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Grassley: Keep ‘environment’ out of diet recommendations

Reports that the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines committee is recommending reduced meat consumption because of environmental concerns don’t sit well with Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley.

“The excuse to use environment as an issue for what you ought to eat or not eat is stupid,” Grassley says. “There are dietary reasons for what you should eat or not eat—but not environmental reasons.”

The Dietary Guidelines process is far from over and the Secretaries of Agriculture and Health and Human Services will have final approval. Grassley says Congress will also have a chance to provide input.

“We’ll have a chance to look at all this stuff when we have oversight hearings and the reauthorization of the nutrition program,” he says. “They (the guidelines) may be advisory, but they’ve set the tone in the last three decades. And so we can’t—for future decades—let these most recent guidelines move ahead.”

Grassley says it’s another example of activists trying to use the federal government to hurt animal agriculture.

AUDIO: Chuck Grassley