Details became public today of a farm bill proposal written in secret by the top leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees and sent this week to the Congressional “Super Committee.” As Environmental Working Group had predicted, huge grain and cotton operations would harvest a windfall in taxpayer dollars while hardworking American families that are just scraping by would be badly hurt by cuts to vital nutrition programs such as SNAP (formerly called food stamps).

If you wanted an object lesson in how broken food politics are in America, you couldn't do better than to read how farm lobbyists, teamed up with big food companies and malleable friends in both parties in the House and Senate, tore up USDA's fledgling, modest school lunch reforms as they wrote this year's agriculture spending bill.

A secret farm bill will leave out healthy food and hurt California. Nearly 70 environmental, public health, nutrition, food and farm groups – including EWG – are calling on California’s congressional delegation to take a stand in the current debate over food and agriculture policy.

Chensheng (Alex) Lu, Associate Professor of Environmental Exposure Biology at Harvard School of Public Health has advised parents and caregivers to use the Shopper's Guide to "keep nutritional foods in their children's diets but avoid the intake of pesticide residues in the high-pesticide-risk items." Lu’s comments came in a study publichsed in Environmental Health Perspectives, that found that about half of the foods most frequently eaten by children were on EWG's Dirty Dozen list.

If the next farm bill gets written without input from healthy food reformers, maybe it’s time to occupy the agriculture committees?

EWG has partnered with the Just Label It campaign to petition the Food and Drug Administration to label genetically modified (GMO), also known as genetically engineered (GE) foods.

Lobbyists for polluting industries and opponents of environmental regulation have been tripping over one another to come up with self-serving lists of targets for the Congressional Super Committee as it labors to find ways to reduce federal spending and trim the deficit. The nation deserves a more thoughtful approach, one that recognizes that Americans want, and deserve, to live in a place where air and water are clean, where soil and natural resources are conserved for future generations, and where health and safety – not merely profit – stand atop the hierarchy of public values.

Local bok choy and baby spinach, a mesclun mix with mandarin oranges and broccoli florets topped with Asian chicken strips. No, it's not the lunch menu at Chez Panisse, the influential organic restaurant known for serving up healthy and local cuisine. It's part of Monday's lunch menu at 27 Washington, D.C. public school cafeterias.

When the federal government skimps on food safety, especially inspections, people can get seriously ill and in some cases, die. That’s why Congress can’t afford to underfund the landmark bipartisan food safety law.