Trail and headed toward the candidate debate. Three are scheduled. Monday september 26, sunday october 9, and wednesday octob october 1 19. All will start at 9 p. M. Eastern and you can watch them on csp cspan. Tonight on the communicators we visited a Technology Show on capitol hill and spoke with several developers at start up Technology Companies including the top of the policy issues they would like to discuss with members of congress. It is an excellent year and why this committee nation. You are looking at 10 times, 15 times the frequencies of cellular operations. The biggest advantage of that, it gives you more bandwidth. Spin watch the communicators tonight on cspan2. Did you miss any of the republican or Democratic National conventions . You can go back and watch every moment, cspan. Org to find every speech from both conventions and watch ondemand whenever you want. At the top of the cspan. Org homepage click on it at the democratic or republican tension where youll find biggest from each day of both conventions. Youll find highlights near the top and scroll down and browse through every speaker. Click on the speech you want to watch and share on social media or email. Cspan. Org visionless copperheads a guide for finding video of any convention moment. Cspan greeted by cable, offered as a Public Service by your candidates provider. Both the president ial candidates are set to get the First National security briefings sometime this week according to news reports. We are joined on the phone by former acting director of the cia John Mclaughlin for some insight into what is inside of those briefings. For joining us. Erector, thank you for joining g us this morning. Guest good morning. Host how did thesefi briefings come about when did they first start . Guest they been doing briefings like this since 1952 when harry truman was president. Truman recognized that the candidate that year, dwight i doubt and allie stephenson, should be briefed on Foreign Policy before they walk into the oval office in order to be prepared for what was then a very tumultuous world. World its been going on all of the se time since. While i was in office i did this several times, greek candidate bush in 2000 been briefed johnca kerry a couple of times in 2004. And had been president clintons briefer after he was elected in the period when he was president elect. Host in this atmosphere of these reported russian hacks, how does cia director or a briefer ensure that briefing state classified first in terms of where its done and in termse of other people allowed in the room . Guest at the end of the day you are trusting the discretion of the candidate and other people who may accompany him. Typically i candidate in these briefings is not accompanied by a large number of people. There might be one or two close aides who are allowed to be there. At the end of the day, you are really just trusting theirtrusti discretion, patriotism, good judgment and order to maintainyw the confidentiality of what they are hearing host the are they hearing specific threats or general, brought issues of National Security . Guest in my experience its quite specific in terms of the threats and the assessment of them. Its less specific in terms of the precise nature of the sources, the identity of the sources that are contributing to those assessments. And also the methods by which intelligence acquires that information. So in other words, you really dont hold back on the bottom line, if you will. Heres whats happening inin china, and russia, iran and syria in quite clear terms but you dont go into all of the details about precisely how we acquired this and so forth. That comes after a person is elected president at which time of course they are entitled to anything you want to know from the intelligence world. Host ahead of election day or one of them being elected president , how often are thesegt briefings done . Guest it varies. Some president ial candidates, for example, president billnt clinton, or candidate bill clinton i think had one of these briefings for an hour or two. Senator kerrey as i recall had at least a few and maybe more. I certainly did too. There may have been some additional briefings with him. There are times when candidates have had four, five sessions with intelligence as the Campaign Goes a long. So the frequency and location of the briefings is negotiated with the sitting white house, between the candidates, represents and the white house so they can vary from one to many depending on what the two sides agree on. Host whether its been a president ial candidate or member of congress, have you ever hada concerns over briefing an, individual, and what would disqualify somebody from receiving one of these briefings . Guest i have not had concerns like that in the past,e in the few number of times ivee done this of course. What would disqualify someone . I think what would really disqualify them would be breaking the rules after the briefing. In other words, if after such a briefing they simply went out and talked openly about everything that had beente discussed in terms of, in terms of how violated the understanding that they were to be discreet about what they heard. That i think would ultimately disqualify them, but im not aware in the past of anything someone has done before the briefings that would disqualify them. Many people ask this question. They ask india of some of the things that donald trump has said, is it okay to briefing . I tend, heres how i see it. I think when someone becomes a president ial candidate, they are entitled to these briefings, and you simply have to trust that having reached that stage ofof political achievement, that theyre going to handle these briefings responsibly. Thats where i am on that. Host and i will direct our viewers at our listeners to a piece she wrote about a month ago that posted on what comes first intelligence briefing will look like from John Mclaughlin. Is it director clapper that will do this first briefing . Do you have an idea of when that might be this week transferred i dont know when it will be. It will be director clapper who organize it. I dont know that he will do it personally. He may. Event instances in the past would have had the Intelligence Community has done this personally. That i believe was the case with candidate bill clinton. Back all those years. But director clapper, he will organize it and he will designate who will do the briefings. Could be himself, could be somebody designates, could be c one person, could be a team of people. Its been done both ways and i dont know precisely how that is going to happen or when it will happen. Host former acting director of the cia and the Bush AdministrationJohn Mclaughlin, thank you so much for the insight this morning. Guest thank you bill spent part of a summit on food and Public Health. Georgetown law center on new institute for national and Global Health law posted this. This portion o could a Panel Discussion on access to produce an healthy foods. This is just under one hour 20 minutes. Are you ready likes all right. Hello, teen. I know people are still trickling in from the break budding interest of time because we have this because we have establishethis type of spam, let started as people coming. Also want to say we just had this panel about sugar and obesity and we did put out cookies during the break. Those cookies were made by an organization in d. C. Called together we bake. Its a group that takes women who are coming out of being incarcerated