US farm bill unlikely to aid good nutrition

[nosmokes]

What really gripes my ass in this article is Rep Collin PetersonD-MN Chair of the House Ag Cmmte where he's quoted as saying organic producers are doing just fine, they don't need any more federal help, and if people are dumb enough to spen all that extra money on organic food then that's up to them. Now this might get tossed off the board. I sincerely hope not, but I hafta say it. With Democrats like this sonuvabitch who needs the GOPosse? This is the same mofowho wants to exempt CAFOs from CERCLA(superfund)legislation because according to him huge lagoons of of pig/cattle/chicken(fed on GMO feedstock) manure laced w/ antibiotics and artiicial hormones doesn't qualify as Toxic Waste.
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original-financialtimes

US farm bill unlikely to aid good nutrition


By Alan Beattie
Updated: 8:13 p.m. PT Oct 17, 2007

Even deep in the US's healthy eating heartland, it is clear how decades of farm subsidies have affected what America eats.

Last year at Google's brand-new California headquarters, a wave of media interest surrounded the opening of Cafe 150, a restaurant offering fresh, healthy, high-quality food sourced from within a 150-mile radius. But just across Highway 101 in the affluent college town of Palo Alto is the Driftwood Deli, a roadside grocery and fresh-made sandwich store. Its $4 (€2.81, £1.96) lattes may come with a wrapper advertising The Economist magazine, but the displays of fresh fruit and nuts in the store are massively outweighed by racks of corn chips and popcorn, not to mention snack foods stuffed with the high-fructose corn syrup that is the sweetener of choice for America's processed food.

As the rewriting of the "farm bill" - the five-year agricultural subsidy programme - nears its endgame in the US Senate, proponents of reform have tried to highlight the effect of the subsidies on American health. Their efforts seem likely to have little impact.

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complete article here