[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
H.R. 2297, WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE ON FOOD AND NUTRITION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RULES AND
ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSE
of the
COMMITTEE ON RULES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MONDAY, MAY 18, 2009
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COMMITTEE ON RULES
LOUISE McINTOSH SLAUGHTER, New York, Chair
JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts, DAVID DREIER, California, Ranking
Vice Chair Member
ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART, Florida
DORIS O. MATSUI, California PETE SESSIONS, Texas
DENNIS A. CARDOZA, California VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina
MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
JARED POLIS, Colorado
Muftiah McCartin, Staff Director
Hugh Nathanial Halpern, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Process
ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida, Chairman
DENNIS A. CARDOZA, California LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART, Florida,
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine Ranking Member
JARED POLIS, Colorado DAVID DREIER, California
LOUISE McINTOSH SLAUGHTER, New York
Lale Mamaux, Staff Director
Cesar Gonzalez, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of the House
JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts, Chairman
DORIS O. MATSUI, California PETE SESSIONS, Texas, Ranking
MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York Member
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina
LOUISE McINTOSH SLAUGHTER, New York
Keith L. Stern, Staff Director
Keagan Lenihan, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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May 18, 2009
Page
Opening Statements:
Hon. James P. McGovern, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Massachusetts and Chair of the Subcommittee on
Rules and Organization..................................... 1
Hon. Pete Sessions, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Texas and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on
Rules and Organization..................................... 3
Prepared statement........................................... 5
Hon. Michael Arcuri, a Representative in Congress from the
State of New York.......................................... 6
Hon. Virginia Foxx, a Representative in Congress from the
State of North Carolina.................................... 6
Witness Testimony:
Hon. Jo Ann Emerson, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Missouri.......................................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 9
Reverend David Beckmann, President, Bread for the World...... 18
Prepared statement........................................... 19
Mr. Robert Egger, President, D.C. Central Kitchen............ 25
Prepared statement........................................... 28
Ms. Nicole R. Robinson, Director of Corporate Community
Involvement, Kraft Foods................................... 30
Prepared statement........................................... 31
Additional Materials Submitted for the Record:
Curriculum Vitae and Truth in Testimony Forms for Witnesses
Testifying Before the Committee (where applicable)......... 36
Letter from Ms. Vicki Escarra, President and CEO of Feeding
America, to Representatives James McGovern and Jo Ann
Emerson, dated May 9, 2009................................. 44
Letter from Ms. Christine A. Poward, Executive Director of
the Association of Nutrition Services Agencies, to
Representative James McGovern, dated May 12, 2009.......... 47
Letter from the Reverend Larry Snyder, President of the
Catholic Charities USA, to Representative James McGovern,
dated May 12, 2009......................................... 49
Letter from Ms. Margaret Saunders, President, and the
Reverend Douglas A. Greenaway, Executive Director of the
National WIC Association, to Representative James McGovern,
dated May 12, 2009......................................... 51
Letter from Mr. Max Finberg, Director of the Alliance to End
Hunger, to Representative James McGovern, dated May 13,
2009....................................................... 53
Letter from Mr. Gary A. Davis, CEO of East Side Entrees, to
Representative James McGovern, dated May 13, 2009.......... 56
Letter from Ms. Karen Pearl, President and CEO of God's Love
We Deliver, to Representative James McGovern, dated May 13,
2009....................................................... 58
Letter from Mr. Hadar Susskind, Vice President and Washington
Director for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, to
Representative James McGovern, dated May 13, 2009.......... 60
Letter from Mr. David Richart, Executive Director of Lifelong
AIDS Alliance, to Representative James McGovern, dated May
13, 2009................................................... 63
Letter from Mr. Joel Berg, Executive Director of the New York
City Coalition against Hunger, to Representative James
McGovern, dated May 13, 2009............................... 65
Letter from Mr. Kevin Winge, Executive Director for Open Arms
of Minnesota, to Representative James McGovern, dated May
13, 2009................................................... 67
Letter from Ms. Deborah R. Hinde, President and CEO to Vital
Bridges, to Representative James McGovern, dated May 13,
2009....................................................... 69
Letter from Mr. Greg Lukeman, Executive Director of Food
Outreach Inc., to Representative James McGovern, dated May
14, 2009................................................... 71
Letter from Mr. James D. Weill, President of Food Research
and Action Center, to Representative James McGovern, dated
May 14, 2009............................................... 73
Letter from Ms. Erin Pulling, Executive Director of Project
Angel Heart, to Representative James McGovern, dated May
14, 2009................................................... 75
Letter from Ms. Ellen Parker, Executive Director of Project
Bread--the Walk for Hunger, to Representative James
McGovern, dated May 14, 2009............................... 77
Letter from Ms. Pat Nicklin, Managing Director of Share Our
Strength, to Representative James McGovern, dated May 14,
2009....................................................... 79
Letter from Mr. Robert Greenstein, Executive Director of the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, to Representative
James McGovern, dated May 15, 2009......................... 81
Letter from Mr. John T. Evers, Executive Director of the Food
Bank Association of New York State, to Representative James
McGovern, dated May 15, 2009............................... 83
Letter from Mr. Clyde W. Fitzgerald, Jr., Executive Director
of Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina, to
Representative James McGovern, dated May 15, 2009.......... 85
Letter from Dr. Keith Schildt, President, and Mr. Bob
Blancato, Executive Director, of the National Association
of Nutrition and Aging Services Programs (NANASP), to the
Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee on Rules and
Organization of the House, dated May 15, 2009.............. 87
Letter from Mr. Bill Ayres, Co-Founder and Executive Director
of World Hunger Year, Inc., to Mr. Keith L. Stern,
Subcommittee Staff Director, dated May 15, 2009............ 90
Letter from Ms. Deborah Weinstein, Executive Director of the
Coalition on Human Needs, to Representative James McGovern,
dated May 18, 2009......................................... 92
Letter from Ms. Pamela Baily, President and CEO of Grocery
Manufacturers Association, to Representative James
McGovern, dated May 18, 2009............................... 94
Letter from Dr. H. Eric Schokman, President of Mazon: A
Jewish Response to Hunger, dated May 18, 2009.............. 96
Letter from Mr. Roger Johnson, President of the National
Farmers Union, to Representatives James McGovern and Jo Ann
Emerson, dated May 18, 2009................................ 98
Letter from Ms. Kelly D. Johnson, Vice President Government
Affairs of Campbell Soup Company, to Representative James
McGovern, dated May 21, 2009............................... 100
Letter from Mr. Paul Downey, President of the California
Nutrition Coalition, to the Chairman and Members of the
Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of the House........ 103
Letter from Mr. Edward M. Cooney, Executive Director of the
Congressional Hunger Center................................ 106
Letter from the Honorable Dan Glickman, Former Secretary of
Agriculture and Former Member of Congress from Kansas, to
Representative James McGovern.............................. 108
The Washington Times Op-Ed by George McGovern and Bob Dole,
entitled ``Obesity Conference Call,'' March 27, 2009....... 110
ORIGINAL JURISDICTION HEARING ON H.R. 2297, WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE ON
FOOD AND NUTRITION
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MONDAY, MAY 18, 2009
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Rules and
Organization of the House,
Committee on Rules,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 3 p.m., in Room
H-313, The Capitol, Hon. James P. McGovern [chairman of the
subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives McGovern, Arcuri, Sessions and
Foxx.
OPENING STATEMENTS
Mr. McGovern. The Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of
the House will come to order.
Let me begin by welcoming everyone to this original
jurisdiction hearing on H.R. 2297, calling for a White House
Conference on Food and Nutrition.
I want to thank all of the witnesses for taking the time
out of their busy schedule to take part in this hearing. I also
want to thank members of this subcommittee, and specifically
the Ranking Member Mr. Sessions, for working on and
participating in this hearing.
To my colleagues of the subcommittee, please feel free to
make some brief opening statements, if you like. Following any
opening statements, we will hear from our first witness, the
Honorable Jo Ann Emerson from Missouri. After her statement, we
will proceed to questions and then go to the second panel.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES P. MCGOVERN, A REPRESENTATIVE
IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETS AND CHAIR OF THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RULES AND ORGANIZATION
Many of you know that ending hunger is one of my passions.
I have spoken about it numerous times in this committee and on
the House floor, and I firmly believe that we have the food and
the means to end hunger in America, but we haven't found the
political will to do so.
While I believe that hunger is a political condition, it is
not a partisan one. A hungry child does not think about
Republican or Democratic politics, only about where their next
meal will come from. That is why, along with my friend and
colleague Jo Ann Emerson, I introduced legislation calling for
a White House Conference on Food and Nutrition.
The last, in fact the only time, a White House Conference
on Hunger was held was in 1969 when President Richard Nixon
convened a similar conference to address these issues. The
result was a dramatic improvement in the Federal safety net
program, food stamps, WIC and school meals.
No longer do we have the sunken eyes and swollen bellies
that are still common in famine-plagued areas around the globe.
Yet the fact is that hunger still exists in the United States.
The face of hunger changed after that conference, yet 40 years
later, according to the latest USDA data, more than 36 million
people living in this country, the United States of America,
still went hungry in 2007.
The rate of very low food security among children and
seniors, USDA's way of saying the hungriest in this country,
rose 60 percent and 26 percent respectively over the previous
year. This means there were over 690,000 very hungry kids in
America in 2007 and over 780,000 very hungry seniors. That
simply is unconscionable in 2009.
The Federal anti-hunger safety net is good, but is an
imperfect system. Food stamps, now called SNAP, helps families
put food on the table. The improvements included in the farm
bill and recovery package greatly improved the purchasing power
of food stamps, yet that benefit is still inadequate for a
variety of reasons. School meals are provided, yet not every
child who needs a meal gets one, nor are these meals as
nutritious as they should be. And while hunger doesn't take a
summer break, there are millions of kids who receive a free
meal during the school year, but don't have access to a meal
during the summer.
The Federal safety net is just that, a safety net. The
Federal programs are critical, but for too long we have relied
too heavily on food banks and food pantries. The problems
facing these organizations are twofold: an increasingly
hungrier population, more middle-income families are relying on
help from these groups than in recent years, and fewer monetary
and food donations are coming in. This is attributable to a
faltering economy and the resulting increase in demand.
There is clearly a connection between hunger, the
availability of good, nutritious food and the livelihoods of
the American people. The school lunch program began as a way to
properly feed our Nation's children so they would be ready to
fight in World War II. We created the WIC program in order to
help low-income pregnant mothers and infants receive proper
nutrition in order to physically and mentally develop and grow.
We know that hunger has direct impacts on the education and
health of our children. The same is true with our seniors. It
is critical that senior citizens, many who live on fixed
income, receive proper nutrition. Without good, healthy food,
seniors will face a myriad of health problems that are easily
preventable. A lack of nutritious food will also exacerbate
existing medical conditions.