who dont have job skills and helps train them and not only gives them skills but confidence in other necessary tools for getting their lives back on track. So they are full of sugar and butter and they are delicious but you can feel good about them. I just wanted to add that in. So we are ending the panel, the ending part of the comforts with a panel about access to produce a nutrition to give me say what i would ending the conversation, access to healthy food is among the most fundamental of the social determinants to health and you think we should talk about this first. Without access to healthy food, all the other conversations are not quite as important. When we started to think about what does it mean to ask us to produce we realized it was one of the most holistic all encompassing topics we should talk about today. Access to healthy food and produce in particular is really about all the of the issues that right now and they selection cycle. Were talking about the economy. You dont have enough money you cant afford healthy food. By that same token, Food Production both the production peace, the restaurant peace our huge parts of the American Economy and huge part of our labor force. Access to healthy food is about immigration. If foreignborn workers make up about 90 of our seasonal workforce, so we cant let that happen ask itself if it ever dont talk about who is going to pick that food and get it to market. Access to healthy food is about the environment. We heard a lot about concerns about water usage in Food Production. Its estimated that as much as 80 of this nations consumptive water use issues for agriculture. Went to think about those kinds of issues that you want to access to healthy food. I could go on and on about this topic but i wont because your speakers are about to do that. Im going to defer reading their bios. The each have really interesting jobs, and does account in each of the panel on the upper like to do what you do. I suggest, i really encourage you to read their bios. And without i will introduce our first speaker. We will go down the line and start with manel, please. [applause] let me get myself sorted out. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for sticking with us. We are a small but mighty crowd at this point. I appreciate that you all still here. I am from kingsland solution where an National Nonprofit based in oakland, california. We focus on helping communities address the tribes of chronic disease using law and policy. Today im going to talk specifically about how we can use law and policy to increase consumption of fruits and vegetables. Im going to talk about this topic in the context of a new collaborative project that im part of. Its the Healthy People 2020 law and Health Policy project. This is my First Technology test. Lets see if i can change the slide. Excellent. So these are the partners in this project. Its Cdc Foundation and the line Health Policy project is under the umbrella of hhs Healthy People initiative. Im sure many of you are familiar with this but it is a sciencebased tenure national, an initiative that provides sciencebased International Objectives for improving the health of all americans. The purpose of the law and Health Policy project is to provide in depth analyses of evidencebased legal interventions and strategies to improve the health in a series of reports. The project is open to issue about 10 to 15 reports on a wide range of topics from dental health to hospital acquired infections. One of those reports is going to be specifically on using law and policy to increase fruit and vegetable consumption. So lets dig into the fruit and veggie report. Im going to try to use as many times as possible throughout his 15 minutes. So the Healthy People 2020 identified increase consumption of fruits and vegetables by individuals two years and older as a leading indicator for over all population health. The report were developing provides a summary to influence the availability and offer a, fruits and vegetables, particularly and settings wired access by the general public. And highlight examples of, wide range of sectors institutional policies, federal, state, local, tribal policies, all of which are likely to increase fruit and vegetable consumption. What we are trying to do although some possible in every case, is tied to policy the evidence that the policy works. One of the things we have learned from the process of developing this report is that the evidencebased related to how law and policy influences public of a generally, fruits and vegetables consumption specifically needs to be strengthened. Doctor angell did a good job of talking about the Health Disparities and so im not going to dig into what the problem is that were trying to address here but i do want to highlight a couple things that are specific to fruit and vegetable consumption. Currently fewer than one in four American Adults consumes the recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables. And one in 10 children eat no fruits and vegetables at all in a day, which is kind of amazing. The rates of consumption across the board for americans is a poor but its lower in communities of color and underserved communities. This is as has been discussed earlier today, due to the fact that these communities do not have access to healthy food generally, and fruits and vegetables specifically. The Research Evidence does show us that there is a Clear Association between access to healthy food, particularly fruits and vegetables, and Better Health outcomes such as lower rates of all of the things doctor angola laid out earlier today. So i could not come to Georgetown Law Center and the site professor lawrence cost and. He is cited here. We were looking at the universe of policies that can address fruits and vegetable consumption to it is the aspect in the things we talked about today can impose bad public policy. So to organize our thinking we used this framework which has been developed by the professor to think about the different strategies and try to put them into some context. We also looked at the different settings where possible to implement policy related to increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables. And thsettings very broadly our government settings, School Settings which are just mentioned as an important kind of access point, Early Childhood setting, retail settings, worksites and generally community settings. So im going to give you kind of a whirlwind tour of the policies that we looked at in the 20 settings and im going to drill down in 2 two to examples that i think are particularly interesting. In the community and government setting, obviously that covers just a wide range of things. That kind of things we looked at in terms of different policies and also in terms would evidencebased is, where zoning regulations, local policies for Farmers Markets and community gardens, local ordinances, regulations of restaurants. Dr. Jacobson talked about childrens meals at fast food restaurants, making the default choice the healthy choice. He can do to local policy. Nutrition policies for food banks, this would be more of an institutional policy, and food procurement policies for Government Agencies and properties. This is one i want to take a minute to highlight. In 2011, hhs and the General Services administration with a lot of support from the centers for Disease Control issued the health and sustainability guidelines for federal concessions and vending operations. I know, i can just