Action Alert - We Need a Vote on the Child Nutrition Act

At the end of last week, the House Committee on Education passed their version of the Child Nutrition Act which as you may know by now governs the school lunch program. While not the greatest thing since sliced bread, the bill contains a lot of good stuff - better access to school meals, junk food out of school vending machines, a modest increase in funding for school nutrition programs, some support for connections between school programs and local farms and so on. Funding for the bill is still very much an issue.

You can read a clear, concise synopsis of the bill the House Committee on Education passed here.

The Senate's version came out of committee back in March. The current legislation expires at the end of September. If these bills are not put up for votes before then, we'll likely end up exactly where we were this time last year - with a one year extension of the incredibly weak law the program currently operates under and the loss of the good things in this legislation. The major obstacles are two-fold. First is the August recess and the second is the big headline kinds of legislation that Congress is also working on.

The Child Nutrition Act needs attention now. Please take a few minutes to call or write Congress. To make it easy, here are three websites which make sending an email on this legislation as painless as possible. Just pick your own personal favorite.

1. The Center for Science in the Public Interest makes it easy to send a letter to your representative in the House ( in our case, Peter King) urging him or her to fund this bill and vote on it before school is back in session. If you have five minutes to send this important letter, click here.

2. Slow Food's Time for Lunch campaign has also set up an easy way for you to email both Rep. King and our senators. Click here for a letter that asks for more funding for childhood nutrition.

3. Feeding America (a large hunger charity and network of food banks) has a letter asking that they fund the bill and bring it to a vote in the House - click here.

Sara