That brings us back to the need for Presidential
leadership. For too long we have relied on an incomplete
Federal and private response to the issue of hunger in this
country. What we need is a new approach to the problem, someone
who will not only highlight to the country that there are still
hungry people in America, but someone who will ask the right
questions: Who are the hungry; who is at risk of hunger in the
near future; is there a safety net doing the job; where are the
gaps in the safety net; how nutritious is the available food;
who is falling through the cracks; and simply, how do we end
hunger in America? How is the obesity crisis connected to food
security? How do we increase people's purchasing power so they
can afford to buy nutritious food? How do we get beyond simply
giving people food? How do we make food banks and food
pantries, some of these safety net programs, obsolete?
As I said at the beginning of this year, hunger is a
political, not a partisan, connection. I believe that President
Bush should have convened this conference when he was in
office, and now I believe that President Obama should do it.
Now I will recognize our subcommittee Ranking Member Mr.
Sessions, if he has any opening remarks, and anybody else on
the committee.
Mr. McGovern. Mr. Sessions.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. PETE SESSIONS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS AND RANKING MEMBER OF THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RULES AND ORGANIZATION
Mr. Sessions. Mr. Chairman, thank you so very much.
Mr. Chairman, just yesterday at church I was reminded that
my church, at the time of Katrina, provided 1 million pounds of
food, 1 million man hours and $1 million to help out Katrina
victims when they came to Dallas, Texas. We did the things we
felt like needed to be done because the need existed there.
My church also, on a regular basis, participates with an
organization called Habitat for Humanity, and while this has
very little to do with food, it has a lot to do with housing. I
think they go together. My church has a program called
Carpenters for Christ, and we are number three in the world as
an organization in providing homes in Dallas, Texas.
So I believe that charity does begin at home. I believe the
story we need to tell is a story that can be told all across
this country and individual communities, with the thought and
the hope that individual communities step up and do what they
should do.
Mr. Chairman, I will ask unanimous consent for a statement
of mine to be placed in the record.
Mr. McGovern. Without objection.
Mr. Sessions. With that said, I will consume just a few
minutes to give you my brief thoughts.
I would like to thank Chairman McGovern for holding this
hearing today. I would also like to thank Congresswoman Jo Ann
Emerson, a dear friend of mine, for being on this first panel.
Thanks as well to Robert Egger, president of the D.C.
Central Kitchen; David Beckmann from Bread for the World;
Nicole Robinson with Kraft Foods Global, for testifying on this
important issue of food and nutrition.
In 2007, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that
36.2 million people in the United States were living in
households considered to be food insecure. Texas, my home
State, is one of the highest food-insecure States in the
Nation, and without the appropriate nutrients, there could be
harmful effects to learning, development, productivity,
physical and psychological health, and family life.
Generally, Americans suffer from a less severe form of
malnutrition than those around the globe. This is due to the
generosity of the American public. American companies provide a
proactive role in fighting hunger through charitable donations,
contributions, trade policies and government safety net
programs.
One example is the Communities Foundation of Texas, a
Dallas-based organization, and they have been a partner with
donors for raising the quality of life in my community for over
50 years. Since 1953, more than $1 billion in grants have been
made by the Dallas-based foundation. Cumulative for the fiscal
year 2007 and fiscal year 2008 year, they have awarded $245,155
in grants directly to food banks and $284,964 in grants to
support other hunger-relief programs.
On a national level, Americans and our Nation's companies
are assisting to end hunger and malnutrition by joining
organizations like Feeding America. Today we have the pleasure
of hearing from the Nicole Robinson from Kraft Foods Global,
one of the manufacturing partners for this organization.
Feeding America, the Nation's leading domestic hunger-
relief charity, assists through a nationwide network of member
food banks fighting to end hunger. They provide food assistance
to more than 25 million low-income people in the United States,
supplying more than 200 food banks throughout the 50 States,
the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Over 2 billion pounds
of food and grocery products are donated annually. I think that
is a pretty good way to help out.
ConAgra Foods, which has contributed to Feeding America for
over 15 years, also has a foundation that is leading the charge
to raise awareness of the 12 million children that go hungry,
and pursue sustained solutions to end child hunger. The
foundation is committed to building a community of people who
are passionate about ensuring access to the food and facts that
they need to eat nutritiously, live balanced lifestyles, and
excel in school and life.
Providing fair trade policies not only assists with the
food and hunger issues plaguing America today, but also reaches
those outside the United States that suffer from malnutrition
and starvation. I appreciate the president of Bread for the
World, David Beckmann, for testifying in front of us today, and
I hope he discusses some of the trade and subsidy policies that
assist in the goal of ending global hunger and any policies
that inhibit that goal.
With charitable donations from American businesses and
individuals, fair trade opportunities, education and awareness
and government safety nets, I am certain that we can ensure
that every American has the appropriate nutrients for a healthy
life.
I do want to thank you again, Mr. Chairman, not only for
holding this important hearing, but I look forward to working
with you and my other colleagues who are here today at this
very important hearing. I want to thank each of those that are
here today with the thought that we can do better.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sessions follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Pete Sessions, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Texas
Good afternoon. I would like to thank Chairman McGovern for holding
this hearing. I would also like to thank Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson
and our second panel of expert witnesses for testifying here today on
the extremely important issue of food and nutrition.
In 2007, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that 36.2
million people in the United States were living in households
considered to be food insecure. Of these 36.2 million about 12 million
were children. Texas is one of the highest food insecurity states in
America. Malnutrition has devastating effects for both the mental and
physical capacity of children who receive inadequate nutrition. Without
the appropriate nutrients, there could be harmful effects to learning,
development, productivity, physical and psychological health and family
life.
Generally, Americans suffer from a less severe form of malnutrition
than those around the globe. This is due to the generosity of the
American public, American companies that provide a proactive role in
fighting hunger, trade policies and government safety net programs. A
good example in my district is Dean Foods, a Dallas based company,
which in 2006 provided a $1.25 million gift to Children's Hospital in
Dallas to create the Dean Foods L.E.A.N Families Program. This is a 12-
week program administered through the hospital's nutrition department
that provides patients and their families intense weight-management
therapy while encouraging healthy habits throughout life.
Our nation's grocery manufacturers are assisting to ensure their
customers live healthier lives by providing tools to help make better
food choices and offering a variety of affordable, nutritious products.
Safeway has created FoodFlex, a free online nutritional tool that
allows Safeway shoppers to receive a nutritional snapshot of their
grocery purchases, benchmark their nutritional performance against USDA
guidelines, identify food alternatives and create a personalized
shopping list to achieve their nutritional goals.
The Communities Foundation of Texas (CFT), another Dallas based
organization, has been a partner with donors for raising the quality of
life in my community for over 50 years. Since 1953, more than $1
billion in grants have been made by the Dallas-based foundation. It has
grown along with North Texas to become one of the largest community
foundations in the nation. Cumulatively, for the FY07 and FY08, CFT
awarded $245,155 in grants directly to food banks and $284,964 in
grants to support other hunger relief programs.
On a national level Americans and our nation's companies are
assisting to end hunger and malnutrition by joining organizations like
Feeding America. Today, we have the pleasure of hearing from Nicole
Robinson from Kraft Foods Global, one of the manufacturing partners for
this organization. Feeding America, the nation's leading domestic
hunger-relief charity, assists through a nationwide network of member
food banks fighting to end hunger. They provide food assistance to more
than 25 million low-income people in the U.S., supplying more than 200
food banks throughout the 50 states, the District of Columbia and
Puerto Rico. Over 2 billion pounds of food and grocery products are
donated annually.
General Mills is another private company that has directed product
donations to Feeding America for over 30 years. General Mills is
consistently ranked among the top ten contributors of food in the
United States. During fiscal 2008, General Mills donated over $18
million in products to Feeding America. Organizations like this would
not exist without the generous donations and contributions from private
business.
ConAgra Foods, which has contributed to Feeding America for over 15
years, also has a Foundation that is leading the charge to raise
awareness of these 12 million children in food insecure households and
pursue sustainable solutions to end child hunger. The ConAgra Foods
Foundation is committed to building a community of people who are
passionate about ensuring that America's children have access to the
food and facts they need to eat nutritiously, live balanced lifestyles,
and excel in school and life. While one in every eight children in
America doesn't know where their next meal will come from, we also have
to recognize that one in every five children are obese. We need to
ensure that not only do our children have food, but they get the
appropriate nutrients to live long and healthy lives.
Providing fair trade policies not only assists with the food and
hunger issues plaguing Americans today, but also reaches those outside
the U.S. who suffer from malnutrition and starvation. I appreciate the
President of Bread for the World, David Beckmann, for testifying in
front of us today, and I hope he discusses some of the current trade
and subsidy policies that assist in the goal of ending hunger and any
policies that inhibit that goal.
I recognize the importance of providing quality nutrients to all
Americans, whether they are children, adults or seniors. America has
the necessary resources to ensure that no one goes hungry. Through
charitable giving, the Giving USA Foundation estimated in 2008 that
$29.64 billion was donated for ``human services.'' While this does not
only represent food and nutrition, it is a strong testament that this
is a generous nation that wants to ensure a successful future for all
Americans. It is extremely important that Congress does everything in
its power to protect and encourage charitable giving from individuals
and companies.
With charitable donations from American businesses and individuals,
fair trade opportunities and government safety nets, I am certain that
we can ensure that every American has the appropriate nutrients for a
healthy life.
I want to thank Chairman McGovern again for holding this important
hearing and I look forward to working with him and all my colleagues on
the Rules Committee to ensure that no American goes hungry. Thank you.
Mr. McGovern. I thank the gentleman for his comments.
We are joined by Mr. Arcuri and Dr. Foxx.
Mr. Arcuri.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL ARCURI, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK
Mr. Arcuri. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for your
work on hunger issues. I commend you for your tireless work on
this critically important issue.
Skyrocketing health care and food costs combined with
rising unemployment cause many Americans to go without food.
That is an absolutely unacceptable situation in the most
prosperous country in the world. In my district in upstate New
York, unemployment numbers are alarming. There are two counties
where they actually exceed 10 percent and more, and more
families are struggling to make ends meet.
I commend you, Chairman McGovern, for your working to
address hunger issues through H.R. 2297. A White House
Conference on Food and Nutrition would be an invaluable tool in
the fight against hunger in this country. I think the last one
was held about 40 years ago----
Mr. McGovern. 1969.
Mr. Arcuri [continuing]. When President Nixon was in the
White House. I think that is far too long. I think it is high
time that we do it again. Certainly we can learn from some of
the things that we did right and certainly some of the things
we did wrong, but I think it is high time we do that.
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses today who have
been on the front line of hunger issues.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIRGINIA FOXX, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF VIRGINIA
Mr. McGovern. Dr. Foxx.
Dr. Foxx. I will make my comments very brief, but I, too,
would commend you and Congresswoman Emerson for your passion
for this and commitment to this issue, and would tell you that
my church, my community, all communities in my district, also
work on food drives and help the food pantries in our area and
have done a lot when crisis times have come in our area. I look
forward to the hearing, and I want to thank all of the folks
here today.