everybodys faces, i know this sounds incredibly boring but this is a really interesting policy. The guidelines came about because president obama met with ceos from major corporations about their worksite wellness programs, and he wanted to put something in place that was similar for federal employees. So we passed the office of Personnel Management to develop similar plans for the federal workforce, and as part of that effort, the General Services administration, worked with other agencies to develop foodservice procurement guidelines for federal facilities. So these are guidelines that vendors are either encouraged or required to follow if they want to contract with the federal government to serve food on government property. These are the types of things that are covered by the guidelines. They are obviously nutritional standards but theyre also recommendations, which could be interpreted as requirements, or pricing, healthier food more cheaply and unhealthy food. For promoting and marketing healthy food in a way that we dont typically see. And guidelines related to sustainability, environmentally responsible practices using organic products, sourcing food locally. I will just note that the cdc is in the process of updating these guidelines and they are going to be, the revised version will be issued probably later this year. I think that this is a really elegant intervention because it has brought impact. It sets an example for states and municipalities to follow but its not a regulatory intervention. So it avoids the nanny state brand that Public Health so often receives. As the gsa says on its website, this increase is choice not restrict choice but the guidelines are designed to make healthy choices more accessible, more appealing and more affordable. They are not designed to restrict choices. Imm or so im all for regulation. I love it. I want to see more of it, but i think this is an excellent middleground tickets into vendors, choosing the consumer with the federal government being a very big consumer insane as a consumer this is what we want and this is what we need you vendors to do. I will not run for all the statistics but ill just highlight the National Parks statistics. You can think about the concessions at the National Parks. In 2014, 219 Million People visited the National Parks. It all of those concessions are some healthy food, that has a huge impact on just a social norm would expect in terms of the food that is going to be offered in served. You are some Important Health equity considerations. I think that may not be immediately apparent from this type of policy. So one is that these policies, sorry, the guidelines are relevant for institutionalized populations that are being served food under the auspices of the federal government. Its important to note that shift workers who are working on off hours on the weekend may not have access to a cafeteria during their shifts and have to rely on vending machines. So for them having vending machines that are serving healthy food may be particularly important. I do think that this policy, of which im a great champion, and does need to be evaluated. There isnt much evaluation dated. It was intimated in 2011 and so across implemented in 2011 so i think there should be more funding for our policies work. Moving on to the retail setting, these are the policies that we looked at in the retail setting, many of them have been already discussed today. Federal level wake and snap at the federal level but also i think more prominently at the state level healthy food finest initiatives and local zoning ordinances. I want to flag one very interesting Tribal Initiative which is closer related to the panel that we just had. This is the healthy to me act of 2014. It didnt come up at all in the panel that we just had such as trees, folks heard of this piece of legislation . Okay, good or im glad im going to to talk about it. The act as often as the Navajo Nation junk food tax. According to the Indian Health service one in three novels suffer diabetes the entire Navajo Nation been labeled if he doesnt by the usda, an estimated 10 Grocery Stores serve the entire 27,000mile reservation. So in about 2010, community activists, Public Health experts who are living on the reservation decided they would want to take a bold step to change the food environment. After three years of the controversy in 2014, president , Navajo Nation president then shall he was present at the time, past this healthy dine act of 2014. Allow levitt at 2 sales tax on food and beverages of minimal to no nutritional value. Its effective and soda tax but its broader than that and also covers junk food. The definitions within the tax, within the legislation are very broad, very ambitious. It also at the same time the Tribal Council passed a resolution which is a local tribal law that removed the 5 sales tax on fruits and vegetables as a complementary measure. Proceeds of the healthy dine act are earmarked for committee was projects, including farming, vegetable gardens and convenience stores, stalking healthy products. So in terms of impact, whats great about this piece of legislation is its a Community Driven solution. The latest of this would be Community Advocates alliance. Its a change the conversation survey for those of us federal interest in looking at policy and regular approaches. It was the precursor to what has happened in berkeley. It created a source of revenue for health and wellness programs. But that said, its very complicated. There are concerns about the regressive nature of the tax. Over city of people who live on the Navajo Nation live on under 35,000 a year. We just reported that difficult to implement the tax. More Technical Assistance is needed to make folks feel like its been a success. Continuing the whirlwind tour, the last two settings that we looked at was the early childcare and education setting, in the school setting. In the ecd setting, we looked at the child and adult put your program because it reimburses childcare providers for 3. 3 comfort enemies for 3. 3 million infants and children nationwide. So the nutrition standards which are just been updated are incredibly important in terms of the nutrition, particularly for low income children, young children. Im going to end by spending a minute talking about the healthy hundred free kids act. Thats come up a number of times. Its a piece of legislation that covers school meals, school practices, school competitive foods which are the facets on school grounds. Its very important for folks to know that the healthy hundred free kids act was up for reauthorization in 2015 and it is currently being debated right now. The house is considering a bill that would weaken the current nutrition standards and make eligible to acquire but for the program significantly more onerous your their has been a remarkable progress in terms of what the school patrician environment looks like from the passage of the 2010 healthy hunger free kids act to know, and they would be, it would be a huge step back for Public Health in just the health of the nation if we were to cut back on the standards that we put in place for child nutrition in schools. That is currently the case with the house, the proposed legislation. If this is something youre interested in, the Pew Charitable trust has a lot of information about that, about this on their website and i would encourage folks to get involved and Pay Attention to whats happening right now with the healthy hunger free kids act. So in