Follow BeltwayBlips on Twitter
The O'Brien Retort: Hope For A "Secretary Of Food"?
Open Left - Front Page —
... KAT: Progressive foodies have been vigorously debating the "who should be Obama's Secretary of Agriculture?" question for several months now. There's been a movement to draft Michael Pollan, who has no interest in the job, and a letter to President-elect Obama, signed by nearly ninety luminaries in the good food movement galaxy, imploring him to buck the Big Ag/biotech brigade in favor of some more sustainably-minded candidates. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof weighed in on the subject this week with ...
Obama Transition Listening To Progressive Pressure
Open Left - Front Page —
... , Kerry Trueman notes that, following a letter signed by ninety experts and forty-thousand activists was sent to the Obama transition team on his Secretary of Agriculture options, ...
Food Activists Take Bottom-Up Politics Seriously
Daily Kos —
... to areas under the purview of USDA: food assistance, food security, organic standards, meat and poultry safety, sustainable production. Someone should be heading the agency who is interest[ed] in pursuing more just and sustainable goals. It's also apparently caught the eye of Barack Obama's transition team. How this grassroots/netroots effort will pan out is anybody's guess. But another 50,000 names couldn't hurt. I urge you to read and sign. Here is Dave Murphy's petition. And here are brief biographies of the six people he has suggested for ...
Examining the New Secretary of Agriculture, Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack
MoJo Blog Posts: mojo —
... food producers instead of one for food consumers, meaning that food policy decisions will be made with the needs of agribusiness first and the needs of low-income kids with little access to healthy food options second. (If you don't know why those two things are at odds, you haven't been listening to Michael Pollan.) It is because a conventional pick like Vilsack likely means the continuation of policies that harm both eaters and small farmers that food activists were passing around a petition to get a reformer the job. Alas, it didn't happen. ...
Daily Digest: Barney, Building Blocks, and the Burgeoning Food Movement
techPresident —
... "We, the undersigned, believe that a healthy food system is necessary to meet the urgent challenges of our time." Thus begins the declaration of Food Democracy Now, a new online movement aimed at creating a sustainable food future in the United States. Signed by food and environmental luminaries like Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, Bill McKibben, and Marion Nestle, the loosely-knit group's mission may find some footing now that Obama has selected Tom Vilsack to serve as ...
Maybe Vilsack Won't Suck?
Open Left - Front Page —
... OK, so it's pretty easy to villify Vilsack. He doesn't have much in common with the dream candidates endorsed by the more than 57,000 folks who signed on to the Food Democracy Now! petition launched by activist David Murphy, who, ...
Dan Imhoff: Ripe for Change
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com —
... In December, the Iowa-based group Food Democracy Now drafted a letter to the Obama Transition Team, recommending potential candidates for the vacant Secretary of Agriculture position. Within a week, that letter gained over 60,000 signatures. A core group of sustainable food advocates talked with the Obama Transition Team in an attempt to express the severity and urgency of a potential food system meltdown, but it remains to be seen if that testimony will actually be taken seriously. In the mean time, the New York Times ran a full-page ...
Daily Digest: CTO Watch -- The Rising Stock of California PhDs
techPresident —
... Bill Richardson as Obama's Commerce Secretary pick. Food Democracy Now, an online effort backed by folks like Michael Pollan and Alice Waters, isn't waiting around to see how the top job shakes out, though. They're circulating a list of a dozen possible USDA undersecretaries they see as suitably committed to a sustainable food future. ...
Sustainable Chefs for Obama
Hit & Run —
... Perhaps the Chefs Collaborative's effusions were provoked by the nomination of Kathleen Merrigan as deputy secretary of agriculture. As a staffer for Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Merrigan drafted the legislation that eventually resulted in the establishment of the national organic program. Certainly, the progressive blogosphere is thrilled with Merrigan's nomination. In addition, the Obama administration's new budget "proposes increased funding to enhance the National Organic Program through additional education and outreach, as well as enforcement to maintain labeling ...
Let's Ask Marion: Should We Be Merry About Merrigan?
Open Left - Front Page —
... feature, with a click of her mouse EatingLiberally's kat corners Dr. Marion Nestle, NYU professor of nutrition and author of Pet Food Politics, What to Eat and Food Politics:)
Kat: A near-collective cheer rose up from the progressive foodie blogosphere
on Monday (here, here, here, here, and here) at the news that President Obama has nominated Kathleen Merrigan, one of Food Democracy Now's "Sustainable Dozen," to serve as Deputy Secretary at the USDA. Obama ...
Food Safety Working Group: Will Obama Close the Revolving Door?
Firedoglake —
... The quality of the two excellent physicians selected as FDA #1 and #2, his public description of the increasingly severe failures to fund and protect food safety, and his selection of the truly outstanding Kathleen Merrigan as ...
Pro Food: Slow Food With an Entrepreneurial Twist
Commondreams.org Views —
... that produce our food. We work to inspire a transformation in food policy, production practices and market forces so that they ensure equity, sustainability and pleasure in the food we eat. Slow Food USA recently started addressing food policy issues in earnest, sparked by Slow Food Nation, its first national convention held last fall in San Francisco. Policy-making efforts have been spearheaded by other organizations, working just as diligently to remake our food system, including Food Democracy Now! , ...
