success of the transformation of school lunch and so forth, and i know i have interviewed personally dozens of people involved in improving nutrition in the school classrooms including ann cooper, the lunch lady and wellness in the schools in new york city, a very successful program. one of the issues that comes up over and over again about improving school nutrition is that the actual kitchen facilities themselves have been essentially dismantled, so that all of the food that comes in is already pre-prepared. they just put it in a sheet pan, in the fryolator, and there's little cooking going on. and the people in the lunchroom, the lunch lay gips, don dieladi culinary skills. my question is, is there funding for programs to retrain school cafeteria personnel and retrofit those kitchens and second, is an earlier session today, scott

faber was talking about the entitlements in the upcoming farm bill and one of the st statistics he quoted, which was incredibly dismaying was that $142 billion is being earmarked as subsidies and entitlements for already successful farming operations and insurance che companies which could -- don't need the money. but are getting it. i'm wondering if any of the money being proposed for those entities could be allocated back toward school lunch and programs that would help improve nutrition in schools by retrofitting kitchen, training personnel and creating regional distribution systems to get more fruits and vegetables from local area farmers. sorry for the long question. anyway. there you go. >> the second question is a little easier for me to answer, respond to. not sure where he got those numbers. he's raising the issue of how we spend agricultural dollars

broadly. let me say, the annual budget of the u.s. department of agriculture is in the area of around $150 billion. $105 billion of that comes to the nutrition area that i have responsibility for, so it's one of those public perception issues. if you ask the american people where's the agriculture department's budget, where most of it goes? most of it goes to the nutrition space. and i'm very proud of that. i think as americans, we can be proud of that. it has enjoyed over the years sort of bipartisan support. i hope that holds in this more challenged environment. so i guess as i say, i'm not sure where some of those numbers came from. to your question about schools. let me say that i have -- first of all, many schools historically over the years didn't have kitchens, period, especially in older school buildings. kids brought their lunches from home.

so they were never adequately equipped from the point of view, in many cases, of having a full-blown kitchen. we in the stimulus bill two years ago put out about $100 million in a matter of weeks, to help schools equip and modernize their school, the food service areas. within a short period of time, we had requests for $650 million. we had $100 million. we had an additional $25 million in the last budget. there is no question about the fact that schools are really challenged in terms of their infrastructure environment around cooling particularly as we get into more vegetables and fruits and salads. et cetera. you need to have cooling equipment as well. now, what many -- yet, at the same time, i've been in schools, i recall a school in denver i was at that has pretty old equipment, and they're doing all

foods from scratch. actually whole grain breads, et cetera. so it can be done. it's more of a challenge. in the healthy hunger-free kids act, congress aproapropropriat$0 million to provide training and technical assistance to school nutrition folks across the country. we're very committed to that, already engaged in that. we've been running something down in fredericksburg, virginia, the past the two years called product safety university, where we're enabling and educating school nutrition leaders on local purchasing. so that they deal with safety issues, traceability, but also ways in which school foods are presented to engage children. some of the work of brian wansik up at cornell on how you structure foods to nudge kids, make the right choice, the

healthy choice. and so i've been able to see, i've been out to visit many, many schools, about 3,000 of them that have already met at least one level of the criteria from the first lady's "let's move" challenges, healthy u.s. school challenge. those schools are doing it. many of them not without the latest equipment. it can be done. it will be challenging, but i don't think we should -- i wouldn't be satisfied, nor do i think it would be reasonable to think that the majority of public and private schools can't meet the challenges of healthier foods that kids would consume, even with the challenges they have in their infrastructure. >> other questions out there? while chris is doing the -- i'm going to ask -- go ahead. you got there fast. so -- >> not so far this time. thanks, chris. thanks to both of you for being here. this is sarah borne from foond

water watch. mr. dietz, you mentioned the pro proposed voluntary guidance and that seems to have been backburnered if i understand correctly. and i wonder, you know, with the competitive foods regulations that are going to be coming out in the next couple of weeks, if the voluntary guidance hasn't been the place where we can push to create industry standard on foods marketed to children. if the competitive foods standard might be a de facto standard if industry needs to meet their requirements to sell their foods in schools, if we'll have more widespread impact in other places where foods are marketed to children? >> i'll let kevin answer the competitive foods piece, and they are really two separate issues, because the interagency working group was focused on marketing standards, and i think that the principles that we put in place were sound principles.