terms of get off my soap box and go back to the portrait entrance of the report, we look at this very extensive landscape of loss and policies, federal, state, local, tribal, institutional and a number of things that have rose to the surface. Its amazing how many policy levers that are to promote fruit and vegetable consumption. Its really, thereve been remarkable progress across a number of major federal programs, wit, school patrician, s. N. A. P. Over the last decade and its really important that the standards do not get compromised or rolled back. Theres also a need for policy mapping of state and local policies. Theres no one place people can go to figure out all of these different policy levers. And, finally, when we started this endeavor just put up your, which we started this project we thought it would be really easy to find policies that have a clear evidencebased that shows that the policy has led to increased consumption of fruits and vegetables. That was not the case. Its not because there are not Great Research is doing Great Research but there needs to be more fun of this type of research. As one of the panelists this said, we really know what works. I will and better and im hoping some of you guys will ask us questions, and i really again, thank you for staying with us for the whole day. [applause] now we will turn to the mike lavender whos joining us again from the group of concerned scientists. Good afternoon. Thank you to the onion institute for having me here and having such a great conference to be. Im thrilled that so many people here this afternoon to talk with and i think its been a great panel so far. I am the washington represented at the union of concerned scientists on the food in a government program. Ucs is a National NonprofitAdvocacy Organization based in cambridge, massachusetts. We also an office here which is almost as big as tha that in cambridge. We are founded in the late 60s. About 20 years ago the food and a private program at ucs was established. So today the food and Environment Program is deeply involved in advocacy around debate such as public nutrition and health issues, and also on the farm side of things, farming practices and other issues. What uncle to talk about is how the union of concerned scientists with a couple of other groups is taking these issues that many of which been talked about today into the president ial election in trying to raise them. I think weve heard from the last panel and kind throughout the day we are to consumer stand, where the voters stand, where the people in general stand on these issues . Encore to talk about that and how it relates to policy. So you can call this president ial a lot of, this president ial election a lot of Different Things but one of the things i dont think you can call it is outwardly focused on food and agriculture issues. Its not something you hear a lot in the debate sphere as youryoure watching at night. The farreaching effects of agriculture and food, particularly on public and individual health, jobs and the economy, and on the environment, its striking to me that talk of food and agriculture and issues related to the or confined to a few niche issues and to very select states and districts drop the president ial campaign trail. So partially in response to this, in 2015 the union of concerned scientists along with a feelgood clients and could cause actual launched a campaign called the plate of the Union Campaign. The plate of the Union Campaign has a simple goal. The goal is to spur all president ial candidates to talk about food and agriculture issues throughout the president ial election process. But its also to encourage the next president to take bold steps to reform our food system once they take office. We want the next president , whoever it is to hold me take office with a clear understanding of all the complex issues that invents disgusted and with the opportunities for success are but want to highlight the great amount of support that comes from the American Public and where they stand on these issues. I think its obvious for us in this room the importance of everything weve covered today. Its almost Second Nature to us. We see the positives and negatives. We also hear a lot about how food is United States in the agriculture is United States and is a hot issue right now. Thats true but where does the American Public stand. Todays conference is focusing on legal opportunities that facilitate better food and Better Health. The American Public plays a tremendously important role. Their opinions in the policymaking process and overly influencing a policy is made, how quickly it is a and whether or not it is made. The American Public plays a significant role in this process. So last years plate of the union launched in october 2015. We released research that was done by a bipartisan research that was done but Lake Research partners and bellwether research consulting. What the research that was American Voters have a surprising about of familiarity with food and agriculture issues as we in this room would think of them. They agreed that our food system is in meeting everyones needs and that stronger food policies are needed to ensure that all americans have access to healthy, affordable food. I want to highlight a couple things we found throughout this research. Voters were concerned about the availability of healthy food but even more so they are concerned about the affordability of healthy food. In fact, the number one priority, what we saw throughout this, particularly for millennials and individuals of color, was that healthy food needs to be more affordable. Voters indicated theyre very concerned about the overuse of antibiotics. Something that voters volunteered. This wasnt something that was an option but something that they willingly volunteered that interview our food system is based entirely on profits and on money, that it has no incorporation of Health Outcomes with individual. That was Something Else interesting particularly because it was volunteered. Another thing we found was there are very concerned that five at the worst eight paying jobs in america are in the food system. Job such as farm workers, meatpackers and fast food workers. I think finally just to finish out the highlights and perhaps most applicable to us than the rest of my talk, they inherit recognized the overlap between and the basic connection between environmental policy, food policy and Foreign Policy. They seemed very intuitive to them at the three should Work Together and it should be integrated to create Better Solutions for everyone. That was something the American Public seem to get pretty well but at least in my opinion isnt necessarily reflected in the policies that make up our food system in washington. Many of the issues discussed today, voters are aware of them. They find them very persuasive and recognize that they are interconnected. So from these findings the plate of the Union Campaign took these and work with several other groups and develop a fivepoint called action for president ial candidates, loosely based on different policy buckets. The first is the plate of the Union Campaign is calling on president ial candidates and next president to keep, stand with working families by committing to ensuring that all americans have access to healthy of audible food. To keep children healthy by preventing companies are marketing junk food to children and to ending subsidies that support processed junk food. Making Foreign Policy work for all farmers