good afternoon global warming has been linked to the cars that we drive the energy supply and now the food that we buy from farm to fork our food often travels long distances to reach our plate the carbon dioxide emissions from these food miles traveled are compounded by the methane produced when food waste is tossed in landfills we cannot continue to spite the land that feeds us the witnesses before us today are all pursuing sustainable dining options that can alleviate the impact of our food consumption on global warming the impact is prevalent in the three responsibilities of a dining facility procurement consumption and disposal purchasing local food reduces food miles traveled using renewable biodegradable plates and utensils reduces oil consumption and waste turning traveled increased one thousand three hundred to one five hundred miles a two thousand and two world watch institute report stated that food in the united states traveled between one five hundred and two four hundred miles the typical american travel can decrease significantly a university of washington study found that a plate of washington sourced foods resulted in thirty three percent fewer co emissions than a plate of similar foods from their most popularly imported countries or states of origin even if a meal is entirely local its contribution to global warming continues after the plates are cleared yard trimmings and food waste constitute twenty four percent of the u s municipal solid waste stream and half of the garbage at restaurants is estimated to be food waste as this food rots in the landfill it produces methane if that methane escapes into the atmosphere it traps twenty times more heat than c food in landfills will continue to contribute to methane emissions a two thousand and six study predicted that by two thousand and twenty five food waste will increase by forty four percent worldwide this methane build up is deplorable because it is preventable food waste can be recycled into compost resulting in fewer emissions and in new economic products compost soil can be used to fertilize crops and landscaping and support green jobs in food waste recycling the reduced garbage load can result in lowered disposal fees as well using materials that can be converted to compost further relieves the strain on our landfills and steers facilities away from petroleum based plastic products the witnesses before us today have successfully put these principles into use i look forward to hearing from those witnesses and i will introduce them at that point in the testimony we will hear today that by making changes to the way food is delivered prepared stored and disposed of we can create some positive environmental balances but there are costs associated with these changes in the long run these costs may be worth it or maybe they are not it points to a larger problem with all things green being sold to us today one of the projects we will hear a lot about today is part of speaker pelosi's green the capitol initiative this project includes many changes to house food service operations and we welcome chief administrative officer dan beard here to talk about them but do the costs associated with these changes create worthwhile greenhouse gas reductions simply put are we getting the most bang for the buck some changes like serving cage free eggs or hormone free dairy and in wisconsin we only produce hormone free dairy will result in no greenhouse gas reductions whatsoever one of my four guiding principles in evaluating any global warming policy is will it produce tangible measurable environmental benefit the house food service project seems to leave that question open which concerns me if the point is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could the money spent making wholesale changes to house food services be better focused on creating more energy efficiency in the house it is unclear to me  if there is enough transparency in this process to actually measure if these changes are worth it mister beard's testimony points toward many simple changes in lighting heating and cooling that could end up saving the taxpayers twenty thousand dollars and that is a good thing it is just too bad that eighty nine thousand dollars in taxpayers money has apparently gone towards questionable carbon offsets in an effort for the house to reach its goals of its green the capitol initiative as the washington post reported in late january it seems that some of these offsets are very questionable the report showed that these offsets produced very little in the way of additionality that is it was difficult to show how those taxpayers dollars did anything to create greenhouse gas reductions that would not have occurred anyway this article shows to me there needs to be more transparency in dealing with all things green it seems obvious that there are many opportunities for waste fraud and abuse or questionable actions to be hidden in a green cloak do changes in the house cafeteria produce more and better environmental benefits for the dollar than improvements in energy efficiency do offsets really produce greenhouse gas reductions and if so how much these are questions that both policymakers and consumers should have answers to many of the changes talked about today in the food service industry will come down to consumer choice living in  carbon free environment will have significant costs and trade offs associated with them it will take consumers and not congress to tell us if these lifestyle changes are worth it i thank the chair in having a dialogical exchange with you after your presentations i am very much interested in sustainable eating and sustainable agriculture  that could separate us from the rest of the world that frankly is already ahead of us in so many ways with regard to dealing with the  wisely we could demonstrate to the rest of the world what kinds of things can be done on a local level that could sustain life and the environment at the same time so i look forward to our  approaches i have seen is the grease recycling project in the east bay innovative ideas such as this are small yet can be effective and these are initiatives which will lower greenhouse gas emissions i am interested will be allowed to place their opening statements in the record we now turn to our panel the chairman our first witness daniel beard is the chief