the most important of which was that a food marketed to children had to contain a meaningful amount of food contained by the dietary guidelines. i think it's unfortunate that congress required the ftc to do a cost benefit analysis before that report was submitted to congress, because the children's foond beverage advertising initiative moved substantially in the direction of the principles that we articulated. but we weren't about to -- it made it impossible to do a cost benefit analysis, because either way, we were caught. how could we project that the implementation of voluntary standards, and if we -- even if we could do that, how could we predict what impact that would have long-term on the health of children and adolescents, as they became adults. and how could we possibly fix a cost of that? so if we actually did a cost

benefit analysis, we would be accused of doing something we didn't have to do and, therefore, we were moving towards a regulatory approach. these were voluntary standards and only regulatory standards needed to have such a report. on the other hand, if we submitted a report, it would be attacked based on the faulty assumptions that underlay the reasoning in the report. so we were stuck, and it's -- chairman liebowitz said that -- in a congressional hearing, that at least for the time being that report -- that we weren't going to do anything further with the report. but competitive foods is yet another issue. >> competitive foods, let me say, that we were talking about partnerships earlier in the federal government to an earlier question. happily, the healthy hunger-free kids act had a very interesting

and effective group of partnerships and among the partner participants that i highly value in a particular way was that of an organization here in this town called mission readiness. an organization of retired military senior leaders, admirals and generals, i think in excess of 250 of them. they successfully lobbied the little and the senate agriculture committee, the original source of this. in particular to make sure we had the authority, unprecedented authority around competitive foods in all schools across the country. and they did so, because they recognize that this is a public health challenge in this country, something like 27% of young people, male and female, who would be in the typical age cohort to join the military, are ineligible, because they are so

seriously overweight. and at the weight of the nation last week, bill and i, the panel we were apart of, a physician who is in charge of the -- all of the health facilities across the world for active military, pointed out a statistic that i was unaware of before, that something like 24% of military personnel who were actively in the military are not allowed to renew their -- their -- to re-up, so to speak, because they are so seriously overweight. so, there was a recognition here that, we have to take some very broad, robust, they can't be weak, in terms of their impact. and i consider the competitive foods directive that we have as just as important as the school meal regulations that we've already promulgated. and we've been working very hard on those and want to make sure they are, in fact, will become

both the law of the land and will, basically, significantly alter the food environment for american children. as i say, i go out to schools. most of the schools i visit are brought to our attention as leaders. but i get into schools that, for other reasons, i happen to visit, and when i see some of the competitive foods that are being offered to kids at the same table, with the school meal, you know, it just doesn't work that way. you wouldn't do it in your own household, or it shouldn't work that way. so we're very anxious to move forward with that. we have a mandate in that regard. but we know it's -- it's going to require the support of people in this room and beyond that, as well. >> so while chris gets to the next question, i would also just like, for those of you who are interested in this whole question of mission readiness,

next week, if you want to have another conference to go to, national journal has a conference that will be next wednesday at union station. it's a summit looking at this very issue of readiness and obesity -- military readiness and what effect that is having. >> hi, my name is meg booth, i'm with the children's mental health project. we're a consumer organization. i'm here, because we work on prevention of dental disease, which is the number one chronic condition of childhood and in the youngest kids, before they enter school, it's the only portion of kids that have an increase in dental decay, the rest of the kids are sort of seeing a decrease because of water fluoridation and different things. we are trying to enter the nutrition world and cross paths, especially when it comes to pregnant women and those under the age of 3. i wonder if you could answer a question. you mentioned you are coming up with guidelines for kids birth to 2 and i was just curious if

you have tried to engage the dental community at all, because they are really trying to focus on preventing tooth decay, does it is so diet dependent. and as a consumer organization, we would love to engage in how to join the nutrition world in those efforts. we can't do it by ourself. how do we join efforts like that? and i think the 0 to 2 is the only place we can sort of start, other than pregnant women, to do primary pri vengs. so i'm curious what guidelines that might be. >> very early in the process. we've basically just outlined or devise the framework to work, both again, with hhs, is the lead agency for the dietary guidelines 2015, which will govern, officially, ages 2 and above, but by agreement, we will subsequently release guidelines for 0 to 2. and i saw just within the last week or so, the outline, the work plan that has been devised

with hhs and with the center for nutrition policy, promotion and, i think, engaged undoubtedly cdc. and there are a whole series of consultations as this is developed to really hear from the academy of pediatrics and the dental community and other nutrition and health organizations. there isn't as much, i'm told, i'm not a scientist, in this regard, but by our folks, there isn't as much science around on 0 to 2 but we certainly see, it distresses us if we see child at clink going around with, certainly, sugar-sweetened beverages and so on. and i've seen this when i've visited federally qualified health centers when i was a state person. so, i fully expect they'll be broad consultation with groups like your own. >> i think we have another question here.