so reform agricultural policies, subsidies and supports to ensure fair markets and pricing for diverse farmers of all sizes, the most healthy diet and so sport sustainable, diversified and organic farming in all committees. Protect food and farm workers. In the fair labor standards exemptions, eliminate some minimal wage for restaurant workers. Finally, to keep antibiotics working by banning the practice of feeding antibiotics to farm animals that are not sick. We are communicating all of those principles and some of the topline findings from our research to all president ial candidates but today i want to pull out a couple that relates to our panel. Two of the most resident messages and the research that we did which are the availability of healthy affordable food and also the impact of the food system on food and farm workers on those individuals who are on the front lines throughout the country. As we covered earlier today, just the speaker before me, there are literally hundreds, probably even thousands of ways to increase the availability of healthy food across all different spectrums. That are no shortage the policy levers that ca could be pulled increase the opportunities for individuals. Congress is in the midst of child nutrition reauthorization act. Child nutrition reauthorization act. The farm bill is another opportunity thats out there. Or youre listening to doug obrien speak, his comments about interagency collaboration come examples such as the Healthy Food Financing Initiative that hold promise, i was particularly through dreams they could agree or another, that way of thinking of interagency collaboration is kind of baked into the administration now, and that that could be something that carries over. I wanted to conclude with a brief example about the necessity for the conductivity and integration that we need to see more broadly across the government in terms of policies and food and agriculture. So we really know how close that an individual health are links. Specific example, diabetes rates in this country have quadrupled over the past three decades, about 30 million americans suffer from diabetes, and about 95 of those type ii diabetes. Type ii diabetes is a diet related form of the disease. So diets high in sugar, salt and fat and low in fiber, vitamins, minerals such as wic and whole grains increase the risk of type ii diabetes. But what people largely eat is depend on access to various foods. Recently a colleague of mine at the union of concerned scientists released a first of its kind study that examined diabetes rates across the country and compared them to local access to healthy food. What she found was that there was a direct correlation in all u. S. Counties between physical proximity to healthy Food Retailers and diabetes rates. If there was greater physical proximity to healthy Food Retailers, they were lowering of diabetes in that county. It seems intuitive that this was the firs first time a study liks have been conducted. If you put a healthy food retail store in a community that did not have it already for particularly in committees of color, those impacts, the resulting decrease in rates of diabetes were compounded in certain areas. So if youre looking just at that that would lead one to believe that the increase the amount of healthy food on processor, corner store shelves but thats the solution to altar boy making a healthier public. But if our goal is for better food and Better Health, that solution misses half the point. This seems be a tendency when talking about equity in access in terms of nutrition to focus private on the delivery side of the sales side of the equation. This is of course valid but theres seemingly less attention given to the other side of the equation, which is access to equity for food and farm workers. So broadly, jobs in the Food Industry can be divided into three different buckets. Restaurant jobs, processing jobs and jobs that are based on farms. The restaurant sector is by far the largest followed by the processing sector, and then followed up by the farm sector. In the Restaurant Industry one of the major issues that weve seen is that some minimal wage has been stagnant for over 20 years at 2. 13 an hour which has a huge impact on the economy. In processing jobs one of the biggest issues for workers can be line speed and resulted issues with repetitive motion illness. For jobs on the targets of some of the most pressing issues center around labor law exemptions, primary exemptions for child farmworkers. Children as young as eight have been found working in farm fields. Some groups estimate 70 of all the children working in the United States work in agriculture. A particularly sobering reality is that often those who harvest food from the fields themselves cant in turn afford the food that theyre harvesting at the grocery store. Theyre not as connected as they should be. Whether those policies are in the financial sector, food or farm, each issue is individually important but its also important for leaders, whether theyre in government or nonprofit organizations or the private sector to identify opportunities across the board for conductivity. Thinking outside the box and looking for ways to bring voices together those are the things we urge trying to promote we are promoting those five points. Particularly for conductivity for president ial candidates because we see that as a way to move forward the conversation where True Solutions can be found. Thank you four last but not least we are going to welcome carlin. Lets just begin by thanking lisa and the conference organizers and the Global Social enterprise initiative. This is really good. [laughter] okay so im the only one standing between you and cocktail hour so buckle up. We are going to do this fast. It occurred to me since im going last, im thinking i have to follow deborah and peggy and dan and donna and there is no beer. Fine. Alright. I want to pick up where you left off a little bit thinking about this complex issue strategically. Yes, i know know we are supposed to be talking specifically about equity and access as it relates to produce. I want to step back and take this up to 60000 feet and try to take this all the way back to where we were this morning during the conversation i think their political experience, the political experience is very important for this particular conversation. Its my understanding that in 2008 a conference Something Like this led to a document that informed president ial transition. Is that correct . Right, in healthcare. Show of hands, who has worked on a president ial transition in any form at all . Okay so you will know what im talking about a little bit. What i want to do is take a lot of what we heard and put it into a business and then a political and ultimately a strategic frame. Before i do that, im going to go through section i call bios and biases. Im going to tell you a little bit about who i am, what ive done and what i allegedly care about. I begin by saying i am in on reconstructed, unrelenting capitalist. My wife would tell you im a taxcutting democrat and she would say that with concern. More seriously and suddenly, i believe in the power of capitalism and worry about market failure and theres no place for you see the market feeling as badly in certain parts of our food policy and food policy environment. Sometimes i look back and i look across the landscape and i think to myself, we would immediately declare war if people imposed some of this on us but unfortunately weve done