Mr. McGovern. Thank you very much.
I am very proud to introduce our first witness, the
Honorable Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri, who has been a powerful
advocate for all initiatives to end hunger.
As I said at the beginning, this is not a partisan issue.
Hunger knows no politics. But Congresswoman Emerson has been
out there on the front line fighting to raise awareness and to
get things done, and she has been pretty successful over the
years.
I am happy she is here, and I am honored she is a cosponsor
on this bill. I now yield to the Honorable Congresswoman Jo Ann
Emerson.
WITNESS TESTIMONY
STATEMENT OF HON. JO ANN EMERSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI
Mrs. Emerson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished
members of the committee. I really appreciate the opportunity
to appear before you today and discuss the proposed White House
Food and Nutrition Conference and H.R. 2297. Let me also thank
the Chairman for the tremendous leadership he has shown on this
issue for so many years. I feel certain that one of these days
soon we will solve this crisis.
I was very pleased to hear Mr. Sessions talk about the
incredible generosity of companies like Kraft Foods and the
private sector, whether it is Wal-Mart or a lot of different
food service organizations, who give a lot of donations for our
food banks and the like, and, working together with the faith-
based organizations like Bread for the World and Feeding
America and others, have made an enormous difference, as have
our safety nets provided by the government through SNAP,
through the Commodity Supplemental Food Program and the like.
But it is still a cold, hard fact that in spite of all of
that, in spite of the generosity, that hunger still exists in
America to the numbers that both you, Chairman McGovern, and
Mr. Sessions indicated: 36.2 million Americans live in food-
insecure households--this is back in 2007, which are probably
the most recent numbers--23.8 million of whom were adults and
12.4 million who were children. And the percent of households
who experience hunger and the number who are forced to make
really, really difficult choices between necessities to avoid
hunger had all increased over the past decade, even before
unemployment brought about the current economic crisis.
I will tell you that in my home district of 28 counties,
the 20th poorest congressional district in America, we have
more food banks with little or no food to give out because of
this added stress with the newly unemployed looking for every
opportunity to be able to feed their children. We have in
Missouri just incredible social workers who have been very
active, and we have one of the highest food stamp participation
rates in the country. But yet at the same time, we continue to
rank near the bottom in terms of food security and hungry
individuals.
So, clearly, in spite of all of this, we are not getting
the job done, and that is why it is so critically important to
figure it out, and that is why it is so important to have this
White House Food and Nutrition Conference that we are
requesting in H.R. 2297.
The Obama administration has also requested $5 million for
Hunger-Free Community grants in the fiscal year 2010 Department
of Agriculture budget. These grants will be used to support the
development and implementation of local strategies to fight
hunger. I also think this request recognizes the need for
increased organization and a fuller strategy at the local level
to make sure we are using all the tools available to fight
hunger, and we are also using them efficiently, because we have
so many people, we have a certain amount of resources, and it
is obviously incumbent upon us to find efficiencies so we can
feed more people.
Last week we had Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in
our Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, and I asked him
whether there was a comprehensive, government-wide strategy to
combat hunger. His answer actually led me to believe that there
was not one.
But just like the Hunger-Free Community grants can help
develop local strategies, I just feel very strongly that this
White House Food and Nutrition Conference that we call for in
H.R. 2297 can help us provide a strategy, a roadmap, if you
will, to help us reduce hunger rates in the United States.
Considering that we are the richest country in the world,
it is a public embarrassment that we would not be able to feed
every single person or find a means by which every single
person in this country would be fed three decent meals a day.
So, in essence, what our bill does is to require the
President of the United States to call a conference on food and
nutrition, and I think that such a conference holds great
potential, and it would serve several purposes, each of which
will fill an important need. I think that it will help us
identify viable solutions to end hunger; it will allow us to
review current programs and activities, identify what has
worked and what hasn't, and there are a lot; and importantly,
it would also, I think, increase the coordination between
government agencies and entities. We all know sometimes that
the right hand doesn't always talk to the left hand within the
government.
You know, interestingly, too, Mr. Chairman, last week while
we were doing some research, my staff was doing some research,
on domestic child hunger, Justin did a little Google search,
and one of the first articles to appear was from the Tehran
Times in Iran. I am personally less concerned that the Iranian
spin machine is highlighting hunger in the U.S., but I will
tell you the fact that that was one of the first hits we made,
the fact that more newspapers and media outlets in this country
are not focusing on hunger, is a shame. If they are looking for
news stories, this is one that is absolutely critical.
So, I am hopeful that this conference will actually move
hunger closer to the forefront of the national agenda and
hopefully produce positive results so that we perhaps don't
have the need for these types of news stories.
Ultimately, however, the most important message that should
be taken from H.R. 2297 is its first finding, as you said,
Chairman McGovern: Hunger and undernutrition are political
conditions that can be solved. Hunger knows no partisanship.
The quicker that Congress and the administration fully accept
this statement and the responsibility that accompanies it, the
quicker we can have an America where no child suffers from
hunger, where no student must suppress hunger pains to study,
where no adult must sacrifice for their child, and no senior
must choose between food and medicine.
So, thank you all for your time. I urge your support for
H.R. 2297. I am happy to answer any questions you might have.
Mr. McGovern. Thank you very much for being here.
[The prepared statement of Mrs. Emerson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Jo Ann Emerson, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Missouri
Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you
for the opportunity to appear before you today and discuss the proposed
White House Food and Nutrition Conference in H.R. 2297. I appreciate
the leadership being shown by the Chairman and this committee on an
issue that is near and dear to my heart--hunger.
It is a cold fact of life in America that hunger exists. In 2007,
36.2 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 23.8 million
adults and 12.4 million children. The percent of households who
experience hunger and the number who are forced to make difficult
choices between necessities to avoid hunger had all increased over the
past decade even before the rise in unemployment brought about by the
current economic crisis. In Missouri, while we have very able and
active social workers and one of the highest participation rates among
food stamp eligible individuals, we continue to rank near the bottom in
terms of food security and hungry individuals. Clearly, what we are
doing is not solving the problem.
The Obama Administration has requested $5 million for Hunger-Free
Community Grants in the FY2010 Department of Agriculture budget. These
grants can be used to support the development and implementation of
local strategies to fight hunger. This request, I believe, recognizes
the need for increased organization and a fuller strategy on the local
level to ensure that all the tools available to fight hunger are being
used, and used efficiently. Last week I had the opportunity to ask the
Secretary of Agriculture during an Agriculture Appropriations hearing
if there was a comprehensive government-wide strategy to combat hunger.
His answer led me to strongly believe one does not exist. Just like the
Hunger-Free Communities Grants can help develop local strategies, the
White House Food and Nutrition Conference called for in H.R. 2297 can
help provide a strategy to begin reducing hunger rates in the United
States.
H.R. 2297 would require the President of the United States to call
a conference on food and nutrition. Such a conference holds great
potential and would serve several purposes, each of which filling an
important need. It has the potential to spur the identification of
viable solutions to end hunger; to review current programs and
activities, identifying what has worked and what hasn't; and,
importantly, the conference should increase coordination between
government entities.
Mr. Chairman, last week while researching domestic child hunger, my
staff started with a simple search of Google News, and one of the first
articles to appear was from the Tehran Times in Iran. Personally, I am
less concerned that the Iranian spin machine is highlighting hunger in
the U.S. and more concerned that fewer American papers have focused on
it. This conference will move hunger closer to the forefront of the
national agenda and, hopefully, produce positive results so we do not
have news stories like these at all.
Ultimately, however, the most important message that should be
taken from H.R. 2297 is its first finding: hunger and undernutrition
are political conditions that can be solved. The quicker Congress and
the Administration fully accept this statement, and the responsibility
that accompanies it, the quicker we can have an America where no child
suffers from hunger, where no student must suppress hunger pains to
study, where no adult must sacrifice for their child and no senior must
choose between food and medicine.
Thank you for your time today, and I urge your support for H.R.
2297.
Mr. McGovern. I feel like when I am questioning you, I am
kind of questioning myself.
Mrs. Emerson. Then I guess you don't need to ask me any
questions.
Mr. McGovern. I want to make clear here that people
sometimes will say, oh, another conference, another summit. Why
do we have so many summits and conferences? Does it really
change anything? Well, some don't, and some do. There is no
argument that the conference that was held in 1969 on this
issue raised awareness and resulted in action. So that is an
example of something that was achieved from a conference at the
White House.
Our point, I think, of wanting this to happen is not just
to have another reason to get together and talk about this
issue, but it is to get everybody who is working on this issue
in the same room and help coordinate one comprehensive plan so
we all know what we are doing, we all take our assignments and
can implement them.
As you pointed out in your statement, the issue of hunger
is addressed by multiple agencies, as it is by multiple
committees. Food stamps, or SNAP, is the Agriculture Committee
and USDA. School lunches, that is Education and Labor and USDA,
but also impact the Department of Education. There are programs
at DOD. There are numerous various health departments and
agencies that have had their fingers in the hunger issue in
some way or somehow, but they don't get together on a weekly
basis and talk. So you have duplication or triplication or
quadruplication, if that is a word, and in some cases you have
all areas of the population that fall through the cracks
because it is not coordinated properly.
So I think having the opportunity to get everybody in
government who is working on this in the room, and then people
in the nonprofit sector and in the private sector who are
working on this in a room, and let us figure out how we can
pool our resources more effectively and more efficiently and
end hunger, because I think one of the first issues is making
sure that everybody has enough to eat, and that the food they
eat is actually nutritious, because that results in other
problems. But the second part of the conversation needs to be
how do we move beyond that so populations are not relying on
the good will of churches or food banks or even government
programs? How do we increase people's purchasing power so they
can become more independent and not have to rely on charity or
on the safety net?
I think that is the issue that I want to be clear on, that
this is not just about a conference to talk about things, it is
not just a conference to figure out how to provide and
strengthen the safety net, it would even go beyond that. And I
think that you agree with me.
Mrs. Emerson. I do agree with you. One of the things that
is very frustrating--well, here is a perfect example. At the
Centers for Disease Control, not that they specifically have
anything to do with hunger, I am just going to use it as an
example, there are certain diseases, certain different--whether
it is breast cancer or whether it is cerebral palsy--actually
they don't do this for CP, it is something they should. They
actually do the surveillance so, you know, every single program
in every single city, every single doctor who has expertise in
this particular disease and all of the latest research, all you
do is click and find it. We do not have that information.
So in the State of Missouri, for example, we have Bread for
the World, we have all of these organizations, and we have a
SNAP program, and we have CFSP. We have lots of things. We have
a Boot Heel food bank. We have a St. Louis food bank. They sort
of work together peripherally, but not really. So a lot of
product might be going one place, and, as you say, nothing is
going somewhere else, and it is very disorganized.
