Of our Advisory Committee members. I just would like to say thank you to her excellent Advisory Committee. One of the great ideas that came out of our Advisory Committee meetings this year was to try Live Audience polling, get into the new millennium son going to test that out now. If you look up the screen behind me, we have our first Live Audience polling question, the least important question that you answer at this years conference. But i think it would be, it will be interesting to see how we feel about it. So there are two ways that you can participate in this Live Audience polling. You can get on your phones, browser, your laptop come your tablet browser and put in pollev. Com food policy or text food policy to the number 22333 and so right out food policy in the message of the text, and as you see somebody coming must be a millennial already got on, answered. Were going to try this out, see if we get any yeses and let you experiment with that. While you experiment with that, i do want to reflect a little bit on understanding our 40th Anniversary National food policy conference and what a Great Program we have this year. In a few minutes congressman jim mcgovern will be talking with you. Later this afternoon we are pleased to have doctor susan mayne, director of u. S. Food and Drug Administrations center for food safety and applied nutrition. Tomorrow well start the program with chuck conner, president and ceo of the National CouncilFarmer Cooperative spirit also a former acting secretary of agriculture and the member of president trumps agriculture Advisory Committee. That will be followed by a conversation with esther dyson who is an entrepreneur in Angel Investor and whose initiative helping five community to shift resources towards quote producing Health Rather than trying to recover it. Part of that strategy has a lot to do with changes to the food supply. I think its going to be very interesting. Lets check in on our poll. Okay, have to interpret that as a lot of disenchanted all right isolationists. Or another interpretation. I think we can close the door on this one. This final question. Continue with our experiment id like him to give us a better sense of audience today. The food policy conference what we are proud to track a very diverse mix of folks. You guys are ahead of the curve. Our interests tend to fall in these three categories. Ill give you some time. I know i wouldnt have responded by now. I want to recognize some of the people that made this conference possible over the years. 40 years ago alan haas started this conference while she was with a group called the Community Nutrition institute. And for many years after that art jaege yeager kept it going. He also ran an awards ceremony called the golden carrot awards during the 90s which i know was very popular. And it has become a really beloved institution, a lot of folks that attend, as a question that indicates we have a mix of interests represented at the food policy conference. It started as a very nutrition focused event, and so its not surprising that a lot of us are most interested in nutrition. But we have a large food safety contingent as well, and i think that reflects in no small part the influence of carol tucker foreman who ran the conference and played a big role in Consumer Federation of america for many years and had an outside effect on food policy generally, but food safety in particular. I should also hasten to add a lot of our program for everyone that in each of these interest groups, dont feel bad if youre a food safety minority. Okay, so get me off the stage. We will move on to our final polling question, to test out. All the features of our platform here and i should do the number, dont write in and, this is sort of a word cloud feature. It would not have occurred to me to say zero, because you are here now. So thats one. But i know, i know that at least 13 i believe it was 13. Im thinking of Chris Waltrip who, i know for a lot of you, chris has been the face of the food policy conference for as long as you have attended, before he took over from last year chris had organize the food policy conference for 13 years pics i know he has attended at least 13 pick in last year he took a welldeserved break, really glad to have them back for this years event. I just wanted to say thank you to chris for being such an invaluable member of our Advisory Committee, a lot of the program reflects his input and for that matter whats in your packet today reflects, i go back and forth with chris and hes been very generous in his time sharing the wisdom he accrued over those years of leading this event. I dont know, what food policy was in response to . So we will be ironing out the kinks of a Live Audience over the next day and a half, but thank you for participating in that. And thank you for being here. Whatever you do, wherever you are from, this conference is a great opportunity to mingle and network with a Diverse Group of folks. And thank you for joining us here, and we hope you enjoy the program. We hope you enjoy the networking reception that weve added to the program at the end of the day. Please make sure you hang around for that. If any of you are on twitter, you can follow us cfafoodpolicy, and a hashtag for the conference is cfa2017. We are in the ballroom, this is where well be having lunch and where are networking reception will be at the end of the day. Two of the Breakout Sessions location on this floor. So 1e is out to my right, and the london breakout room is out to the left. And then our third breakout room is on the third floor where it says health club and pool on the elevator. So keep that