Free Republic

New York’s Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake school district has become the latest casualty in first lady Michelle Obama’s preferred lunch plan, dropping the menu after too many students complained of hunger. “[Food service manager Nicky] Boehm and her staff worked hard to implement the new regulations, but there were just too many problems and too many foods that students did not like and would not purchase,” said Assistant Superintendent Chris Abdoo about the National School Lunch Program in a statement reported by EAGNews.org. “Students complained of being hungry with these lunches and the district lost money.” Undaunted, the nattering nabobs from...

After a children’s magician said he was harassed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture over a permit for the rabbit he used in his act a few years back, Marty Hahne probably figured it couldn’t get any more intrusive than that. USDA Reportedly Orders Childrens Magician to Produce Disaster Plan for His...Rabbit (Credit: Marty Hahne web site) Silly, Marty… Now the Ozark, Mo.-based illusionist is saying the trick’s allegedly on him, as he notes in an email to blogger, Bob McCarty (emphasis added): My USDA rabbit license requirement has taken another ridiculous twist. I just received an 8 page letter...

See the website pages....

“The Pig Cafeteria” was an exhibit produced by the Department of Agriculture to educate farmers about new methods of farming and raising livestock — specifically, what to feed pigs so that they would be healthy and profitable.

The USDA Rural Development agency also touted a program to subsidize the Wine Barn LLC in “marketing and increasing production of its Kansas produced wine.” That cost $25,000. The USDA Rural Development also said it would hand $300,000 to the Mackinaw Trail Winery in Michigan, $100,000 for the Appleton Creek Winery in New York, $162,500 for the Old Westminster Winery in Maryland, and tens of thousands of dollars to wineries in Nebraska and Iowa. Liquor is the name of the game for the USDA, apparently – they’re also subsidizing the production of vodka in North Carolina, Bloody Mary mix in...

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "poison" as "a substance that is capable of causing the illness or death of a living organism when introduced or absorbed." The legal definition of the term is "any product or substance that can harm someone if it is used in the wrong way, by the wrong person, or in the wrong amount." The medical condition of poisoning is even broader: It can be caused by substances that are not even legally required to carry the label "poison." Therefore, can food become poisonous? Of course it can if it is infected, tampered with or altered...

I attended a conference in New York City on Thursday regarding the future of housing finance. While all the proposals were interesting, I asked if this will mutate into another Obamacare debacle at 13,000 pages or the 1,000 page plus immigration bill. And I warned that government policies will assert themselves to control and manipulate whatever is decided, regardless of how ironclad one thinks it will be. As an example, I mention the recent story where millionaires wanting to buy a home on Martha’s Vineyard are eligible for a zero percentage down payment mortgage from the USDA! The US Department...

I attended a conference in New York City on Thursday regarding the future of housing finance. While all the proposals were interesting, I asked if this will mutate into another Obamacare debacle at 13,000 pages or the 1,000 page plus immigration bill. And I warned that government policies will assert themselves to control and manipulate whatever is decided, regardless of how ironclad one thinks it will be. As an example, I mentioned the recent story where millionaires wanting to buy a home on Martha’s Vineyard are eligible for a zero percentage down payment mortgage from the USDA! The US Department...

- A strain of genetically modified wheat found in the United States fuelled concerns over food supplies across Asia on Thursday, with major importer Japan cancelling a tender offer to buy U.S. grain. Other top Asian wheat importers South Korea, China and the Philippines said they were closely monitoring the situation after the U.S. government found genetically engineered wheat sprouting on a farm in the state of Oregon. The strain was never approved for sale or consumption. Asian consumers are keenly sensitive to gene-altered food, with few countries allowing imports of such cereals for human consumption. However, most of the...

–The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced today that test results of plant samples from an Oregon farm indicate the presence of genetically engineered (GE) glyphosate-resistant wheat plants. Further testing by USDA laboratories indicates the presence of the same GE glyphosate-resistant wheat variety that Monsanto was authorized to field test in 16 states from 1998 to 2005. APHIS launched a formal investigation after being notified by an Oregon State University scientist that initial tests of wheat samples from an Oregon farm indicated the possible presence of GE glyphosate-resistant wheat plants. There are no...

