• Speaking at Growth Energy’s annual leadership conference, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said he has reached out to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy and White House officials to stress the importance of the ethanol industry.

    In November the EPA issued a proposal to lower the RFS requirement for 2014.

    Vilsack said he has asked McCarthy to carefully review the 15,000 comments submitted on the proposal, many of which point to the many benefits of corn-based ethanol.

  • In a statement released last week the National Potato Council said they were disappointed that the USDA has chosen to ignore the latest nutritional science and consumption data in its final WIC rule.

    When the USDA revised the WIC program to include all fresh fruits and vegetables, except fresh white potatoes, it relied on an IOM report that looked at consumption data from the mid-1990s.

    Much has changed over the past two decades and the latest CDC consumption data from its National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey demonstrate that today’s women and children are falling well short of their consumption targets for starchy vegetables.

More From News Talk KIT