So if this could be one time that we actually get it all
out there, organize it, I do think it would be much more
efficient, and it may end up at the end of the day costing the
taxpayers less money if we can simply be efficient. But when
the right hand and left hand don't know what they are doing,
and somebody in the Ag Department is working on the issue, or
somebody at the Department of Education or Labor is working on
the issue, I can assure you, they are not talking or
coordinating their efforts. That, to me, is just a waste.
Mr. McGovern. That is why I think we need to suggest to
Secretary Vilsack that it is important that there be this kind
of coordinated strategy, because it won't be solved just in the
Department of Agriculture.
President Obama made a pledge he wants to end childhood
hunger by 2015. That is a big task.
Mrs. Emerson. It is a big task, but I think it is
definitely doable if we are organized about it.
Mr. McGovern. But it is not going to just happen at the
Department of Agriculture; It is going to need more than just
the Department of Agriculture.
Just one final thing, and that is I think people also need
to appreciate the link between hunger and bad health. We are
talking about taking on health care reform, and the big issue
is how do you control health care costs? One of the best ways
to control health care costs is not get sick and not have
people end up with chronic diseases that will plague them for
the rest of their lives.
I toured the Boston Medical Center not too long ago. They
serve an underserved community, a very low-income community.
And the chief pediatrician there told me when kids come into
the emergency room with strep throat or the croup or with
something, that normally you would just give them medicine and
tell them to go home.
Kids who are hungry, kids who are food insecure end up
staying in the hospital for a day or two or more. The costs--
forget the moral implication of wanting to feed people--the
costs associated with that are phenomenal. Even the tie-in
between food insecurity and obesity, families that can't afford
nutritious food want to try to keep their kids just healthy, if
not quiet during the week, you end up buying stuff that is not
good for you. So we see this linkage, you know, which a lot of
people have a tough time connecting the dots here, but between
food insecurity, bad nutrition and obesity.
How many young kids who are obese will end up with diabetes
or will end up with high blood pressure or ultimately heart
disease, chronic conditions that will plague them for the rest
of their lives? Again, if you want to talk about controlling
health care costs, we can control those costs much more
effectively if we just make sure that these kids have good,
nutritious food. And for all the discussion going on in the
health care debate right now, a lot more needs to be dedicated
to what we are talking about here, food nutrition as well as
exercise.
It is incredibly important to make sure that people can
afford nutritious food; and even in school lunches that we are
giving kids, that we are giving nutritious foods. I have been
to school lunch programs that are phenomenal, where kids are
given choices, where there are salads, and there are healthy
options. And kids normally would like to take those options. I
have been to school feeding programs that are awful, where the
choices are all bad. I am going to tell you, you know, we need
to kind of get back to basics here and focus on some of these
issues.
Mrs. Emerson. I agree.
Mr. McGovern. Mr. Sessions.
Mr. Sessions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Jo Ann, I will admit I have not sat in on one of your
agriculture meetings in a long, long time, but I do know that
there is a discussion on a regular basis about exactly what we
are talking about, and I hope--without asking any questions, I
hope what will happen in this conference, too, is we really
look at the rules and regulations related to subsidies and the
other things we do to encourage or discourage food from being
grown.
Mrs. Emerson. Okay. I understand what you are saying.
Mr. Sessions. That is a whole other topic. That is not what
I am trying to say. You know more about the correlation and
relationships than we do, and I think you would argue with me
if we want to argue, and I am not trying to do that. There is
enough food; it is just where it goes, and I don't know the
facts of that.
Mrs. Emerson. Well, technically there should be enough
food. But keep in mind that there always needs to be a level
playing field when you are competing in trade matters, as you
well know, if you want to discuss the subsidy issue, which I
know you don't. However, there is enough food. There is enough
food on the one hand, but on the other hand, we have programs
like the SNAP program or the food stamp program. But keep in
mind the majority of recipients of food stamps are working
Americans. They are not nonworking Americans.
And then you have the TANF program, and that is for the
assistance to needy families. I am pleased they are finally
changing the menu on that, because, as Jim was saying, the
choices were all very high carbs, in my opinion very unhealthy
in many instances, but an absolutely critical program.
I hope we are able to get this coordination, and we will be
able to pass this bill out of the House simply because I think
at the end of the day, we will be able to solve the problem of
hunger in this country.
I did a mission trip down to Nicaragua, to rural Nicaragua,
a couple of years ago, and the worst of the poverty in my
district was nothing compared to what I saw there, where people
really literally had nothing and lived in a house that was made
out of black garbage bags. But, nonetheless, it still troubles
me that we would have 12 million-plus children in this country
who have no food, who go hungry, or who are hungry every day,
and so many millions of adults.
The churches have done so much, and the private companies
have done so much, but we are still not reaching everybody.
Hopefully we can figure out who those people are that we are
not reaching through a conference like this.
Mr. Sessions. That would be the second point that I really
want to debate, other than say with you I support this bill and
hope this happens, but that we look at what really works and
try to fill in the gaps where it is not working as opposed to
where it does work, so don't overlay certain areas. You would
be the first one to say to me, Pete, thanks a lot. But even
with the 1 million pounds or $1 million or 1 million volunteer
hours, even in that area there are still some gaps. Yet that we
recognize. I am talking about where there is success, I hope
you will let the success continue.
Mrs. Emerson. Oh, no. Listen, we have a lot of success.
There are a lot of issues in rural, because access is just
difficult in rural America, and you don't have the ability to
get to a grocery store where you can get really good choices.
Sometimes you have got like a little 7/Eleven or Quick Shop
place where it costs a dollar, or it was 99 cents at Quick Shop
for one banana at my Quick Shop I was at the other day. So that
is too expensive.
Anyway, hopefully we will come up with some good strategies
that help to solve this problem.
Mr. Sessions. Then the last point I would like to make, I
hope that there is some bit of work that a dietician would do;
in other words, when you come in with a food stamp purchase,
that you would understand that banana, even at $1, is more
worth it than maybe something else for a dollar. I am not
trying to engage in any argument.
Mrs. Emerson. No, I appreciate your support of this bill.
Keep in mind that the average food stamp recipient gets $3 a
day. I did a food stamp challenge for a week. I was out to
prove that you could eat nutritiously. But because it was my
husband and me, I actually had a tiny bit more money to spend
than just on myself. And I would say we ate 50 percent
nutritious. I could buy one big iceberg lettuce that I chopped
up and tried to expand as much as I could. And I bought one
tomato, and I bought a cucumber, and I bought a small onion,
and I bought a pack of chicken that was on sale.
Jim and I did this up at Safeway with coupons. It took me 2
hours. I had $33 to spend for 1 week. My husband was only doing
it for 4 days, and I was doing it for a week. I had $33 to
spend, and it took us 2 hours to shop because I kept having to
put things back.
Keep in mind, most people don't have--if you are working in
a factory, you don't necessarily have that kind of time. At
least I had the Safeway to go to. Out in some of my areas, we
don't have grocery stores like that. So one banana for $1, that
is one of my meals for the whole day.
But I think we have an opportunity here to really do good
things so that perhaps we will be less reliant on the need for
food stamps to supplement our other food budget that we have
personally.
Mr. McGovern. I lived on that food stamp budget along with
her. I relied mostly on lentils. I used to like them. I don't
like them anymore.
Mr. Sessions. That is a Doc Hastings-made product.
Mrs. Emerson. I love lentils, so I gave Jim some of my
chicken salad I made and took some of his lentils.
Mr. McGovern. Also one other point. Some people said food
stamps is a supplement, and it is supposed to be. But in this
economy, again, with fuel prices what they were and are, and
what the cost of living is in general, food stamp budgets turn
out not to be kind of a supplement to their income, it becomes
basically it.
The other thing I have noticed is when you go to grocery
stores, the lousier the food is, the cheaper it is. The better
and more nutritious the food is, the more expensive it is.
As Jo Ann mentioned, in some of these rural areas, we have
those little Quick Marts. Some people can't get to a bigger
supermarket. The same thing in the urban areas, too. We have a
lot of people who don't have transportation, a lot of elderly
people who have to rely on those little corner stores where
everything is inflated because they are small. I am glad the
stores exist, but the reality is that if you are on a fixed
income, and you don't have much money, and you are relying on
this food stamp benefit to basically get you through, you have
some really lousy choices.
But hopefully if we could all get in a room together, and I
invite the grocers in, too, how do we work together to get this
thing solved, because we all can put something into this, and
then maybe we might get this done. The frustration has been for
me is there is no plan.
If you ask anybody in government what is the plan to end
hunger in America, there is not one. We are going to increase
food stamps. Fine. That is not a plan to end hunger. Or we are
going to look at the nutrition of a school lunch program. We
need to do that. That doesn't end hunger. We are going to
expand charitable giving. That is great. It doesn't end the
problem. I think connecting this all together and saying, okay,
how do we pool our resources to do it?
Mr. Arcuri.
Mr. Arcuri. Thank you so much, Mrs. Emerson.
Just an observation that I had. I live in a city, a small
city, and there is a neighboring city that is very large, but
we are all in the same region, and there are a lot of very,
very small communities.
What I have seen is as the community food banks strive to
get more food, the big cities tend to reach out into the entire
areas and take food from stores that normally will give it, and
then it leaves the smaller communities more hard pressed to get
the donations for the food banks. So in my smaller cities, they
are constantly complaining because the nearby city that is much
larger has a bigger staff and is better able to get the food.
We see the smaller the community, the harder it is for the food
banks to get their food.
Have you noticed that?
Mrs. Emerson. Exactly. Exactly. The way the infrastructure
of our system works, I guess is a better way of putting it, let
us say the biggest donation of food would go to St. Louis, and
then it spreads out, because there is so much demand there. It
depends on whether you are getting the donations from some of
the stores or not. We are fortunate to have many Wal-Marts. So
even though the types of foods are perhaps changing a little
bit from what they used to be, we are having fewer items down
my way, which is in southeast and south central Missouri, so
then you have to pull from other directions.
The Boot Heel food bank, which is a central repository for
several of my counties, we have had some real challenges just
being able to get enough donations to make an adequate food
basket. You try to balance it out. Where we have had a lot of
trouble is with meats particularly. Sometimes you can get the
mac and cheese, but mac and cheese isn't good for you anyway.
It is going to help somebody stay full.
I don't know, but I think by having a discussion at a
national level, we can get this stuff figured out. But it is
tough.
Mr. Arcuri. I couldn't believe how many complaints I was
getting from my unit there, saying all of the stores that
normally give were saying that Syracuse already came in and the
bigger city, and we gave to them, so we don't have anything
left for the smaller communities. It sort of trickles down. So
I think the smaller community, the harder it is.
Mrs. Emerson. And even if you have the ability to spend
money at a store, sometimes it is even harder to get it in the
smaller communities. We don't have any kind of public
transportation system where I live. I don't know if you all do
up there. It is a challenge. But I appreciate what you are
saying.
Mr. Arcuri. Thank you very much.
