Ag policy it ain't, but ag must respond

A lot of things get dumped into the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) besides things that have strictly to do with the propagation of crops and husbandry of animals. Over the decades, social welfare programs, foreign policy points and small town construction projects all fall under USDA purview.

One such program is school lunches. It probably began with farm programs that buy up excess production to keep farm income strong. To get rid of it, USDA started parceling out the surplus to school lunch rooms, military bases and government hospitals. Ultimately, as the social do-gooders decided to reform America's diet in the schools first, USDA wound up dead in the middle of who should pay for school lunches and who should get them free or at reduced rates.

This had led to all kinds of dictatorial policies about what can and cannot be served in the school lunch program. Lost in all the healthful mandates is "willl the kids eat it?" Salad and vegetables get thrown out in school lunchroom trash in droves, but the diet-health radicals pride themselves on having served them.

Now another Johnny-come-lately has proposed outlawing processed meats like bologna, hot dogs and Spam in the school lunch program. They ignore the protein, zinc, iron and B-complex vitamins that come from these meats. They scream "excess salt and nitrates," period. Many are vegetarians who wouldn't eat meat no matter what it contained, so are fine ones to talk.

These meats have been made a great deal more healthy in recent years, and with tight school lunch budgets, are one of the only ways many districts can afford to serve meat. It wouldn't matter if they were serving sirloin steak or poached chicken breasts--if it's meat, stamp it out.

New York City led the way in forcing fast food restaurants to cut out saturated fats in fried foods. Other liberal interventionist groups have followed suit, but been unsuccessful on a federal or state level. They don't care if its public preference, or the replacement tastes so bad sales drop. The socialists want to impose their vision of what's good on all of us.

That's why they're sneaking in the back door through the school lunch program.