A growing coalition wants the Biden administration to leverage its $8.8 billion in federal food purchasing to promote racial equity, animal welfare, environmental sustainability and local food procurement.
A group of 160 organizations recently wrote President Joe Biden a letter calling for an executive order that would require federally operated facilities to align their food purchasing to a set of federal guidelines that are currently voluntary. Adopting the Food Service Guidelines for Federal Facilities (FSG) in all facilities, the letter argues, “would be a clear signal to all that the federal government is willing to 'walk the walk.'”
On Capitol Hill, Senate Ag Democrat Cory Booker and seven members of the House of Representatives have made similar requests, the organizations noted.
Voluntary guidelines were rolled out in 2011, but agencies have been slow to adopt them. Following last fall’s White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, state and local governments were encouraged to adopt the federal guidelines.
Chloë Waterman, a senior program manager for the Friends of the Earth climate-friendly food program, told Agri-Pulse that FOE is grateful for the administration’s commitment to update and implement the guidelines, but an executive order would push the federal government to encourage change not only for the $8.8 billion in federal food purchases, but also in the private sector.
“Right now, it's just a bullet point in a plan. It's not converted into a policy yet, and it's not really happening in any formal or comprehensive way,” Waterman said.
Chloë Waterman, Friends of the Earth
Waterman said they’ve taken the same theory of change around what the federal government's procurement of clean energy did for that sector to create a catalyst for change in the food sector.
“Not only does it shift the government, a large energy purchaser, toward a more sustainable system, but it really helped spur the shift in the private sector toward clean energy as well. And we think that the government can do that same thing for food purchasing,” she said.
Many cities and counties have embraced the approach by adopting the Good Food Purchasing Program, which offers a verification system for leveraging public food dollars to promote five core program values: stronger local economies, environmental sustainability, a “valued workforce,” animal welfare and community health and nutrition. The City of Los Angeles and L.A. Unified School District adopted the Good Food Purchasing Program in 2012.
“Impacting $1.1 billion in annual spending, the program’s ripple effects have created new union jobs; provided a new market for local farms; reduced greenhouse gas emissions, pesticide use, and water use and improved the nutritional quality of meals for 650,000 students” in Los Angeles, seven House Democrats wrote to Biden ahead of the September White House nutrition conference.
Waterman said implementation of the voluntary FSG and broader values-aligned food procurement is “few and far between” and “pretty haphazard and spotty across the federal government.”
In a new report on the current status of federal food purchasing, the Federal Good Food Purchasing Coalition identifies progress on serving “more climate-friendly, plant-forward options” that also prioritize ingredients that are locally sourced, organic or raised without the routine use of antibiotics.
“Key factors that have enabled this progress include focusing on increasing rather than restricting choice, having dedicated champions and valuable external partnerships and advancing changes to agency policies and prime vendor catalogs,” the report concluded.
The Centers for Disease Control has officially adopted the food service guidelines for its employee cafeterias. Waterman said the Veterans Health Administration is a “standout” agency that is working toward implementation of the food service guidelines and prioritizing other types of values-aligned food purchasing.
The VHA leverages its purchasing power through its Subsistence Prime Vendor Contract with US Foods to purchase values-aligned products, such as meat, poultry and fish raised without antibiotics. Individual facilities are also encouraged to establish contracts with local vendors for fresh produce, dairy and bread.
Emma Sirois, director of Health Care Without Harm’s food program, works with Veterans Affairs hospitals to support a shift to healthier and more sustainable menus. HCWH also offers guidance for the membership-based Practice Greenhealth and its 1,600 hospitals to provide a range of tools and frameworks to support sustainability and health goals that also focus on values.
Sirois said the voluntary food service guidelines for federal facilities were the driver for many of the decisions made at the VA to embed sustainability into its food programming. “We think it will be a good motivator across the federal government if [mandated],” Sirois added.
She explained the White House guidance needs to clearly articulate benchmarks and goals, with the recognition it will take time for vendors to expand their offerings for some products. If a facility's goal is to buy 15% of its purchases locally, some of those same producers may also meet other sustainability, environmental or equity goals if purchased from a minority-owned farm or food business, she said.
In working with vendors, some have five- to 10-year contracts, which will require a longer timeline for implementation.
“This is not going to be an overnight thing,” she said, but having mandatory food service guidelines would allow food purchasing or procurement specialists to start integrating them into contract negotiations.
She said most food service operations work with the vendor US Foods. “The federal government’s purchasing power is tremendous, and their ability to open up these very large supply chains to values-aligned producers, whether they are local [Black, Indigenous and People of Color], high animal welfare standards or environmental standards operations, they have an opportunity to really open up opportunities for all of those farms and vendors for different businesses in a way that is not possible in other sectors,” Sirois said.
Waterman said the coalition didn't find examples of agencies, nor are they pushing for agencies, to implement actions such as completely meatless days, but instead shift some of the balance or adding some plant-based choices to menus that previously lacked the options.
It’s easy to sign up for a FREE month of Agri-Pulse news! For the latest on what’s happening in Washington, D.C. and around the country in agriculture, just click here.
Sirois said over the past year, HCWH has been conducting pilots at different VA facilities to offer more plant-forward meals.
Sirois recognizes that when facilities shift toward foods with embedded values in their production practices, food will cost more. But a more holistic look at food cost offers a different picture.
“When taken as a whole, your food service that increases the health and sustainability of your food service operations can be cost-neutral,” she said.
“Some plant proteins are most often cheaper than animal products,” Sirios added. “You can get some cost savings through that shift that is having health and environmental positive impacts.”
David Ditch, The Heritage Foundation
Waterman said those in the coalition recognize the possibility of a closing window to take action during the Biden administration. A similar executive order was considered at the end of the Obama administration, she said, but it failed to materialize.
“We are getting short on time for them to actually take action and move from a bullet point to a formal policy that will actually result in changes to menus,” Waterman said.
But David Ditch, a senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, said if instituted, values-based procurement requirements would increase costs to the federal government for an effort that isn’t aligned with the majority of thinking in the U.S.
“It’s layering on mandates and preferences that are moving away from price and quality and toward providing all of these niche things that the political left in the U.S. cares about,” Ditch said. “This is an attempt to enact a strong left-wing agenda from the top when there is absolutely no sort of strong electoral mandate.”
Ditch said if the executive order does become reality, it would be a “textbook example” of policy Republicans would look to block through an appropriations rider.
“This is pushing back against the Biden administration’s agenda, which is going out of its way to insert into various political fights its governing agenda,” he said.
For more news, go to www.Agri-Pulse.com.