Mr. McGovern. Dr. Foxx.
Dr. Foxx. Well, I have been sitting here debating whether I
should say anything at all today or not. There are probably few
people in Congress who grew up as poor as I did, so I
understand maybe better than all of you who are working at this
vicariously, the issue of having to provide food for yourself.
I think because my husband and I both come from that background
and have succeeded in a time when really the people in our area
mostly were extraordinarily poor, we have a somewhat different
idea about how people can be helped or should be helped.
Seriously, where I grew up, I grew up in the poorest county
in North Carolina at the time I was growing up, and basically
my husband has been providing for himself since he was 10 years
old because his father died, and his mother was totally
illiterate. Yet they managed.
There were no food stamp programs in those days, there were
no public help programs, yet the people in that area may not
have had the best nutrition, but they survived. Most of the
people that we know have succeeded pretty well, and the area
has changed a lot, but I think it is partly what has made both
of us very conservative and partly why we come at it from such
a different point of view.
I believe there is a need to help people who are extremely
poor and have no access to food, but I think that many times
government programs designed to help people have not done the
things that they ought to do, and that many times our
government itself through its policies have made things more
difficult for people. I think that we have in many cases forced
both parents to work because of high taxes. I think in many
cases, because of increased rules and regulations, we have
driven jobs overseas.
So I come at it from a point of view of allowing people to
do more for themselves so that they have the dignity of being
able to do those things.
My daughter grew up working. She worked as a cashier in a
grocery store. If she were here, she would tell you that made a
conservative out of her because she saw the tremendous abuse of
food stamps by people from working in a grocery store and had a
really big impact on her.
So, again, I support our need to do the kind of things that
we should do as a government and as a culture. I differ a
little bit with Mr. McGovern that I do think the role of the
churches is to help people in our communities who can't help
themselves. One of the reasons I support food banks a great
deal is because I see a great deal of community support for
them. So while I think there may be a good reason to have a
heightened focus on the issue, I would like to see more done in
the private sector rather than from the governmental sector.
Again, I have lived it. My husband has lived it. I have
lived on less than $1 a day, Jo Ann, not just to experiment,
but because I had to. People can do it and survive and even
thrive. And you know what? I am still very frugal as a result
of having lived that way.
Mrs. Emerson. That is certainly something that I can't say
that I have experienced before, but I do think that the point
is clear that we have a lot of different means with which to
try to attack this problem, and obviously the more that we can
do from the private sector, from the faith-based community--
because all of the churches in my hometown of Cape Girardeau,
for example, are involved in food bank-type efforts. Our
Ministerial Council in Cape Girardeau is quite good because my
minister happens to be the head of it, and for the Presbyterian
Church this is an important issue and one we are trying to work
on nationally.
However, I daresay there are other leaders in our
communities who ought to know exactly what is going on in the
community with regard to this just from the private sector
perspective, and there is not that coordination beyond just
what our ministerial alliance does.
So I think by having a conference like we want to have, it
at least allows us to focus. And as Jim said earlier, if
successful, it may well turn out that we can continue to
diminish or we can begin to diminish the governmental piece and
rely more on the private sector and the faith-based community.
I will say one thing, and this is interesting, and I think
I might have mentioned it to Jim once. Our public health
department in Wayne County, Missouri, which is one of my poorer
counties, actually works with their TANF recipients. They
actually challenged all of them to grow their own fruits and
vegetable garden. Now, fruits are a little tough to do. You can
do strawberries or blueberries, but other fruits are too
complicated, and we don't have that environment like you have
in Florida, for example, or Texas, where you can grow citrus.
But anyhow, it has been very, very important, and our
University of Missouri Extension Service actually worked hand
in hand with them as well. And so all of a sudden we have,
number one, all of these gardeners, and the Extension Service
gave them the seeds, everything, taught them how to take care
of the soil and to properly water and stuff. But they actually
taught them how to can, how to freeze, how to do all of this.
So it has been a great supplemental that didn't cost
anybody anything, other than the professionals within those
organizations, to even challenge TANF recipients. So we have
more fruit and vegetable gardens in Wayne County.
But other than me, there is nobody that talks about this in
my district, because I seem to be the only person other than
the TANF recipients who know about it, and they don't want to
tell anybody they are getting TANF because they are proud. It
is a last resort for them. And most of them are all single
mothers, I might add.
Anyway, but I do appreciate this, and you are a good
resource, Virginia, I think, when it comes to this issue. But
certainly it would be our hope that by being able to get
organized and coordinated and really know what is out there
should be one means by which--I mean, we should know this
before we then add just yet another Federal program or
whatever. So that is why I think this is absolutely critical.
Mr. McGovern. Let me just say before you can go, I want to
be clear, too, that what I am suggesting and I think what you
are suggesting by this conference is not simply ways how
government can do better, it is how we can work together with
the private sector and the nonprofit sector, the churches, the
synagogues, the mosques that do so much, to provide food and
figure out ways to get people beyond relying on a safety net in
order to feed their families.
I will say one other thing. One of the things about being
in Congress is you get to meet a lot of different people, and
you get to see a lot of different things that probably you
might not necessarily see. I have been to a lot of emergency
rooms in hospitals in Massachusetts where I have seen kids in
emergency rooms being treated, and they are hungry. That just
shouldn't be. Those kids need more than $1 a day to get by, and
if their parents aren't being able to provide for them, we need
to get it to them, because if not, you are going to end up with
a situation, as we have been ending up with in so many cases,
where that young kid is going to be developmentally challenged,
is going to have a whole bunch of health problems, and we are
going to have to work with that kid until he is an old man or
an old woman.
Part of what we are trying to do here is figure out how we
can all do better. Maybe government needs to do less in some
areas. Maybe government needs to do more in some areas. We need
to do what works.
Mrs. Emerson. We need to know what resources are out there
that we just simply have no idea about.
Mr. McGovern. I appreciate very much your coming, and
thanks for your leadership.
Now I would like to welcome the Reverend David Beckmann
from Bread for the World, followed by Robert Egger from the
D.C. Central Kitchen, and Nicole Robinson from Kraft Foods. All
three of you can get up there together.
Reverend Beckmann, we will begin with you.
STATEMENT OF REVEREND DAVID BECKMANN, PRESIDENT, BREAD FOR THE
WORLD
Rev. Beckmann. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you know, I am
deeply grateful for your leadership and your commitment; and,
members of the committee, I really appreciate especially your
opening statements. I found them really heartening. The whole
conversation is really good.
I am David Beckmann. Bread for the World is a collective
Christian voice urging our Nation's decision makers to end
hunger in this country and around the world. I think this White
House conference would help to launch an intensified nationwide
effort to reduce hunger. The need is clear. That has already
been talked about.
I want to talk about the opportunity, and from the
perspective of an organization that works on hunger in our
country and around the world, because one thing that has really
struck us is that the world has made dramatic progress against
hunger and poverty over the last several decades.
The last couple years have been terrible for hungry and
poor people around the world. Even now, the proportion of the
world's population that is hungry, undernourished, is much
lower than it was three decades ago. Trade has been part of
that. But it is just obvious to us that if Brazil and
Bangladesh can dramatically reduce hunger and poverty, so can
the United States.
In our own country, in fact, there have been times when we
made real progress against hunger and poverty. One of the best
times actually for progress was in the 1960s and early 1970s,
and the White House conference in 1969 was part of that. What
we had then, and, in fact, in almost every place where there is
progress against hunger, is a combination of economic growth
and focused efforts. In the 1960s we had economic growth, and
both the Johnson and the Nixon administrations really focused
additional effort on nutrition programs, antipoverty programs,
and we cut the poverty rate in half. We dramatically reduced
hunger during that time.
So progress is possible also in our own country. I think
the U.K.'s recent experience is also relevant. When the Labor
Party came to power in 1997, they committed their nation to
ending child poverty. That is a commitment that all three
parties in the U.K. now embrace; they are going to end child
poverty. So they have put some programs and policies in place,
they are monitoring progress, and, in fact, there has been a
substantial reduction in child poverty in the U.K. over the
last decade or so because there is a commitment by all the
parties and a focused effort.
I think it is important that our new President has made
this commitment to end child poverty. He also wants to end
child hunger. He wants to end child hunger by 2015. He wants to
cut poverty in half. He has also made it clear that reducing
world hunger is a theme in his foreign policy.
I think the policies he outlined to end child hunger are
really remarkably good. The policies are stronger nutrition
programs and better nutrition programs, but it is also economic
recovery. The policies are complementary efforts to reduce
poverty, especially among poor families with children. And in
the Obama statement about child hunger, there is a strong
emphasis on what churches and other community organizations do
in fostering a more fruitful interaction between what
communities can do and what we can do through Federal and State
government. So I think that this White House conference under
this President should really focus on the goal of ending child
hunger and try to enlist a bipartisan effort and a society-wide
effort.
We are not going to end child hunger in America if this is
not a bipartisan program. So, Mr. Sessions and Dr. Foxx, the
themes that you have sounded of work, thrift, markets, growth,
trade, those have got to be part of the solution. If it is just
government programs, and if it is not a bipartisan, nationwide
effort, it isn't going to be sustained from now to 2015, and we
are not going to succeed.
So one thing that this White House conference could do is
to strengthen the bipartisanship around this goal. Fortunately,
ending hunger, reducing hunger, is an issue that has been a
bipartisan issue for a long time. Bob Dole is a member of my
board. He worked with George McGovern way back in the late
1960s and early 1970s to make progress against hunger. And what
you, Mr. Chairman and Jo Ann Emerson, now do, your close
partnership really maintains, embodies that bipartisanship that
I think is crucial to success in reducing hunger.
I think a White House conference could also foster fuller
engagement of all sectors of society. Several state governments
are committed to ending child hunger, so what are they
learning? How do we get more state governments involved? How do
we get our community organizations working in a strategic way
as part of a broader system so all that effort helps to make
the bigger system more effective?
Corporations are clearly part of what needs to happen. We
are not going to end child hunger if we don't get more
corporations that are serious about feeding people, and also
pushing for systemic solutions that will actually solve the
problem.
So I think the White House conference is a great idea. And
since I am a preacher, I just want to close with a religious
comment. No matter what you think about God, we know that
helping hungry people is something that is really good. It is
holy. And I think that this White House conference could help
to move our Nation so that we don't have widespread hunger
among our kids.
Mr. McGovern. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Rev. Beckmann follows:]
Prepared Statement of Reverend David Beckmann, President, Bread for the
World
Ms. Chairwoman and members of the Committee, thank you for this
opportunity. I am David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, a
collective Christian voice that urges our nation's decision makers to
end hunger at home and abroad.
the case for a nationwide effort to reduce hunger now
The need is obvious. As of 2007, 36 million Americans lived in
households that struggled to put food on the table. One in six U.S.
children lives in a food insecure household, and food insecurity does
long-term damage to young children.
The recession has sharply increased hunger and poverty. Food banks
report an increase, a 33 percent increase in requests for emergency
assistance over the last 12 months.