administrative officer for the house of representatives mister beard spent ten years on the staff of the house appropriations and natural resources committee he returned to the hill at speaker pelosi's request to become the chief administrative officer he is well suited to speaker pelosi's green the capitol initiative with his extensive background managing environmental issues with the department of the interior and the national audubon society his work on greening the capital and the house cafeteria system has been noted by food writers for the new york times the washington post and the san francisco chronicle we welcome you mister beard whenever you are ready please begin mister beard thank you mister chairman and members of the committee i appreciate the opportunity to be here with you today our goal with the house food service operation has been to make it a premier showcase of sustainable green and healthy food operations we have worked closely with our new food service vendor restaurant associates of new york to implement our changes with each of the two hundred and forty thousand meals we serve each month in our cafeterias carry outs and other facilities our highest priority was the banning of all  plastic and styrofoam from the cafeterias in addition we wanted to make nearly all of our waste stream compostable as a result all of the knives forks and spoons which are in use in the cafeteria as well as our sandwich clamshells which has a delicious desert in it are made from corn based products the plates and coffee cups are from paper and the entree containers which are shown here are made from sugar cane this material in front of me will become compost in ninety days the house is demonstrating i think with this effort and with every meal that we serve that there is a market for u s manufacturers to provide green sustainable recyclable products our biodegradable items for example come from companies in maine nebraska pennsylvania and georgia we send the compostable food service items along with all of the food waste in the front of the cafeteria and from the kitchens coleslaw or a moist confetti so all of these items plus all the food from the front and back of the house plus all these are then ground into this kind of a mix it picked up once a day and it is sent to compost facilities in suburban maryland two days a week it goes to the department of agriculture three days a week to a commercial composter near crofton the result process now while the new operation has only been up and running for sixty days preliminary results are very encouraging the waste hauler for the landfill picked up twenty tons less material in the last three weeks of december two thousand and seven as compared with two thousand and six we are realizing cost savings by hauling and depositing less waste in landfills and the compost tipping fees are thirty percent less than they are at the regular landfills more important sending the food service waste for compost also reduces our carbon footprint by preventing the conversion to methane as the chairman mentioned we are now working to calculate the meth and use the savings as a carbon offset for the house operations we have also looked at our food the food that we serve for sustainability improvements our coffee pura vida coffee is fair trade shade grown and organic our beef chicken and pork are hormone free the seafood served is certified sustainable by our using the monterey bay aquarium seafood guidelines under restaurant associates the amount of fresh produce and meat has increased from thirty five percent under the previous vendor gsi to eighty five percent this switch to fresher food and the resulting trimmings is complemented at the back end with pulper and the composting solutions that we have implemented the house is also promoting the buying of food produced in a one hundred and fifty radius from the capitol whenever possible we are emphasizing the purchase of organically produced food and providing a market for new and existing farms and businesses to meet these needs this incidentally is part of the policy efforts and the direction that restaurant associates has used in its  operations in other cities as well we have made a good start but we know that there is much more that we have to do to be sustainable greener and to continue to reduce our carbon footprint i want to thank you mister chairman for the opportunity to testify and i would be happy to answer questions at the appropriate point the chairman thank you mister beard very much our next witness is doctor patricia millner who specializes in environmental microbiology her work on micro organisms and composting has significantly influenced the design of large scale composting facilities she also researches how composted soil can prevent disease she is a thank you for the opportunity to appear here mister chairman i would like to present some information on general aspects of composting and the environmental benefits as related to food residuals management and the greening practices composting involves a natural aerobic self heating process in which micro organisms rapidly transform the raw organic materials into humus which is a critical component for soil health management and testing are used throughout this process in order to ensure that the primary goals of nutrient stabilization pathogen destruction and odorant elimination are achieved when finished compost is mixed with soil and this helps to reduce erosion from wind and water compost also enhances soil structure root penetration and very importantly the water holding capacity of soil all of these  plant growth and increase the resistance to drought disease and other stresses compost also provides major and minor plant nutrients and can substitute for one third the amount of nitrogen fertilizer usually required for turf this means that compost use on lawns in areas like washington d c and the surrounding metropolitan area can help reduce nutrient runoff that ultimately gets into water waste such as the potomac river and the chesapeake bay composting can also reduce the generation and release of greenhouse gases recent estimates indicate that aerobic composting instead of landfilling of food residuals avoids major amounts of methane generation and release approximately six metric tons of co equivalent are saved from each metric ton of compost food