Government Cheese

There’s a cheese glut in America. Cheese inventories are higher than they’re been in over 30 years, while families go hungry. Even a third of those on food stamps need to visit food banks.

The USDA is trying for a twofer by buying $20 million in surplus cheese — 11 million pounds — and distributing it to food banks. While you might question the wisdom of paying tax dollars to support corporate dairy operations, surely no one can object to the government helping food banks feed the hungry, right?

US Government: ‘Eat More Pizza!’

13 percent of Americans eat pizza each day (no, not the same 13 percent …). That’s a lot of people and lots of calories, saturated fat, and sodium, too.

And Uncle Sam helps. The USDA runs a “dairy checkoff program” though small assessments on milk sales to processors, raising hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The funds are turned over to Dairy Management, Inc. (DMI) to encourage public demand for dairy products. U.S. fluid milk consumption is down, but cheese eating is way up, and 25 percent of that cheese is melted on pizza.  DMI has a partnership with Domino’s Pizza, America’s 2nd largest retailer of pizza-like objects, and paid Domino’s $35 million over the past 3 years to develop and market cheesier pies.

Read about it here:

“How the U.S. government spends millions to get people to eat more pizza,” Brad Plumer, Washington Post blog

“USDA reports on pizza consumption and on dairy checkoff program initiatives to increase pizza demand,” Park Wilde, US Food Policy blog

Occupy Cottage Cheese

Hundreds of thousands of middle class Israelis began protesting a huge jump in dairy prices this summer, resulting in the largest demonstrations the country has ever seen. These soon became protests about widening economic inequalities in the small nation.

The protests are getting results. The Israeli cabinet has just approved a new tax plan reducing taxes on low-income wage earners and raising them for the rich and for corporations. Other new policies include cuts to the defense budget.