The persistence of mass hunger in our richly blessed nation is
completely unnecessary.
Bread for the World works to reduce hunger both in this country and
around the world, so we are struck by the fact that the world as a
whole has made remarkable progress against hunger and poverty over the
last several decades. High food prices and the recession have sharply
increased world hunger recently. But even after this setback, less than
one in five people in developing countries are undernourished. That is
terrible, but it is down from more than one in three in 1970.
We haven't made sustained progress against hunger and poverty in
this country over the last several decades, so it has become hard for
us to imagine progress. Let me list some of the developing countries
that have made dramatic progress: China, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana,
Brazil, and Mexico. In each case, the reduction of hunger and poverty
has depended on economic growth combined with focused efforts. If
Bangladesh and Brazil can dramatically reduce hunger and poverty, so
can the U.S.A.
The United States has been able to reduce hunger and poverty when
our economy was strong and we made a focused effort. In the 1960s and
early 1970s, for example, we cut the poverty rate in half and
dramatically reduced hunger. We expanded nutrition and anti-poverty
programs during both the Johnson and Nixon administrations.
The recent experience of the United Kingdom is relevant. When the
Labor Party took office, the nation adopted the goal of ending child
poverty and established a timetable of intermediate targets. They
increased support for child care, raised the minimum wage, tightened
child support enforcement, and established child savings accounts. They
reduced the child poverty rate from a third in 1997 to 18 percent in
2005. All three political parties in the United Kingdom now share the
goal of ending child poverty.
u.s. goals for reducing hunger and poverty
President Obama has proposed that our nation commit to ending child
hunger by 2015 and cutting poverty in half over the next ten years. He
and Secretary Clinton have also made reducing world hunger a priority
in our nation's foreign policy.
I think the proposed White House conference would be very helpful.
It could focus especially on more fully defining a strategy to meet the
President's goal of ending child hunger in this country by 2015 and to
begin engaging enlisting our entire society in this effort.
President Obama outlined a plan to end child hunger in America
during his campaign. I have attached his proposal to this testimony. I
find it compelling. It talks about strengthening the national nutrition
programs. The child nutrition programs are being reauthorized this
year, and the extra $1 billion a year that the President has proposed
is crucial to progress against child hunger. Obama's plan also calls
for the engagement of communities. More charitable effort is focused on
hunger than on any other social problem, and there's a lot to be gained
through collaboration between all these community efforts, state
governments, and the federal government. The Hunger-Free Communities
Program, authorized in the farm bill, is one way to help foster this
collaboration, and the President has requested an initial appropriation
for Hunger-Free Communities in his first budget request.
The Obama plan is also clear that nutrition programs alone will not
end child hunger. We also need economic recovery and broader efforts to
reduce poverty, notably tax credits for poor families.
Secretary Vilsack and White House staff are talking about the
President's goal of ending child hunger. But now that President Obama
is in power, we need an official statement of the administration's
plan. That plan will need to be debated and win broad, bipartisan
political support.
Mounting and maintaining a national effort to end child hunger by
2015 will require bipartisan commitment. Hunger is not a Democratic or
Republican issue. Fortunately, hunger has always been a bipartisan
issue. Bob Dole and George McGovern worked together to reduce hunger in
the early 1970s, just as Jo Anne Emerson and Jim McGovern often work
together now.
Some people will say we can't afford to tackle the problem of
hunger now. But efforts to reduce hunger stimulate the economy and
boost worker productivity. Over the longer term, no investment pays
higher returns than providing adequate nutrition for children.
A successful national commitment to end child hunger will also
require active leadership by state governments, and several are already
committed to the goal. We also need the involvement of religious and
charitable networks, civil rights groups, unions, corporations,
universities, and many committed individuals. The proposed White House
conference can begin to shape a social movement to get the job done.
a faith perspective
I'm a Christian preacher, so please permit me to speak briefly from
the perspective of faith. As I have come to realize that hundreds of
millions of people around the world are escaping from hunger and
poverty, I've become convinced that this is God moving in our history.
It is the great exodus of our time.
No matter how you think about God, it's hard to imagine that God is
not impatient with the persistence of mass hunger in our richly blessed
country. I'm hoping that we will emerge from this economic crisis as a
better country. And what change would be more important ethically than
ending widespread hunger among America's children?
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Mr. McGovern. Mr. Egger.
STATEMENT OF MR. ROBERT EGGER, PRESIDENT, D.C. CENTRAL KITCHEN
Mr. Egger. Thank you, everybody, for this opportunity. I am
here to testify, of course, about the need, but also, as my
friend David suggested, about this amazing opportunity for a
White House Conference on Food and Nutrition.
For those of you who don't know, I work just down the Hill
from this Chamber at the D.C. Central Kitchen. Every day we
collect almost 2 tons of food from Federal buildings,
restaurants, hotels and other food service businesses, which we
use to train unemployed men and women, many of whom are
homeless or fresh from prison, for jobs in the very businesses
which donate the food. Since opening on Inauguration Day 1989,
we have distributed 22 million meals and placed 700 men and
women in food service jobs.
In addition, I travel extensively throughout the country,
first to help open similar community kitchens in most of your
districts, and recently to start a new project we have called
Campus Kitchens, which interestingly there is one at Wake
Forest, one at Baylor, and soon one at Boston University.
In all of these travels, what I see is, frankly, very
troubling, and I am going to speak here more to almost the
business side of hunger, because donated food for our national
network of kitchens, food banks and pantries relies upon a
rapidly decreasing supply. It is--and this has to be
understood--lost profit for the businesses that donate it, and
the advent of new inventory controls and alternate markets,
this is taking up what used to be a steady stream of
nutritionally dense donations and turning it into a trickle.
In short, our supply of food is decreasing at the very
moment the need is increasing.
And I am not speaking about the current need that has been
exacerbated by our economic downturn. While this is immediate
and pronounced, it will also likely be mitigated when America's
economic ship is righted.
And this next part, I am really glad to be looking up under
the watchful glare of Claude Pepper, who was the last person in
this body who really spoke passionately and consistently about
our elders. What I am speaking about is the fact that 80
million baby boomers are going to be coming right down the
road. Every day in America, 12,000 people turn 60. There is a
waiting list in half of American cities today for Meals on
Wheels.
And, again, there are 80 million people coming. This
generation will outlive every previous generation by an
estimated 10 to 20 years. Yet the level of saving for this
generation will most likely be insufficient to ensure that they
will be able to afford anything resembling their current
lifestyle. Simply put, we can predict with alarming accuracy
that there is going to be a wave of older Americans who will
need substantial and sustained nutritional aid.
This will be a very, very different group than the prideful
generation that Representative Emerson spoke of, people who
avoided the stigma. This new generation are already leaving
traditional senior centers and congregant meal sites and they
will require most likely demand meals that will be far more
nutritionally complex and varied than were currently provided
by charitable outlets. In short, they are not our grandfathers'
seniors.
So now is the time to really look hard. Again, this is the
powerful opportunity to really look at childhood hunger, senior
hunger, but more importantly, I think, as everyone suggested,
the amazing opportunities we have to reorganize what is already
here.
For example, the current Federal reimbursement rate for a
typical senior meal is close to $5 per meal. In rural
communities where small farms still operate, programs-that
purchase local food will be able to elevate the impact of
Federal funds while also serving more nutritious meals to our
elders.
This new generation will also want to maintain activity as
long as possible, so linking food availability to volunteering
could also be a way great way to ensure the physical and social
well-being of our elders.
Intergenerational food programs--and I am just going stop a
second to say, we have built a system in which we feed children
here and seniors here. So the idea of intergenerational
programs could be a tremendous way for seniors to not only
transfer knowledge at after-school programs, but also be
involved in intergenerational service programs. And speaking
for the program I work with, there are 60,000 school-based
cafeterias where we could potentially have intergeneration
after school, but where, frankly, we could produce for a
generation of working Americans healthy, reasonably priced
meals to go made from local foods, that are involved in job
training programs and also, again, give our kids access to
cafeterias as learning centers so we can talk about nutrition
but also math, science, history and get community services at
the same time.
Historic charity has served our country well; however, the
era of extra is coming to an end. The entire system relies on
extra food, extra money, extra clothing, extra time; and we are
just running out of that. A White House conference could pave
the way for a new approach, one that incorporates revenue-
generating employment projects, sustainable agriculture,
school-based generational programs, along with many other
important ideas that emphasize the value of our elders.
I just want to add on two more things, based on some of the
comments I heard earlier. A spectacular area to talk about--and
I think Representative Arcuri was talking about small rural
communities. Very few rural communities have processing
centers. In fact, what you have in many states is fresh fruit
and vegetables oftentimes that aren't of the grade that is
available to be sold. There is no place to process them except
for sending them outside the state, and then they have to be
sold back to people in the state. So rural processing plants
are an amazing opportunity that is sitting right there.
And the other thing I wanted to point out is, one of the
top five things our country ever did was create a land grant
university system. And the land grants were built around the
agriculture schools. And those ag schools administer 4-H, WIC,
and the entire extension program, and there is probably no
greater existing resource than the American extension system.
It is a little bit old and I think it is ideally suited for the
kind of changes we are talking about. But this will only be
brought about, I think, with the kind of leadership that I
think Mr. McGovern is alluding to in calling for this
conference. So I heartily approve it.
Mr. McGovern. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Egger follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mr. Robert Egger, President, D.C. Central Kitchen
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.005
Mr. McGovern. Ms. Robinson. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF MS. NICOLE R. ROBINSON, DIRECTOR OF CORPORATE
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT, KRAFT FOODS
Ms. Robinson. Thank you.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Sessions, and
members of the subcommittee. I am Nicole Robinson, Director of
Corporate Community Involvement at Kraft Foods, and I am
sincerely honored and privileged to join you here today to
share with you a little about Kraft Foods' efforts to improve
nutrition and hunger. I applaud you for your commitment and
attention to this most pressing social issue.
As the second largest food company in the world, Kraft
Foods is really acutely aware that many men, women and children
face hunger. In the U.S. alone, 36 million, nearly one in
eight--quite staggering. And many of them lack access to the
nutritious fresh fruits, vegetables, and dairy products
necessary to avoid diseases like obesity, diabetes, and other
chronic illnesses. So we are very concerned about that.
With the recognition that these challenges cannot be
resolved alone, Kraft Foods welcomes the opportunity to partner
with nonprofit organizations and government. As embodied in
your bill, we share your desire to foster a high-level dialogue
on this effort.
To that end, a little bit about Kraft Foods: We have
donated nearly $770 million of cash and food over the last 25
years to address hunger, and we have recently pledged $180
million over the next 3 years to address malnutrition around
the world. By 2010, we will have programming in the U.S.,
Indonesia, Philippines, China, Australia, Brazil, Russia, and
select European markets; and with your permission, I would like
to highlight a few of these efforts.
