john brail is vice president and vp of public policy and telecom at the national consumers league. john is a long time leading washington dc advocate for consumers working in across areas privacy data food airlines telecommunications, the list goes on we are delighted to have them here today. and agreeing to my right is former senior advisor for fair and competitive markets for the agricultural marketing service at usda. andy was single-handedly responsible for injecting Ãi really want to think the two of you for joining us for this conversation. we know how important food is to the average american consumer. just about numbers on what i said earlier, food accounts for about 13 percent some of the consumer's budget, housing is 37 percent some of the consumer budget, transportation 17%. food inflation rose 5% per year whereas average inflation rose about 2.7% per year. that's about double what consumers were paying for food in the grocery store and restaurant and food service over the last 10 years. obviously price increases can be due to a lot of things, scarcity, opportunistic pric