Word: vilsack
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Congratulations, Thomas Vilsack, on your recent appointment as America’s new Secretary of Agriculture. As you leave Harvard’s Institute of Politics this week for your more spacious new quarters on the National Mall, America’s farmers are doubtless foremost on your mind. But the success of your tenure will more likely be judged by its impact on the 98 percent of Americans who don’t farm but do eat—and to serve them your agency needs radical reforms...
...change this, Secretary-designate Vilsack? Your first step should be to appoint impartial officials who will challenge the USDA’s culture of complicity. The current Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, Charles F. Conner, is the former president of the Corn Refiners Association, and the agency’s Chief of Staff is the former chief lobbyist for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. As long as agency jobs serve as sabbaticals for industry lobbyists, the USDA will halt reforms...
...intensive confinement has also contributed to the public health crisis described above, created huge environmental waste, and reduced animals’ lives to mere cogs in a machine—all negative externalities of factory farming. And Mr. Vilsack, as you’ll know from sitting in on Ec 10 lectures during your time here at Harvard, taxing negative externalities is a better idea than subsidizing them...
...tackling all this seems like a challenge, Mr. Vilsack, look to the President you’ll be serving. In an October interview with Time Magazine’s Joe Klein, Barack Obama commented on a recent New York Times article by Michael Pollan, the nation’s foremost critic of factory farming. Obama agreed that America’s food system is broken, noting that “our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector … and [is] partially responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs...
...Barack Obama just nominated former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack as his agriculture secretary. What reform would you like to see in the USDA? I'd like a re-examination of the Farm Bill. I would like to see the Department of Agriculture clarify its message, so that it was saying eat more plants and fewer animals. I would love to hear that blared from the rooftops. I'd like to see stricter enforcement of antibiotic and hormone use in animals. In this country, you can't blame people for figuring out clever ways to make money, but if you charge...