In the U.S., I would like to say that Feeding America, our
partnership, has really been rooted in that idea of
collaboration. We are proud of our community nutrition program,
which was designed to improve the quality and increase the
quantity of food distributed through food banks. If you think
about the early era of food banks, in the beginning it was
primarily canned goods and other shelf-stable items, and Kraft
Foods made a deliberate effort to, over the course of this
decade-long partnership, award 600 grants across 46 States
which we are proud to say today delivered over 1 billion
servings of fresh food. So we are quite proud of that effort.
Now, during this unprecedented time of increased demand,
during this economic environment, we have awarded Feeding
America another $4.5 million over the next 3 years to purchase
25 mobile pantries. And mobile pantries are really a viable
solution in communities where families are far away from food
banks or pantries or grocery stores; the pantry brings the food
to them. It is really a traveling pantry on wheels, and
particularly in urban settings where there is an increase in
``food deserts''--places where there are no grocery stores, it
is another viable option.
I have had the opportunity to volunteer in several of these
pantry distributions. Most recently I served on a Saturday
morning on Chicago's West Side. Although the distribution
begins at 9 o'clock in the morning, I thought, well, I will
arrive early, 8:00 a.m., and it was kind of sobering to see 200
to 300 people lined up when I arrived at 8:00, and many of them
had been there as early as 6:00 a.m.; and I think that is
certainly a testament to the need that is out there and exists
today.
But I am happy to say that by June we will have mobile
pantries in New York; Chicago; San Antonio; Madison, Wisconsin;
Central Valley, California; Cincinnati, Ohio; Newberry, South
Carolina.
But we are also--that is a little bit about what we have
done in the U.S., but we are also very sensitive to the
prevalence of malnutrition outside of our borders which
threatens the health and well-being of children around the
world. In the Philippines, for example, there are 2.9 million
hungry children, and in Indonesia it is a staggering 13 million
undernourished children. And to that end, earlier this year we
awarded a $3 million grant to Save the Children for the next 3
years to help address malnutrition in those countries.
So we are very excited about that effort as well; and that
is just what we are doing on the corporate end, and it doesn't
really stop there. It then begins with our employees, and they
are just as committed. The spirit of volunteerism is across our
organization. We have a senior executive that is on the board
of Feeding America. We have another that is on the board of the
Congressional Hunger Center, and we have employees at food
banks across our plants, our distribution centers. Everywhere
they either serve on boards or they are volunteers at pantries,
they are either packing food or distributing food; so we are
equally proud of that.
But there are also higher skilled opportunities and, in
fact, we have a partnership with the United Nations Private
Sector Program, and since 2001 Kraft Foods has sent over 100
employees to 29 countries to assist farmers, agencies, and
manufacturers so that they can learn how to produce food in
country, which I think is really important. And we have had
volunteers in Albania, West Africa, Ecuador, Fiji, Grenada and
Nicaragua, among others.
So, in closing, I would just like to say that Kraft really
does have a strong appreciation for the role that private
industry can play. We have done a lot and we have a commitment
to continue to do so. The partnership between us and the
nonprofit community across the globe has helped communities
have better access to nutrition.
Again, we are honored to partner with you in this effort,
and many thanks for this opportunity.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Robinson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ms. Nicole R. Robinson, Director of Corporate
Community Involvement, Kraft Foods
Good afternoon Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Sessions and members of
the Subcommittee. I am Nicole Robinson, Director of Corporate Community
Involvement at Kraft Foods.\1\ It is a privilege to join you today to
highlight Kraft Foods' efforts to end hunger and improve nutrition in
America. I commend you, Chairman McGovern and Ranking Member Sessions,
for your commitment to this important cause.
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\1\ Kraft Foods (http://www.kraftfoodscompany.com) makes today
delicious in 150 countries around the globe. Our 100,000 Kraft Foodies
work tirelessly to make delicious foods consumers can feel good about.
From American brand icons like Kraft cheeses, dinners and dressings,
Maxwell House coffees and Oscar Mayer meats, to global powerhouse
brands like Oreo and LU biscuits, Philadelphia cream cheeses, Jacobs
and Carte Noire coffees, Tang powdered beverages and Milka, Cote d'Or,
Lacta and Toblerone chocolates, our brands deliver millions of smiles a
day. Kraft Foods (NYSE: KFT) is the world's second largest food company
with annual revenues of $42 billion. The company is a member of the Dow
Jones Industrial Average, Standard & Poor's 500, the Dow Jones
Sustainability Index and Ethibel Sustainability Index.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the second-largest food company in the world, Kraft Foods is
acutely aware that hunger ranks among our most pressing social
problems. Thirty-six million Americans--nearly one in eight--are
hungry. And many more cannot afford fresh fruits, vegetables and diary
products that can help them avoid obesity and diseases related to
calorie-rich, nutrition-poor diets.
Kraft Foods is pleased to join you in your efforts to eradicate
hunger in this country, and throughout the world. We share your
desire--as embodied in the Chairman's Bill--to foster a high-level
dialogue on the subject. And we welcome the opportunity to partner with
hunger relief organizations like those represented here today and with
the federal government to find viable, effective solutions to this
problem.
To that end, I am proud to report that around the world Kraft Foods
has donated nearly $770 million in cash and food over the last 25 years
to support hunger relief. And we have pledged an additional $180
million over the next three years to address malnutrition globally. By
2010, we will have hunger programs in the US, Indonesia, the
Philippines, Russia, Brazil, Australia, China and select European
markets.
As large as those numbers are, they only provide a general
perspective on our efforts to combat hunger and malnutrition. With your
permission, I would like to highlight some of our specific efforts.
collaboration--kraft foods & feeding america
Here in the United States, Kraft Foods is a founding corporate
partner of Feeding America (formerly America's Second Harvest) and
remains among the organization's top supporters today. Our partnership
is rooted in the spirit of collaboration demonstrated by the Community
Nutrition Program, which works to increase the quality and quantity of
food distributed to families via the food bank network.
I am particularly pleased to note to this audience that over the
course of this decade-long partnership, we have provided needy
Americans with 1 billion nutritious servings of fresh produce, dairy,
and much needed protein-rich meat items.
And we aren't finished yet. Going forward, Kraft is evolving the
Community Nutrition Program initiative. We recently announced a 3-year,
$4.5 million grant to Feeding America to launch the national Kraft
Mobile Pantry Program. We learned from Feeding America that rural food
pantries frequently are located more than 120 miles from the nearest
food bank. And in urban settings, there is an increase in ``food
deserts''--places where there are no grocery stores or supermarkets
within walking distance. The Kraft Mobile Pantry Program will rollout
25 mobile pantries that will bring nutritious food into these
underserved neighborhoods.
On average, each mobile pantry will make three trips a week and
distribute 1.1 million meals annually to Americans who might otherwise
go hungry. Collectively, the Kraft Mobile Pantries will provide nearly
55 million meals to those in need.
I am pleased to share that by June of this year, mobile pantries
will be donated to Feeding America food banks in New York; Chicago; San
Antonio; Madison, Wisconsin; Central Valley (Fresno area), California;
Cincinnati, Ohio; and Newberry, South Carolina. In 2010-2011, we will
expand to additional markets across the United States.
collaboration--kraft foods and save the children
Kraft Foods is also acutely aware that malnutrition threatens the
health and well-being of children in other countries. In the
Philippines, for example, 2.9 million families struggle with hunger.
Indonesia faces a similar challenge with 13 million undernourished
families. Earlier this year, Kraft Foods awarded Save the Children a $3
million dollar grant over the next three years to help improve the
nutritional well-being of impoverished children in the Philippines and
Indonesia.
employee volunteerism
Fighting hunger is more than just a corporate concern at Kraft
Foods. Our employees are just as committed--and that is why we provide
opportunities for them to give back to their communities. This spirit
of volunteerism reaches across every level of the organization. For
example, a senior Kraft Foods executive currently serves as Feeding
America's board chair. Another Kraft Foods executive serves on the
Board of the Congressional Hunger Center. Other Kraft Foods employees
volunteer at food banks and pantries across this country, packing food
and distributing meals. Still others serve on local food bank boards.
Employees also share their expertise through a United Nations
Private Sector Program. Since 2001, Kraft Foods has sent over 100
employees to 29 countries to assist local agencies, farmers, and
manufacturers produce foods in-country. Our volunteers have helped
Albanian coffee producers to create the formula to produce a
consistently perfect bean and taught temperature control to meat
processors in West Africa. Our employees have also assisted with
projects in Ecuador, Fiji, Grenada and Nicaragua, among others.
conclusion
In closing, Kraft Foods has a strong appreciation for the role
private industry can play in helping to address social issues. The
partnership between Kraft Foods and hunger-relief experts across the
globe has helped more people in more communities have better access to
balanced nutrition. And we are honored to partner with you in this
effort as well. Again, many thanks for this opportunity and I look
forward to answering your questions.
Mr. McGovern. Thank you, all three of you, for your
testimony. I appreciate it very much.
Rev. Beckmann, I will be the first to admit that government
can't solve this problem all on its own. But I want to hear
from you whether or not the faith-based community can solve
this problem all on its own.
Reverend Beckmann. No, no way. Churches and charities can't
do it all. That is clear to anybody who is involved in church
and charitable effort to help hungry people. Those people who
are really involved in it know that they are overwhelmed, that
people are lining up before and after the churches and
charities are done.
It would be great if churches had the resources to be doing
more than they are doing, but they are doing an awful lot, and
their charitable efforts are in some cases extraordinary. But
government has substantially more resources than the other
actors. There are also policy questions, questions about how
you make a society in which people have an incentive to work
and work pays and there are jobs. So there are lots of things
that government needs to do to be doing its part to overcome
hunger.
Mr. McGovern. Mr. Egger, I have visited DC Central Kitchen.
I appreciate the fact that it is not only about food but about
nutritious food. I actually cut up cucumbers and carrots, but I
was told by the person who worked there that I was doing it
poorly. But I saw of a lot of fresh vegetables going into the
ingredients. So if you could comment about the importance of
nutrition as part of our challenge here.
But the other thing, too, is the types of people that you
help. Some people are people that can be trained and go back
into the workforce, but there is a big population out there
that if it weren't for the fact that you could bring them a
meal, they would be basically helpless--people that are
homebound, people that have physical challenges that don't
enable them to kind of, if I gave them a dollar, to be able to
kind of stretch it and make it all work.
If you could comment on the types----
Mr. Egger. Yes. What has really been exciting over the past
few years is how many organizations have really focused on
nutritional content, recognizing, in effect, that it does no
good to feed somebody unless you are going to feed them
something that is going to be make them healthy versus
unhealthy.
So many of us have really focused--in fact, I think in Mr.
Arcuri's district, the food bank in central New York was one of
the very first to draw a line, saying, in fact, we are not
going to serve anything that does not meet this nutritional
content.