it to ourselves. We understand the data and im not going to go over a huge amount of that. I want to talk first about the business piece of all of this because i do think its particularly relevant as it relates to the access and equity challenge. In doing so i want to tell you a bit of a story. As you may have heard earlier, we are are involved in sustainable and regenerative livestock production. We run goats in virginia and northern alabama. Something happened to me on a way to regenerative livestock production and we found ourselves in the produce business. Another quick show of hands, who has worked on a farm, grew up on a farm or worked on a farm for any amount of time . So you know this is the hardest work that youre ever going to do. It is a very difficult business and we learn that very quickly. We purchased a commercial Apple Orchard that had been conventionally farmed or chemically farmed and i quickly found myself in the middle of this horrible business. Absolutely awful. By awful i mean, we were getting 40 cents a bushel for the apples we harvested. A bushel is about this square thing. Forty cents. Fill that full of apples and we got 40 cents. It does not take an mba to figure out that is bad business. I took one look at our p l after one year and i said this isnt going to work, were getting out. It was interesting what we learned over the course of just the two years we were in that business. First the label market as it relates to farming is a train wreck. It is an absolute disaster. It is very difficult to manage the labor issues associated with the production of produce in this country and unfortunately its not getting better. Its getting worse. We will get to that in a minute. So back to the apple or to her, as it turned out the Michigan Apple crop failed that year so are aggregator processor came to us and said well michigan guys are going to come. I said thats great. I ended up selling all of these apples to mcdonalds for the slices in happy meals. Kids from detroit are eating my 40 cents a bushel apple and guess what they were paying for them. Okay. All that to say ive learned the very most important business lesson that there is to learn in agriculture which is the way to make a small fortune in agriculture is to start out with a large one. So thats the business hat that i wear. I want to say a word or two in terms of background about the policy work that weve done over the course of the past ten or 15 years. Weve worked on, exclusively in d. C. Worked on child nutrition reauthorization, food modernization, farm bills and in the farm bills we worked very hard on staff reform and staff incentives we spent years working on immigration and all of these related questions go to the equity and access challenge. So to take this back into the political frame and thats i was asking if anyone had ever done a transition, when you do the review and you come back and the team gets the metals from the agencies and youre looking at the situation and how to things sit, where things stand relative to what it is the presidtelect is seeking to accomplish, you take those memos and you read them through a particular analytic and political frame. The Due Diligence has been done that comes back and now you have to make decisions. What i want to offer is an analytic framework by which any one of you who happens to work on the president ial transition, whoever that president , whoever she may be, that you have a way of looking at the challenge of equity and access. I would begin by saying we dont have an access problem at all. We dont. What is the problem that we have . Whats the real problem that we have . We have a poverty problem. Okay, the only thing that you need to get good food in this country are the three things that pretty much everyone in this room has. A cell phone a credit card and a fixed address. If you have those three things you are fine. Theres no access problem. I really want us to focus on the poverty problem that we have because so much of what we have talked about today and so much of the challenge that we face is symptomatic of the fundamental poverty challenge that we face in america and that is getting worse instead of getting better. The second problem or the second feature of the analysis can roughly be summarized in what i call the unfortunate crisis of a braindead incentive system. By that i mean is weve talked about today, we know know bad food equals bad health but too much of a wellintentioned antihunger policy exacerbates existing problems and we talked a little bit about that. From a policy perspective, what we have are a set of robust skill but to some degree and edges. Were not actually solving the underlying problem. You think about the food waste challenge, especially in produce. We have seen this, the neighbor down the road last summer, he left 15 or 20 grant of food in the field. Think about that. Fifteen or 20 grand of food in the field. Thats a huge amount. It just went to waste. He pouted under. I suppose you could make the argument that he was regenerating the soil but think about all of the poor people who couldve been fed by that 15 or 20,000 that sat rotting in the field. The food waste problem is a great example of the fact that we have a rain dead incentive program. We see the rise of ugly produce campaigns in europe. Those are some efforts that we have to try with to deal with this very basic challenge but we still, i think think if we are in the agency review. Had we organize things at treasury in hhs and elsewhere to deal with this very fundamental incentive problem that we have. Our incentive programs are upside down. We reward the wrong things. So what we do Going Forward . We keep the anti property challenge and type poverty challenge at the center. We have to ask to strategic question of every food policy proposal. Heres the first. Is this policy designed to combat poverty that is the source of the challenge that we are addressing . Second, will this policy catalyze on this longterm private sector marketbased solutions that promote health and Wealth Creation. Why am i twinning health and Wealth Creation . Any intelligence model of sustainable have to have those two. If you look at produce, if you are not having a Health Conversation and a wealth conversation you are just going to end up with bandaids and bandages. Youre not going to fix the problem. If the answer to the second question is yes but the first question is no, then we have this fatal disconnect to an otherwise useful policy prescription and its ability to drive structural, societal change. I would say we are still talking about politics. At the end of the day, good enough is pretty much all im going to have. I want to pivot a little bit to some of the comments that were made earlier because it goes to the environment moving forward. In dougs point about interagency collaboration is great. I think its a feature of the fact that the Obama Administration has, in in my view, done more to move the culture of our public policymaking in a progressive way in food issues than any in the second half of the 20th century or the 21st. Michelle obama has singularly begun to change our society in ways that very, very few people have been able to do and i think we are in the very important position of starting to move the needle on winning the argument. Basic rule in politics, first you win the argument then you win the vote. We are starting to win the argument. We have a long way to go but some of the stuff that doug was talking about, a lot of the