A. APHA: A NEW CO-SPONSOR
NATIONAL HEALTHY SCHOOLS DAY, APRIL 30, 2007
National Healthy Schools Day is coordinated annually by APHA Environment Section member Claire Barnett, executive director, Healthy Schools Network, Inc. Celebrated on Monday, April 30 this year, we are pleased to announce that joining us as co-sponsors are: APHA, the Collaborative for High Performance Schools, Green Seal, the Council of Educational Facility Planners International which hosts School Building Week annually, and U.S. EPA, as well as leaders of the national Coalition for Healthier Schools.
Visit www.healthyschools.org to find out how you can celebrate locally and to see events suggestions promoting healthy school environments for all children.
Submitted by: Claire L. Barnett, Executive Director, Healthy Schools Network, Inc.
B. Policy Campaigns for the U.S. Farm Bill
1. Building Sustainable Futures
The general goal of the Building Sustainable Futures for Farmers Globally Campaign (BSF) is to provide a forum in which a broad coalition of constituencies can work together to build consensus around core principles and specific policy options in anticipation of the upcoming 2007 U.S. Farm Bill reauthorization. The Campaign's steering committee is composed of six groups: ActionAid International, Federation of Southern Cooperatives, Friends of the Earth USA, Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy, National Family Farm Coalition and the Rural Coalition/Coalición Rural.
In addition to farming, food and public health, the U.S. Farm Bill has significant impacts on agricultural trade policy, and vice versa. The BSF Campaign has attempted to focus on those areas where domestic farm policies interfaces with international trade policies.
We invite interested organizations to consider signing onto the general BSF Declaration. The Declaration encapsulates the core principles that guide the ongoing collaboration of the Building Sustainable Futures for Farmers Globally campaign: These include, for example: Ensuring the food sovereignty of nations; curtailing artificially cheap commodity grain prices, and ending the dumping of overly cheap commodities abroad; sustainable energy production from biomass feedstocks; and respecting the rights of immigrants and farm workers.
The Campaign also calls for domestic food and farm policies that promote safe and healthy foods, including policies that "Reaffirm and strengthen the right of democratically elected, local, state and national governments to regulate genetically engineered crops, animal factories, biomass energy facilities, and other industrial agricultural facilities on the basis of the precautionary principle in protecting public health and safety and the environment. Eliminate all direct and indirect public subsidies to vertically integrated animal factories so that they pay the full cost of environmental and health impacts that they current externalize. Bar the illegal importation of Milk Protein Concentrate (MPC) and mandating vigorous USDA and FDA regulation of MPC use in food products. Enact and enforce strong public health and safety measures to protect consumers from food-borne diseases such as BSE (mad cow) and e coli."
Signing on to the Declaration is not considered an endorsement of everything listed under the four platform areas. Rather, for those groups interested in engaging in further dialogue, four policy planks offer focal points through which they may enter into a dialogue. The four major issue planks are: commodities, sustainable bioenergy, small and minority farms, and food aid. The dialogue would continue to work toward further agreement on, and refinement of, specific policy options as we move into the actual farm bill debate next year.
These planks were informed by three 2006 international farmers' exchanges organized by the BSF campaign in Wisconsin, Alabama and Mexico City. These exchanges were designed to solicit the opinions of farmers from several countries, including the United States, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Guatemala, Malawi and Kenya on key aspects of agriculture and trade policy, and to reach consensus on specific policy options to build a more sustainable future for farmers and consumers globally. Highlights from these exchanges can be seen on the Project's Web site at www.globalfarmer.org.
If you have questions or request more information on BSF, please contact Dennis Olson at the Institute for Agriculture for Trade Policy. Dolson@iatp.org
Submitted by: R. Dennis Olson, senior policy analyst, Trade & Global Governance Program, Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy
2. Farm and Food Project
Over the past year, a diverse group of organizations – family farm, sustainable agriculture, conservation and environment, rural and community development, anti-hunger, nutrition, public health, faith, and others – has met under the auspices of the Farm and Food Policy Project (www.farmandfoodproject.org) to discuss the future of U.S. farm and food policy. They have created a declaration that represents the consensus wrought between farm, conservation, anti-hunger, nutrition and community food security organizations participating in the FFPP process. They are now soliciting sign-ons from organizations, associations, cooperatives but not individuals, businesses or farms. To view or sign their public declaration, which outlines a series of broad goals and specific measures that they believe will secure a brighter future for farmers and ranchers, for rural and urban communities, and for all of us who depend on a healthy food system, go to: http://www.farmandfoodproject.org/declaration.asp The template is available from Jessie Dowling and can be obtained by emailing her at jessie@foodsecurity.org. You may also call to sign on at (202)543-1300.
Submitted on behalf of the Farm Food Policy Project