We are very deliberate about where we distribute the meals
we produce, and we are looking to create almost a ladder. So,
in effect, we are trying to partner with agencies, for example,
it might be a drug treatment program in which we are helping
heal physically by giving them good food, so that they
ultimately become productive citizens; but at the same time the
meals we serve save that agency millions of dollars a year,
which means they can produce more men and women who are not
going to be using drugs anymore.
If done correctly--and I think this is to your point in
this conference--done correctly, it is more than just you are
hungry, here is a meal. It is part of a broader system, whether
it is educating children that become--I really want to frame
this away from the right/wrong, good/bad rhetoric into the
smart/dumb concept.
And so this whole thing, by making sure kids are fed, they
are just going to be productive, healthy, taxpaying citizens in
our future versus young men and women who will be a drain on
our economy at the very time, with 80 million people getting
older, we will need them to be productive taxpayers.
So the nutritional impact side is huge, and this is what I
think many of us are now looking at. The traditional approach
of saying, would you please give us, restaurants, hotels,
farmers, give us what you have, versus a new approach where we
start to actually purchase, subsidize local farmers, taking the
food that they normally couldn't sell in a retail outlet, but
that they--it is still good food. If we could start to purchase
that, use leveraged Federal dollars again, not only are we
going to get better food, but we are going to be stimulating
the economy at the same time.
Mr. McGovern. Ms. Robinson, first let me thank you for
being here and let me thank Kraft for their generosity. Food
banks and food pantries in Massachusetts have benefited from
your generosity. And, again, not just the food and not just the
money, but the help and support of your employees who have been
willing to go out and volunteer and to help make our
communities better.
I appreciate the fact that you are even being more generous
in the upcoming year. But the sad reality is that in America
hunger is getting worse and the cost of food is more expensive
than it was.
So--if I gave you a $100 donation 2 years ago, it doesn't
buy the same today as it did 2 years ago, so I may think I am
being just as generous, but people get less food with it. And I
am wondering whether--you sell food products. I mean, have you
been able to control your prices or has the cost of fuel and
everything else resulted in some spikes in your products as
well?
Ms. Robinson. Kraft, too, has been impacted in that way.
But what we have tried to do is help our consumers, which are
also food bank clients, because they are the working poor,
understand better how they can budget their meals. How do you
create dinners off of $10? How do you generate that shopping
list, which may or may not include Kraft products? And how do
you learn how to cook nutritious meals and create those dinners
on a lower budget? So we are doing things like that.
And healthy lifestyles, I know there has been a lot of talk
about nutrition. To us, obesity--malnutrition is sort of the
intersection between hunger and obesity. You can not have
enough to eat and be malnourished, and still be malnourished at
the end of the day. So to complement our hunger programs, we
also deliver healthy lifestyle programs that include nutrition
education and physical activity.
And as a part of these programs, there is this huge
component about shopping. When you go to a grocery store, how
do you sort of navigate the store and select the right items
and sort of build your shopping basket, which is a skill that,
quite frankly, a lot of consumers don't have today.
Mr. McGovern. I wish all grocery stores would have
nutritionists come in once a week or that there was more truth
in advertising. I mean, even those of us who consider ourselves
educated shoppers, if you go to the supermarket and you see 50
percent less sodium, than what? The Dead Sea? I mean, you may
think you are making the right choices, and you shouldn't have
to be a chemist to figure out a good diet.
But also, too--and I learned this when I was on the Food
Stamp Budget--it is tough to be poor. It takes a lot of time to
shop when you are poor because, for me, if I run out of
groceries on a Thursday and I go shopping on a Saturday, I
mean, I will just go back and get more. But for a lot of
people, that is it. And it takes a lot of time, and it is very,
very difficult. And again, too often, people aren't given an
option for a healthy choice. So I appreciate, in particular,
what Kraft is doing in terms of kind of educating people and
helping provide people the kind of guidance on how you can do
it for less. But I think just listening to the panelists here
today--Democrat, Republican, I mean all of you and what you
represent--getting everybody in a room together and figuring
this out so that we could actually stand up and say, here is
our plan, here is what the faith-based community is going to
do, here is what the corporate community is going to do, here
is what the nonprofit community is going to do, here is what
the Federal Government is going to do, on the Federal, State,
or local level; and just tie it all together and let us see who
keeps their assignment. And whoever doesn't do their
assignment, we will yell at them and make them feel bad.
But I appreciate that.
Mr. Sessions.
Mr. Sessions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me thank each of you. I think each of you recognizes
that there is not one way to solve this problem. I would,
however, like to thank each of you because none of you work for
the government the way I understand it. You are out in the free
enterprise system, the marketplace, trying to do things because
you see need.
Robert, I hear you talk very plainly about children and
elderly people, or at least the future. The numbers are
staggering. To Members of Congress, they are staggering. We
have heard these figures before. We recognize we need to
prepare people for what is ahead.
I would say that I think each of you needs to be a part of
this White House conference when it does take place. I am very
much in favor of people who can thoughtfully articulate what we
ought to have, rather than demonstrating or breaking down
barriers, but rather coming and saying, here are the cold hard
facts of the case, here is a strategic and a tactful way to get
to where we want to go.
And the fact of the matter is that we are starting with--I
am not trying to start an argument. We are starting with a
really good story about what exists out there, and we need
somebody to complete it. We need to work better together. I am
not going to say we are happy, we are satisfied; you didn't say
that. But I think that we should start with what we have and
make it better and then go and find where the holes are.
Nicole, thank you for taking time to do this. I probably
put you up to this, and for that I apologize. But I think the
story that you told was very compelling, and it is a commitment
that you make, all three of you make. You know what the issue
is, you see where the holes are, you see where we need to go.
And like anything else, I think if you coach a lot of us, we
can get there.
Thanks to each of you. Thank you.
Mr. McGovern. I want to thank my colleague, Mr. Sessions,
for his very thoughtful remarks. I appreciate very much your
being a part of this hearing.
Thank you for putting Nicole up to this. I appreciate that
too.
Mr. Sessions. It is my fault. She did great too.
Mr. McGovern. She was wonderful. And I think Robert and
David are great friends of advocates. Thank you very much. I
think we are on our way.
Before we close this hearing, I want to ask unanimous
consent to insert into the record 30 different letters of
endorsement for this bill, and an op-ed by former Senator Bob
Dole and George McGovern in support of a similar conference.
So thank you for being here.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:25 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
Curriculum Vitae and Truth in Testimony Forms for Witnesses Testifying
Before the Committee (Where Applicable)
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.006
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.007
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.008
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.009
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.011
Letter From Ms. Vicki Escarra, President and CEO of Feeding America, to
Representatives James McGovern and Jo Ann Emerson, Dated May 9, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.012
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.013
Letter From Ms. Christine A. Poward, Executive Director of the
Association of Nutrition Services Agencies, to Representative James
McGovern, Dated May 12, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.014
Letter From the Reverend Larry Snyder, President of the Catholic
Charities USA, to Representative James McGovern, Dated May 12, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.015
Letter From Ms. Margaret Saunders, President, and the Reverend Douglas
A. Greenaway, Executive Director of the National WIC Association, to
Representative James McGovern, Dated May 12, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.016
Letter From Mr. Max Finberg, Director of the Alliance to End Hunger, to
Representative James McGovern, Dated May 13, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.017
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.018
Letter From Mr. Gary A. Davis, CEO of East Side Entrees, to
Representative James McGovern, Dated May 13, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.019
Letter From Ms. Karen Pearl, President and CEO of God's Love We
Deliver, to Representative James McGovern, Dated May 13, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.020
Letter From Mr. Hadar Susskind, Vice President and Washington Director
for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, to Representative James
McGovern, Dated May 13, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.021
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.022
Letter From Mr. David Richart, Executive Director of Lifelong AIDS
Alliance, to Representative James McGovern, Dated May 13, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.023
Letter From Mr. Joel Berg, Executive Director of the New York City
Coalition Against Hunger, to Representative James McGovern, Dated May
13, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.024
Letter From Mr. Kevin Winge, Executive Director for Open Arms of
Minnesota, to Representative James McGovern, Dated May 13, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.025
Letter From Ms. Deborah R. Hinde, President and CEO to Vital Bridges,
to Representative James McGovern, Dated May 13, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.026
Letter From Mr. Greg Lukeman, Executive Director of Food Outreach,
Inc., to Representative James McGovern, Dated May 14, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.027
Letter From Mr. James D. Weill, President of Food Research and Action
Center, to Representative James McGovern, Dated May 14, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.028
Letter From Ms. Erin Pulling, Executive Director of Project Angel
Heart, to Representative James McGovern, Dated May 14, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.029
Letter From Ms. Ellen Parker, Executive Director of Project Bread--The
Walk for Hunger, to Representative James McGovern, Dated May 14, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.030
Letter From Ms. Pat Nicklin, Managing Director of Share Our Strength,
to Representative James McGovern, Dated May 14, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.031
Letter From Mr. Robert Greenstein, Executive Director of the Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities, to Representative James McGovern, Dated
May 15, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.032
Letter From Mr. John T. Evers, Executive Director of the Food Bank
Association of New York State, to Representative James McGovern, Dated
May 15, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.033
Letter From Mr. Clyde W. Fitzgerald, Jr., Executive Director of Second
Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina, to Representative James
McGovern, Dated May 15, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.034
Letter From Dr. Keith Schildt, President, and Mr. Bob Blancato,
Executive Director, of the National Association of Nutrition and Aging
Services Programs (NANASP) to the Chairman and Members of the
Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of the House, Dated May 15,
2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.035
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.036
Letter From Mr. Bill Ayres, Co-Founder and Executive Director of World
Hunger Year, Inc. to Mr. Keith L. Stern, Subcommittee Staff Director,
Dated May 15, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.037
Letter From Ms. Deborah Weinstein, Executive Director of the Coalition
on Human Needs, to Representative James McGovern, Dated May 18, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.038
Letter From Ms. Pamela Baily, President and CEO of Grocery
Manufacturers Association, to Representative James McGovern, Dated May
18, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.039
Letter From Dr. H. Eric Schockman, President of Mazon: A Jewish
Response to Hunger, Dated May 18, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.040
Letter From Mr. Roger Johnson, President of the National Farmers Union,
to Representative James McGovern and Jo Ann Emerson, Dated May 18,
2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.041
Letter From Ms. Kelly D. Johnston, Vice President Government Affairs of
Campbell Soup Company, to Representative James McGovern, Dated May 21,
2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.042
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.043
Letter From Mr. Paul Downey, President of the California Nutrition
Coalition, to the Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee on Rules and
Organization of the House.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.044
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.045
Letter From Mr. Edward M. Cooney, Executive Director of the
Congressional Hunger Center.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.046
Letter From the Honorable Dan Glickman, Former Secretary of Agriculture
and Former Member of Congress from Kansas, to Representative James
McGovern.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.047
The Washington Times, Op-Ed by George McGovern and Bob Dole, Entitled
``Obesity Conference Call,'' March 27, 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 56021A.048
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