For the past 50 years, the lead-up to presidential elections has started with the Iowa caucuses. But last week, the Democratic National Committee voted to support a Biden administration plan to kick off the party’s 2024 nomination process in South Carolina. While Republicans will still start their process in the Midwest farm state, many political insiders reacted to the news by commenting on how the change might impact federal agricultural policies, since Iowa’s political powerbrokers will likely now hold less sway.

Iowa voices have been particularly key in pushing for federal support for ethanol, despite growing evidence that suggests the biofuel’s climate impacts may be equal to or greater than fossil fuels. “We’ve enjoyed the opportunity to have the candidates here and help them get educated about agriculture and ethanol,” Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, told the Wall Street Journal. (Of course, Iowa legislators are not the only ones pushing ethanol: Last Thursday, Representatives from Minnesota and Nebraska introduced a House bill that would boost ethanol sales.) If President Biden decides to run for a second term, the move wouldn’t mean much this year but would affect future election cycles.

Funding for Free Meals. At the state level, the growing fight to secure free meals for all public school students got a major boost last week with an infusion of cash from Tusk Philanthropies’ Solving Hunger. The nonprofit will fund public campaigns intended to drive state lawmakers in New York, Connecticut, Vermont, and North Carolina to make universal school meals permanent. Although free school meals provided at the federal level during the pandemic ended in September, the USDA’s Economic Research Service released data showing that since last March, the percentage of schools participating in federal meal programs fell from 94 percent to 88 percent. The share of schools reporting more than half of students were eating school meals dropped more significantly, from 84 percent to 69 percent.

While a direct line between the end of universal school meals and the decline in numbers is impossible to draw, the challenges that schools cited as preventing higher participation—including getting parents to complete applications for free and reduced meals—suggest a relationship. With action on universal school meals stalled in Washington, many advocates have shifted their energy to states.

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]]> How the Midterm Elections Will Impact Food and Agriculture https://civileats.com/2022/11/03/how-the-midterm-elections-will-impact-food-and-agriculture/ Thu, 03 Nov 2022 15:56:50 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=49307 December 10, 2022 update: In the Senate, Democrats maintained control and expanded their majority to 51-49. In the House, Republicans won control with a slim majority, 222-213. November 9, 2022 update: Control of the Senate is still up in the air and likely will be for another month, since Senator Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia)—a member of […]

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The Next Chance to Improve School Meal Access Is Coming Up Soon

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 08:00:34 +0000

An excerpt of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only email newsletter. Become a member today to get the next issue in your inbox. It’s no wonder why: As child hunger rose at alarming rates in 2020, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued waivers to allow schools to distribute all meals free […]

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For Healthier School Meals, California Bets On More Cooks in the Kitchen

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 08:00:09 +0000

When beef brisket is on the menu, Erin Primer relies on an assistant superintendent to tie on an apron, grab a knife, and help slice meat. “Any additional bodies that come in and offer some type of relief, whether it’s wrapping a burger, plating a salad, any of those additional hands are helpful,” she says.

Primer, the food and nutrition services director at San Luis Coastal Unified School District in San Luis Obispo, California, is down 13 people on a team that typically totals 40. About 200 miles north, in the Santa Clara Unified School District, bus drivers pitch in to help serve food, as do some older students. The pandemic has left school kitchens across the country in dire need of workers. Last fall, 95 percent of school districts reported labor shortages in a School Nutrition Association (SNA) survey.

When Primer learned of a program that would recruit school kitchen trainees and pay them to learn the tools of the trade, she immediately volunteered to host and train a few of the inaugural participants. The program is known as the Healthy School Food Pathway program (HSFP), and was created by the Chef Ann Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing healthy scratch-cooked meals in schools.

“If we really want to talk about moving the needle of school food, elevating our programs, we definitely need that skilled labor.”

Mara Fleishman, CEO of the Chef Ann Foundation, says the program officially launched last year as a three-year pilot program in California. Fleishman says HSFP aims to address a problem the organization has repeatedly run into during its 13 years supporting schools trying to boost scratch cooking. “We were going in, helping districts change for two or three years and then the food services director would get a job at another district, and they wouldn’t be able to fill that position with someone who had scratch cook program experience,” she says. “There wasn’t someone below them to move up.”

Primer, who strives to prepare at least half of the district’s meals from scratch, had worked with the Chef Ann Foundation before and saw HSFP as offering two advantages at once: it added to the number of available on-deck hands and it helped cut a path toward a more skilled workforce overall.

“If we really want to talk about moving the needle of school food, elevating our programs, we definitely need that skilled labor,” says Primer.

While HSFP teaches the basics of school food—portion size, nutritional guidelines, procurement—its main mission is to create a pipeline of cooks ready to tackle the daunting transition of moving hundreds, maybe thousands, of meals a day from mostly pre-packaged food to scratch cooking using as many fresh ingredients as possible.