More than 60 leading chefs, authors, food and agriculture policy and nutrition experts, business leaders and environment and health organizations have sent an open letter to Capitol Hill objecting that the House agriculture committee’s proposed farm bill would “steer the next five years of national food and farm policy in the wrong direction.”

Today at the National Press Club, Environmental Working Group and a wide array of public interest organizations, including anti-hunger, public health, labor and animal welfare advocates – took part in a widely covered press conference to highlight the damaging and alarming provisions of the farm bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee.

The budget-busting farm bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee late Wednesday night is quite simply the worst piece of farm and food legislation in decades. The bill will feed fewer people, help fewer farmers, do less to promote healthy diets and weaken environmental protections – and it will cost far more than congressional bean counters say.

The farm bill proposed yesterday by House Agriculture Committee leaders would cut funds for nutrition programs and the environment to help finance new price and revenue guarantees and increase insurance subsidies for the largest and most successful farm businesses.

Everyone who eats should take a moment to thank 11 senators who proposed farm bill amendments designed to ensure that our farm and food policies help more farmers, the environment and the hungry at less cost to the taxpayer.

EWG issued the following statement by Scott Faber, Vice President for Government Affairs, on the Senate's failure to pass Senator Gillibrand's amendment to reduce subsidies to crop insurance companies to restore proposed cuts to feeding assistance programs and to increase funding for the fresh fruit and vegetable snack program.

National leaders in food and farm policy have taken steps to form a new nonprofit organization that for the first time will hold lawmakers in Congress accountable for their votes on a broad range of issues, including food safety, farm subsidies, nutrition assistance, farm animal welfare, fisheries management, organic and local food, farm and food worker justice, and the impacts of food and farm policies on the environment.

For those of us lucky enough to sit down every day to healthy, nutritious meals, it's easy to forget that millions of American families in the grip of the recession are struggling to put food on the table and often end up consuming cheap, heavily processed food that puts their health at risk.

The Environmental Working Group today released a letter signed by more than 70 American food and health leaders who urged Congress to cut crop insurance subsidies and redirect that money into vital investments in nutrition, healthy food and conservation programs. Signers include Michal Pollan, Bill McKibben, Marion Nestle and celebrity chefs Mario Batali, Tom Collichio, Alice Waters and Rick Bayless.