initiatives that my colleagues on this panel have been discussing have been funded as a result of the culture change happening. We were talking at the beginning of our wj. All of those signals tell us that the culture is moving. What we have to think about in the next presidency are ways in which we can build upon the successes that has been established and address the critical questions that i highlighted. The way we do that is by creating an enabling environment that allows us to answer yes to both of the two critical questions that i raised a moment ago. The way to do that is to promote, as we talked about, promote what works. At a time when Government Resources are limited its critical that programs we fund are effective and achieve results. We have to rely on evidence will we make decisions on how to use funds and we need dated driven decisionmaking. Its absolutely critical. We have to ensure that what we do in the activities that we undertake help make sure we are not creating a situation where we are program rich but system four. Thats the kind of systemic change inside the federal government that can move an awful lot of policy. Thats about getting our thinking to a place that will allow us to be system rich so the system can then begin to drive the kind of change based on the questions i outlined earlier. I think enabling the environment should focus on using three keywords and thats to build, to invest and redirect. Here are the highlights of three examples of ways in which we can think about the current policy environment. Lets think about snap incentives, the double up Food Box Program and allowing for increased purchasing power for fruits and vegetables at Farmers Market by low income snap beneficiaries. That has a net economic benefit because we know for every 9 benefit for every 5dollar snap purchase, i believe thats the figure. Folks can rule that incorrect me if im wrong. There is a net economic benefit to snap. When we use double up food box which is a publicprivate collaboration, all the sudden youre drying drying an awful lot more of that produce that my neighbor left in the fields, your your drying that into the market because theres an opportunity through the Farmers Market program to bring that to customers that otherwise didnt exist. Hes making more money and theyre getting healthier, the getting access to lowercost produce. Wealth, health. There are a whole host of tax opportunities that we have. Im not going to spend a lot of time there. I do think in terms of investment, i think one of the areas we could benefit from is increased investment in organic cropland. I think 1 of of u. S. Cropland is currently in organic production and we could make investments that would accelerate the conversion to organic. We have seen organic go from zero to 30 billion. That is just the market acting as only one policy driver that is the usda organic driver. Think about the impact that has had just on the environment alone let alone the access people have had to healthier produce. We should redirect, build, invest and redirect. I redirect i mean subsidies. Speaking of braindead incentive structures, we all know the drill there. I think theres a way that the next administration can think about using policy to be creative about how to deal with the challenges that we face both environmentally and from a health and access perspective. If you think of lettuce production, i think the figure is Something Like 300,000 acres are used to produce lettuce in this country. 300,000 acres of land. Why . It makes no sense to me. One of the other things we did is we started a project of 3000 squarefoot greenhouse and we produced all kinds of fantastic greens from kale and spinach and a bunch of different kind of lettuce. Ink about what we would be able to do if we could take a portion of the terrestrial production, transfer it to greenhouse base production using recirculating technology. We could take the land that is currently in use and represents a bio security risk, we could take that land out of production and use it for carbon sequestration. That might be a good idea. Then all of a sudden the farm that holds the land has two sources of income instead of one. Health with the environment, wealth of the farmer. The problem is we dont have a price on carbon so quit sequestering it doesnt do any good. Thats a great example of a braindead incentive system. Now, you walk over the hill and people will talk about how they cant price carbon for all kinds of different reasons. At the end of the day its really impractical for us not to do that. We could make so much money if we did. So many people would be so much better off. Sugar. Im not saying we should treat it like tobacco, however, ill leave it at that. So look, let me wrap it up and simply say the two strategic westerns that i asked, how do do we address the fundamental underlying problem of access and affordability to create a situation that improves health and drives Wealth Creation. We need to realign our incentive systems in many ways that weve discussed in use data and evidence to do it. We need to build on what works and invest in scale what works to redirect away from wasteful spending into things that do work and we will then begin to have the structure in place that will allow us to move forward to have the kind of system that we are hoping to achieve. With that its cocktail hour. [applause] im going to keep you for 15 more minutes because we have a great group with us and we can ask some questions. I have some questions that im also happy to defer to the group if people want to start. Otherwise i will go first. Okay so my first question is for monell. We heard from the panel about the gap in response of legislation and that our legislators dont follow a good scientific it recommendation and i think that struck me because as a personal anecdote, i have a fouryearold in Public Schools and i was i was very excited because they serve breakfast lunch and two snacks. Because its a title i school, its free for all students and its a wonderful way for kids who might not have had breakfast or lunch to eat that day. I got the menu. Breakfast every day is wholegrain something but its usually wholegrain cinnamon toast crunch. Masking whole grains and sugar is not necessarily healthy. They are required to have a fruit and vegetable but in the morning they usually get a juice instead. Its usually grape juice or fruit punch. I sent a message to the catering unit and they wrote me back and they said were following the dietary guidelines and we dont have to count sugar. Thats not something we look for. So with all that Michelle Obama has done to make food assessable , theyre still in school and something is missing with the science. Im wondering the next administration to continue with whats being done, how do we get the legislatures to hear the science more . I followed the debate around the tomato paste. I understand theres a lot of politics but how do we as lawyers and Public Health advocates, how do we make the science really matter . Thats a great question. I have a 5yearold in Public Schools and sometimes she does lunch and she very gleefully tells me she gets chocolate milk which is like nails on a chalkboard. So i think there is still a lot more that could be done but a lot has been done in terms of child nutrition and we definitely need to celebrate what has been done. I think that there are two answers to your question. The child nutrition act and healthy hunger for kids act and all the areas that