in mind. Give yourself a little bit of time to get up there. You can take the stairs but its a bit of an adventure. Restrooms are located out the door to my left. Theres a map in your packets if you get lost, but you can also go to the Registration Table and we can help you. Theres also a description of the panels if youre having trouble deciding, you can consult that with a few exhibit tables outside the registration area. To my right over there. We have exhibitors from the union of concerned scientists, the National Association of county and city health officials, dupont, the interNational Food information council, the u. S. Food and Drug Administration and Usda Economic Research service. We also have a table for General Information if anyone has reports, brochures or hand out thethere would like to make available to your fellow attendees. Id like to take a minute to thank our sponsors. Theyre listed on the back of your printed program. We are very grateful to all our sponsors for their support for these companies and organizations rarely recognize the importance of supporting an event like this where we can foster an open and vigorous exchange of ideas on important food policy topics. So thanks to all our sponsors, come in particular id like to thank this years underwriters and benefactors including cardio, the International Dairy foods association, dupont car deal general mills, mars, Pew Charitable trust and walmart. Id also like to thank Sally Squires and 13 for their promotional support, begin this year. Using the excellent design work over the past several months and the registration emails and the Cultural Program and brochures on it. And finally special thanks to the cfa staff. They put an enormous amount of work to register all the participants, prepare the conference, materials, deal with much of the logistical work to help make this conference happen. So i like to especially thank annamarie lowery and the rest of the cfa staff that are here today. [applause] and i like to think all of you very much for being here, and once again welcome to the 2017 National Food policy conference. Now to kickoff the program i am thrilled to present our opening keynote speaker. He is a native of worcester massachusetts, which he now represents in congress along with the rest of the Second District of massachusetts. Since being elected to congress in 1996 he has been a leader on food policy issues come and take a outspoken on hunger issues. He has promised one hell of a fight to those proposing cuts to food aid programs and the accounts among his policy successes expanding the mcgoverndole international for education and trot child nutrition program, program that recently gained notoriety as a target for elimination in the Trump Administration proposed budget. He is at the second ranking democrat on the house rules committee, a member of the house agriculture community, the democratic Ranking Member on the House Committee on agriculture subcommittee on nutrition, and culture of the house hunger caucus, among many other credentials. Since 2013 as part of his hashtag into hunger now campaign he has given nearly weekly speeches focus on Food Insecurity in america on the floor of this house of representatives. We are happy to have him talk about hunger and other food policy related issues with us today. Please welcome congressman jim mcgovern. [applause] good morning, everybody. I know its not easy to get up early in the morning. The only thing worse is being the first speaker of the morning. But thomas, than thank you very. I want to thank the Consumer Federation bringing you all here today, represented from consumer advocate organizations with Food Industry, nonprofits as well as governmental officials and come together get some important conversations about agriculture and food policy and nutrition. So i welcome the opportunity to be here. I probably should say at the outset that sometimes people think because my last name is mcgovern that im related to George Mcgovern who was the senator from south dakota and ran for president in 1972. While i worked as an intern in his office in the senate one i was in college and a beacon when a major strength in the world, a great inspiration can we are not related. I say that because when i was giving a coffee in the lobby somewhat in the camp came up and said they were longtime supporters and my dad. And they seemed a little shocked when i said thank you. My dad owns a liquor store in worcester, massachusetts, and hope youll keep on supporting him. [laughing] so i thought i should just cler the air on that. Look, you know, i welcome the opportunity to talk about the issue of hunger and Food Insecurity in this country and around the world because i think it is an important issue, and its one of those issues that is maddening because its solvable. I tell people all the time that hunger is a political condition. We have the money. We have the resources. We had infrastructure. Where the brainpower. We have everything, but we dont have the political will. And i have a tough time grasping why that is the case. We live in the richest country in the history of the world, and we have 42 million americans who are hungry for food insecure and the United States of america. And as a United States congressmen come as a citizen of this country, im ashamed of that. I find that so unacceptable. It is unconscionable. With all of our riches in this country come with all of our knowhow and all of our ingenuity, that is the reality. We talked about hunger. Its more than just about talking about people who dont have enough to eat. There are other issues related to it. There are Health