>> hi. i want to thank both of you for sharing your update on the initiatives, and i can tell you from new york state, i've witnessed some great progress with the school equipment grants, farm to school. the fresh fruit and vegetable program. we had a healthy food healthy community fund, which the healthy food financial initiative is very similar to. i would like to push the envelope, being from new york and a new york yankee fan. i wanted to ask about the d.o.d. fresh program and the concept of turning that into cash in lieu, or a voucher program, similar to the fresh, ffmp, the farmer's market nutrition program, so that schools will have the option to purchase fresh local food of the highest quality that they can get their hands on at a more efficient, quicker and handle it within their own districts. thank you. >> thank you very much for that.

the d.o.d., which she is referring to, is the department of defense. we have a contract nationally with the defense logistics agency out of philadelphia, to purchase fruits and vegetables for both the school program but for feeding program on indian reservations. it's about, it's in excess of $100 million a year. her question, though, can we cash out a portion of that to allow local schools to purchase more fruits and vegetables, either locally or own their own. the short answer is no. and the reason i say no is this. most schools -- the representation or what the d.o.d. fresh program represents as a portion of school purr chases is a fraction. it's under 20%. where a school can spend the money that we give them. $2.77 per meal, in whatever way

they wish. they can use that, buy it all locally or use a portion to buy usda commodities. we've had that question from another state, up in that region of the country, and our answer was, we don't want to weaken the leveraging we have through d.o.d. to add our money to their purchases for military bases and independents. by pooling our resources, it has an effect on price, and to the extent we start cashing it out, we lose that margin, but we understand when very sympathetic to schools wanting to do more local purchasing, if that's what you're interested in. but we say, use some of the money you get from us, or from private paying students, to do that local purchasing. >> so i think we are just about out of time. is there one more question? yeah. okay. >> hi.

you talked about whether eating healthier is more expensive than -- or like the cost of that. and so i was just wondering. i think that eating healthier can be just as inexpensive, if you know what to do, but i think that a lot of the food knowledge has been lost and cooking knowledge has been lost. can you talk about what you guys have been doing in terms of food education and educating people on how to eat healthy and know what to do? >> i think the study i referred to, just released yesterday or the day before, by the economic research service, encouraged people to look at it. because it's very compelling. they look at food costs by calorie, by volume, by portion. and obviously timeliness is another factor in all this, but they -- they point out fruits and vegetables among food groups are the least costly and the economist i know at the briefing i was at, compared the price, the number of calories in a doughnut versus a medium sized banana, and the banana being less expensive than that

doughnut and far healthier for you. so there are a number of very practice practical sort of messages that way. but i want to say on that access to healthy foods, we're very mindful, and bill referenced this in his remarks, we're very mindful of the access question. i know that in the food stamp or the snap program, about -- in excess of 90% of food stamp recipients have access to supermarkets or spend part of their benefits at least once during the month at a supermarket. so -- but we also know that a vast majority of stores that are authorized to process those benefits are small stores. i go to a 7-eleven routinely in maryland, but i see a few bananas and a few other things, but by and large it is pretty

lean in terms of healthy food. part of our effort is to -- what we're thinking about the depth of stock, to me would be a step forward, not the silver bullet. but certainly a step forward, and also the healthy food financing initiative that's been referenced to try to deploy more or to encourage more supermarkets in poor areas. but it's also education. educating, using the collective resources and nutrition education. we are examining that internally. i mentioned in my remarks, we spend about a billion dollars a year if you add it all together, the center for nutrition policy, nutrition education for people and the wic program. snap for education people in the food stamp program. the feeding program on indian reservations. all have nutrition education components.