weve looked at in terms evidencebased, its probably has one of the strongest Evidence Base so because a lot of folks and researchers and cdc folks have been looking at how the rollout of the nutrition regulations have gone, its actually one of the places where we can really show that kids health has improved with these regulations even though theyre not perfect. Thats why we feel its really important that we do not rollback those standards which is whats being debated at the moment. I think Public Health and the school food folks need to get better at explaining that benefits and explaining and encouraging local School Districts to go beyond whats required in the federal regulation system once they do that. You sending an email to your school food director is fantastic. We need to get more parents, pta, wellness policy parents involved in really looking at what their kids are eating and encouraging local School Districts to strengthen whats being offered, going back to the panel, the federal government can do an awful lot but really i think the best role for the federal government is setting up baselines in the context of nutrition and encouraging places like new york city and places all across the country to go further than the baseline. I think this is a case where that could definitely happen. Thank you. We have some more question. Im going to throw out one more and then will go to the audience. This is a question for mike and marlon. When you look at some of the ways that workers are treated, the way theyre compensated and denied healthcare, its very sobering and depressing. As a consumer, its almost impossible to go to the grocery store. You dont know what youre buying. You dont know how it got there. The legal structure around Worker Compensation laws and worker safety are poor, as you mentioned for a farmer. So understanding that those laws , that is one area where the law could really be used to improve Public Health and strengthen our system. Can you. Guest what a goal could be in the first hundred days in office for the president in terms of starting the conversation . And then as an employer, you have very low potential profit margins, what do you do . Youre really at a hardpressed position to treat workers equitably. What do you do . s so i think thats a great question and thinking in terms of the next administration and what are those quick actionable things, specifically in this area and the next hundred days that they could pull the lever on or start a conversation on, i wont pretend to know the specific regulations that should be expanded or drawn back, but i think one of the most important things is talking to the Transition Team of an administration for the next administration once they take office in showing the breath of support and strength and legal case but also the numbers behind whatever policy or certain standards you are trying to promote to get these things whether its some sort of label on a supermarket shelf that gives people a good indication but making sure you are communicating with the administration and showing the numbers. One of the distinct benefits and points on the board that administration can get from taking that action. I think new administration are clearly slams with a billion different requests from all sorts of sectors on things to do within the first 100 days. Demonstrating these are actionable items that can be done simple and theres a lot of support behind them is critical. The short answer to your question is its not going to happen. Why . Because, and this is the simple, cold, brutal, factual deal. The American People are utterly unwilling to pay the cost of food that it would take to pay the people that produce it. Theyre not going to pay it. They wont. They will say they will but theyre lying. In order for me to stay in business, you saw the 40cent deal. Thats why put that out there. If im getting 40 cents for that box, what do you suppose the guy whos hanging off the latter is getting. So let me know quadruple your shopping bill. Who is happy . I would love to tell you there is a magical policy solution. When people tell you that its crab. Its just not true. The American People are unwilling to pay the freight. Until they are nothing will change. Can i ask, this is kind of a naive question. Ive been thinking about my favorite policy, it occurred to me that there are standards and their related to organic produce and Animal Welfare and local sourcing but theres not actually anything in there about the can visions, the working conditions of the folks working on the farms that are providing the food. Would it be possible, hypothetically hypothetically to include Something Like that in those procurement guidelines and what kind of impact might that have . Yes and little or none. What it would take to drive compliance would be very, very expensive. I doubt the appropriators would pony up for it. I think its a good and important and valuable idea. I think we do need to look and understand the Workforce Development opportunities that actually exist in our food system because i think this is the principal area, theres great opportunity for innovation. Actually think theres a Workforce Development bonanza if we think about it right. We need to get our incentives structured properly. Under the current regime, i dont see a path forward. Thank you. I think we have a couple questions. Just to add to that discussion, the truth is we have an economy that is dependent upon the u. S. Consumer spending the smallest of their income on food ever in history and we are used to a disposable income that buys all these products that drives the rest of the economy. Even if we were willing to spend more on food, the the economy has to be willing to accept less money for other goods. I love the discussion. I love the discussion about farm labor. I think thats a complicated issue that i think is even more complicated looking at the politics between liberals and conservatives. For example, this morning they were right in saying the science that eating gm owes is fake is pretty clear. The science on whether that gm owes are safe to grow and is safe for the exposure of farmworkers or the environment or the risk associated with monocultures is far less clear. It is more complex. Just to ask questions, there was a recent study that showed that conservative Group Donations toward most sectors of the Food Production system, certainly animals with few exceptions is largely conservative. Its almost 85 to 100 conservative and yet these are the same groups that seem to resist Immigration Reform for the workers that we need for this kind of labor. Im just not sure i understand the disconnect. Im sure you can explain it. So youre asking me. Youre asking me to fill the distance between donald trump and ted cruz . I dont expect an answer but its bizarre. I do think, again how can we take some of the bleeding edge innovation in our food system, but what sits behind that is an ecosystem that is very immature relevant to other sectors but i do think its a nexus of technology and agricultural process give us the path forward. Imagine a situation where lettuce is produced in greenhouses harvard harvests by robots and delivered by drones. Thats amazon. What are the Workforce Development consequences of that all of a sudden you have a very different picture of what a farmworker looks like and hopefully how they are compensated. I dont want to be the voice of doom and gloom here entirely but i do want to be the voice of paranoia and reality butot