Issues related to people who on a regular basis go without food. Your child who misses meals on a regular basis, you show up in school, youre less likely to be able to learn. You are more likely to have developmental challenges in your lifetime. If you are a pregnant mother and you cant get the adequate nutrition, that oftentimes results in the birth of an unhealthy baby. If you are a worker who, on a regular basis, goes without food, you will be less productive in the workplace. So there are all these avoidable costs that are associated with hunger. And so when we talk about it i think we need to look at not just the immediate problem but the impact that this has on our country and on so many people who live in this country i have had a blessed life. Im not talking at getting elected to congress. I do know if its a blessing or a curse some days, but i have had a blessed life in the sense i have never had to worry about basic necessities. Ive always had a home. Ive always had shelter. Ive always had enough to eat. Ive never been hungry. But i believe that those of us who are blessed, have blessed lives come have a special obligation to make sure that we worry about and care about those who are having challenges. I think thats just the decent thing to do. Whether its in our communities or whether its in congress, i think this is a matter of decency to address issues like hunger. I get frustrated in congress because while i think this issue should not be a partisan issue, and for many years it wasnt, George Mcgovern and bob dole worked together in a bipartisan way during the 1970s to strengthen our nutrition and antihunger programs. We are actually on her way to eliminating hunger in this country. Then we began to reverse some of the progress we made. And now what i find is that this issue has become a very polarizing. You are never going to find a member of congress is going to tell you that they are prohunger. Prohunger. They will never say that to you. When you look at the voting records at some of my colleagu colleagues, i dont know how you could come to any other conclusion. Because what instep happening is that they are chipping away at programs that provide the basic necessity of food to our children and to parents and two older people. When i look at the president s budget, we are told in that budget their may see cuts to programs like wic, womens infants and children program. Basic nutrition for pregnant mothers for their Young Children after they are born. I mean, it is important. It is important because if we neglect that we will end up having to pay in other ways down the line it and again i to talk about this in terms of the bottom line in dollars and cents, we should be moved to do something because its our moral obligation because what to prevent human suffering in this country. I get the feeling sometimes thats not enough. I get to become friends, after, when i was running, when i first got elected with john kenneth galbraith, the great economist and a great fish there. I remember him saying to me one time, ill ask you to go out and comfort the afflicted, but in these days that might be considered a subject. I will go out and ask you to afflict the comfortable. I think thats the mode were in right now. We had to go out and afflict some of the comfortable and get them to talk to start responding in ways to make progress on issues like hunger. We have these debates in congress its always about the fact that the people who need these programs get characterized as somehow lazy or somehow undeserving, or their poor because they want to be poor. Ive never met anybody who wants to be poor. Ive never met anybody who wants to be hungry. And by the way, just so that the facts are clear, when we talk about snap, a majority of people on staff our children. They are Senior Citizens. There are people who are disabled. Of those who can work, the majority works. So why isnt the question in washington how can it be that somebody who works is still so poor, but they need to rely on snap to put food on the table . Why we talked with increasing wages in this country so people can actually earn and livable wage and afford to put food on the table and the kinds of foods that they wanted. Instead we tend, the debate tends to be, tends to demonize the most Vulnerable People in this country. And it is frustrating because it is, because a perception in washington is so different from the reality all throughout this country. We talk about we want people to make better choices. We want people to make healthier choices. Absolutely. By the way we all need to make healthier choices. Not just people who are on snap it with studies that show those of us who are able to afford our own food make lousy choices, too. So we need to have, and better and more Effective National dialogue on nutrition. But with regard to snap recipients, i serve on the nutrition subcommittee. I dont know how many hearings we had come i think i lost count after 20 come i dont know. We had so many hearings i dont know, ive lost count. During one of the last hearing someone raise the issue, why dont people make better choices . The reason why, and its very simple is at the average snap benefit is about 1. 40 per person per meal. I bought a Starbucks Coffee on the way in here, you know, that was more than 1. 40 and thats a small one. The fact of the matter is that the benefits we provide people are inadequate. What we should be talking about is making sure that our social safety net is a safety net, that it provides what they need to be able to put nutritious food on the table. We ought to be talking about increasing the benefits of snap, n