(Cartoon by Glenn Foden) Where do food stamps come from? They come from taxpayers—certainly not from family farms. Yet the “farm” bill, a recurring subsidy-fest in Congress, is actually 80 percent food stamps and other government nutrition programs. The food stamps sweeten the farm deal for lawmakers, who admit that the combination works for their political purposes. As Heritage experts Daren Bakst and Diane Katz explain: The food stamp portion creates a reason for urban representatives to support farm subsidies, and for farm-state lawmakers to support food stamps. Talk of de-politicizing agriculture programs and welfare policy is met with...

Documents Reveal that Mexican Government Encourages Maximum Participation in U.S.-Funded Program (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released documents detailing how the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is working with the Mexican government to promote participation by illegal aliens in the U.S. food stamp program. The promotion of the food stamp program, now known as “SNAP” (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), includes a Spanish-language flyer provided to the Mexican Embassy by the USDA with a statement advising Mexicans in the U.S. that they do not need to declare their immigration status in order to receive financial assistance. Emphasized in bold and...

Welfare: As if being "food stamp president" weren't enough, Barack Obama's administration is partnering with the Mexican government to make sure Mexican nationals living in the U.S. don't miss out. Ay caramba! On Wednesday, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who's been pushing for reform of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack asking for details of our partnership agreement with Mexico to promote food stamp use, including whether we are looking the other way in cases of illegal aliens. The partnership agreement goes back to 2004, so Obama administration...

Welfare: Not content with having more Americans on food stamps than people in Spain, the Obama administration is ringing the dinner bell for illegal aliens. We'll feed you and not check your status. As we wrote last July, just as food stamp use has skyrocketed here under President Obama, so have marketing efforts to Hispanics under a partnership with Mexico. We dubbed the program "Fat and Furious" after the administration's gun-running program that also seemingly had worthy goals but had unclear motives and pernicious effects. "USDA and the government of Mexico have entered into a partnership to help educate eligible...

The New York Times reported Friday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has likely enabled massive fraud in the Pigford series of legal settlements, in which black, Hispanic, female and Native American farmers have claimed to be victims of past discrimination. The cost of the settlements, which could exceed $4.4 billion, is the result of a process that "became a runaway train, driven by racial politics, pressure from influential members of Congress and law firms that stand to gain more than $130 million in fees," the Times notes. Among those influential members of Congress was then-Senator Barack Obama, who...

A plan to drop a recognizable logo in this part of the country — the Forest Service’s iconic shield — generated so much outrage among the agency’s retirees that the idea has been dropped. In early January, the U.S. Department of Agriculture quietly introduced a policy to phase out all of its sub-agencies’ logos, including the Forest Service’s, and replace them with the USDA symbol. But that policy was kept so under wraps that not even Pacific Northwest forest supervisors were told. Some of them only heard about it in retrospect late last week — after the USDA had decided,...

It is an old saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but a record 18.7 million American schoolchildren would not have learned that lesson when they attended school in fiscal year 2012. That is because U.S. taxpayers—via the U.S. Department of Agriculture—were picking up the tab for their lunch. According to new data from the USDA, during the average school month in fiscal year 2012, 18.7 million students in U.S. high schools and grammar schools were given completely free lunches, courtesy of the department’s National School Lunch Program. That was up from the record of 18.4...

The federal government is tapping experts for its “B-24 Project.” It may sound like a new jet fighter, but in this case, “B-24” pertains to nutrition advice for infants and toddlers up to 24 months old. The project will produce “unified federal dietary guidance for children from birth to 24 months based on the best available science,” said Kevin Concannon, the Agriculture Department’s Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services. Concannon noted that current federal dietary recommendations are designed for people two years and older, and therefore the B-24 project “will fill an important gap.” …

(WASHINGTON) -- The sequester likely won’t cause meat and poultry shortages for a while — thanks, in part, to union negotiations and USDA inspectors’ lack of email access. Furloughs to Food Safety and Inspection Service inspectors at the U.S. Department of Agriculture could force meat and poultry plants to stop production — with no inspectors to approve products, they can’t be sold — but Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told the House Agriculture Committee that those furloughs probably won’t happen until later this year. “We are looking at a several-month period, if you will, before a furlough will be imposed,”...

Letter at link.