PETA asks Obama team to form food council, move school lunch
Cathy
PETA asks Obama team to form food council, move school lunch
By Janie Gabbett on 12/24/2008
Meating Place.com
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is asking the Obama
administration to form a National Food Policy Council and to move food
entitlement programs out of USDA's jurisdiction.
In a letter to President-elect Barack Obama's transition team head John
Podesta, PETA suggested the proposed council operate like the National
Economic Council in composition and process to affect food policy.
PETA also asked that both the National School Lunch and the Women,
Infants and Children food programs be administered by the Department of
Health and Human Services instead of USDA.
"USDA consistently spends more than twice as much money on cholesterol-
and fat-laden meat and dairy products for the school lunch program as it
does on healthier plant-based foods," the animal activist group charged.
PETA cited two reports released in April to bolster its charge that "our
current method of devising food policy is broken." One report was the
PEW Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production titled "Putting Meat
on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America." The other
was "CAFOs Uncovered: The Untold Costs of Confined Animal Feeding
Operations" by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
In the letter, PETA cited California voters passing "Proposition 2" in
November, which bans certain poultry and hog confinement practices.
Animal agriculture advocates have warned that its passage would empower
animal activists. (See Meat industry faces emboldened animal rights
lobby next year on Meatingplace.com, Dec. 10, 2008.)