October 8, 2024 – A new version of the Farm Bill proposed by the U.S. House of Representatives includes provisions that could harm federal nutrition programs, according to an editorial co-authored by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Eric Rimm.
The Farm Bill is a massive legislation package that includes funding for agricultural programs and nutrition programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Congress failed to extend or pass a new version of the bill before the 2018 bill—which was extended for a year in 2023—expired on September 30. Lawmakers have until the end of the year before most of the bill’s funding runs out, and they are not expected to act until after the election. The House advanced its version of the bill in May, but the Senate has not yet advanced its version.
The House bill includes harmful proposals, according to the editorial, which was published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) on October 2. Rimm, professor in the Departments of Epidemiology and Nutrition at Harvard Chan School, and co-author Mary Story, a professor at Duke University, wrote that the bill would introduce political interests into the process of developing the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, undermining the scientific integrity of recommendations that provide a foundation for school meal programs, SNAP, and other federal nutrition programs.
Rimm and Story have previously served on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC), an independent panel of experts that advises the USDA and Health and Human Services on updates to the Guidelines every five years. Under the House bill, Congress would partially appoint a new board that would set the DGAC’s scientific agenda. In addition, the bill would prohibit the DGAC from exploring questions around the impact of social and environmental factors on diets. These changes would increase the chances that special interests could influence future Guidelines, according to the authors.
They wrote that “politically motivated attempts to dismantle the current process have negative ramifications for all of us, but more critically they compromise access to healthy food for the millions of Americans who depend on federal nutrition programs.”
Read the CSPI editorial: Dietary Guidelines should be led by science—not politics
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