jerry mann, senior policy advisor, he is reaching out at our request to cdc, indian health service, a variety of sources in the federal government to say what are we doing, all of us, collectively, what do we know, and are there additional ways we can really have an effect in terms of nutrition education, i personally am very wedded to and enthusiastic, if you can't tell, about the my plate. i think the message is fairly simple and actionable. not the food pyramid, wonderful for professionals, but not so practical for the average person. the my plate or mi plato, make half your plate fruits and vegetables. pretty basic. and i've seen it in a number of these schools i've been visiting where in the health sciences programs or in the classes, the teachers are using that outline,

that template, and then having the kids write in, fill in the quadrants, so to speak. and the more we can reinforce this. we talked about food culture, understanding, that is, again, one of the tools that i think is a powerful one that's right before us. >> i guess -- i think we -- i think we are out of time. chris, are you coming up for a couple of last remarks? >> i just wanted to thank both of our speakers and thank you for attending the food policy conference and we'll see you next year. thank you. [ applause ]

here's what's ahead on c-span3. next, a discussion on jobs, trade and competition. and after that, the 2012 elections and deceptive political ads. coming up tonight, a debate between the candidates running in wisconsin's gubernatorial recall election. republican incumbent scott walker is being challenged by milwaukee's democratic mayor tom barrett. watch this live tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> i guess number one what i would ask is that if people do have information, i want them to come forward with that information, either to our office of professional responsibility or to the dhsig. but, you know, the thought or the notion that this type of behavior is condoned or

authorized is just absurd in my opinion. i've been an agent for 29 years now. i began my career for seven years in detroit. i worked for -- i was on the white house detail twice. i've worked for a lot of men and women in this organization and i never one time had any supervisor or any other agent tell me that this type of behavior is condoned. i know i've never told any of our employees it is condoned, so i feel as strongly now as i did after reading -- as i did before i read that article. >> this week, officials with the secret service and homeland security testified on capitol hill about agent interaction with colombian prostitutes. view the hearing online at the c-span video library. coming up next, a discussion on trade and competitiveness organized by the group gen next. gen next is a nonprofit

organization of business executives and entrepreneurs looking for long-term solutions for economic growth, education and international security. the speaker at this event was mark anderson, the ceo of strategic new service. mr. anderson's subscription based internet newsletter forecasts technology shifts. this discussion from april is an hour. >> -- we know you would have

been anywhere else tonight, but you chose to be here. and i think it says an extraordinary amount about you, that you chose to be here with us. my name is michael davidson, i'm the ceo of gen next. i came up here from orange county because we're particularly excited about this program. for those of you, i haven't given you much context on gen next to begin with, but we essentially tried to find very successful people who are particularly forward thinking, they want to do bet, they want to be better, and we try to give them the tools so information access, knowledge, a network to actually be consequential on issues we believe are related to generational opportunity. primarily in economic, education and global securities space. so many of you here are already members so you know that, but for those of you who are not that is what we try to do. tonight is part of that process of exposing our members and our guests to thought leaders and people who kind of -- they move ideas and they advance them and

they shape the debate across the board. and tonight that's mark anderson who is the ceo, strategic news service, which was the actual first online newsletter on the internet, subscription based online newsletter on the internet. and he did bill gates reads it, michael dell reads it, any major thought leader reads it, but he's very sort of prominent in the space of prediction. so 95% of the time since 1995 all of his predictions have come true. two kind of cool ones. one is he predicted the liquidity collapse before anybody else did. second one, predicted steve jobs would return to apple before steve jobs knew that he was going to return to apple. so definitely inside his brain, it is fantastic. also, he runs a conference that on technology that the economist magazine has named the best technology conference in the

world. and fortune magazine named him one of the quote, smartest people we know. so if for any of you news junkies you will see him on bloomburg, on cnbc, you'll read him in the wall street journal and the new york times and the los angeles times, in every sense of the word, well, two words, he's a thought leader and he's an entrepreneur. so we're, very, very fortunate to have him here with us tonight. please put on your thinking caps because we will get to the point where we will get to q & a and i will moderate those questions. with that, mark anderson, everybody. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you. hi, everybody. nice to be here. thank you for having me. and i think my marching orders this evening are we'll do 10 to 15 minutes of me talking away at you and then we'll talk together for the next 45 minutes or so. so start to think of questions and complaints and all the things i said that were wrong in that short period of time and we'll cover that right away

after. i want to talk to you tonight about something which will seem half obvious to you but the other half probably won't seem open us have obvious at all. and maybe it will lead you to a new idea of america and other nations too, inventing nations, and what they should do today or tomorrow which they're not doing yet and which they may have no choice but to do if they're going to succeed. this sounds very dramatic. i actually feel that drama is well placed. and i want to give you a little background about this. i spend a lot of time with predicts in technologies and markets. in order to be good at that, you have to look around the world and look at lots of levels of things. so i was forced to look at the countries around the pacific asia rim and try to figure out how they really ran their business models nationally. not what was in the newspaper, but the truth of the matter. which is quite different, by the way. so beginning with post war japan and what that story is really about, still i think