residuals that are not landfill picture up here gives you an aerial view of our composting site the long rows are actually the wind rows we use the second picture shows the compost turner which is used in the process of collectively about forty cubic yards per week or six tons of material from the south building and the whitten building the u s house of representatives longworth building cafeteria and a commercial organic food retailer a commercial provider collects and hauls the material ten miles from d c to our site at beltsville where it is mixed with sawdust from the congressional woodworking shop along with leaves and old hay from our farm this public private team effort has helped to advance the inclusion of compostable biobased cafeteria ware as the seasons progress we plan to incorporate grass landscape and floral trimmings from the congressional grounds the u s botanical gardens and the usda headquartered complex the residuals from the longworth cafeteria are notably distinct from the other materials that are collected in that they are pulped as m has explained this type of processing reduces the whole mass by approximately seventy percent with concurrent per unit whole cost savings and facilitates an accelerated decomposition our interest in composting food residuals at barc measures well with our field skill research studies which include evaluations of the degradation rate of biobased cafeteria ware as part of the usda's biopreferred program and that includes things like this corn based bottle which is a water bottle with a chlorine filter attached inside and there are some other articles that are being passed around the room that are also b are also looking at the efficiency of biofiltration on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from a variety of different composting formats alternative uses for excess compost heat are also an important feature of our program and lastly we are also always concerned with the safe production of local leafy greens fresh fruits and vegetables currently the compost from beltsville is used for soil improvement on usda farm the u s national arboretum and the usda whitten building gardens looking forward we have engaged with the maryland environmental service the maryland department of environmental protection and members of the u s epa headquartered in region iii food recycling work group to explore and encourage more food composting capacity in the d c metropolitan region to address this need and to avoid long haul distances we are pursuing through our cooperative research and development agreements a variety of in vessel composting and processing options that include energy recovery and sustainability in conclusion barc and other ars locations continue to press forward with composting and other technologies to increase recycling of agricultural municipal and food residuals to reduce the landfilling of organics to increase energy capture and to lessen the pollution that threatens our natural precious resources soil water and air my colleagues and i appreciate the opportunity and the interest of your committee in doctor kelly thank you for being here thank you very much for the opportunity to testify about the essential role of the food service industry and sustainability and the strategic value of sustainability to guide food service innovation i am the chief sustainability officer of the university of new hampshire where for the last ten years i have directed the university office of sustainability the first endowed university wide program of its kind in the country the university of new hampshire is building a culture of sustainability by organizing everything we do around its principles our curriculum our operations our research and engagement with the wider world within our own campus operations we have been building a low carbon infrastructure that will result in total emissions fifty seven percent below one thousand nine hundred and ninety levels by this time next year with no offsets purchased millions of dollars saved and energy security enhanced but our efforts go well beyond that in educating the next generation of citizen professionals to meet the challenges of sustainability and building a sustainable food system is fundamental to this broader mission i have included specific examples in my written testimony including our local harvest initiative that links local and regional procurement with energy and water efficiency and composting as well as the first organic dairy research farm on a land grant university in the united states but for my purposes for speaking i would like to share four principles and five broader recommendations with you that we have found to be important in building a sustainable food service at the university of new hampshire and all of these are about business not as usual but about collaborations and partnerships that cut across virtually every well established boundary between disciplines management functions and internal and external stakeholders first a comprehensive approach to food system sustainability must address the important role played by the food service industry and i applaud your actions here today to do just that the food service industry is an increasingly important actor in the chain that links agriculture the environment and public health in addition to minimizing their own direct operational impacts sustainability practices within the food service industry can create greater demand for sustainable agriculture from the local to the global level while providing healthy delicious cuisine that nourishes the palate and the spirit this means that the sustainable food system advocates from all sectors must engage the food service industry in these broader efforts second a comprehensive approach to building a sustainable food service industry must see that industry as part and parcel of the larger food system a successful approach must go beyond food counter to compost as this hearing is entitled to embrace the entire food system cycle from healthy soils to healthy farm and food enterprises to healthy communities including composting operations that in turn help build healthy soils and so the cycle continues we cannot truly have a sustainable food service industry unless we have a sustainable food system from farm to fork to compost to food security and nutritional health this means that the sustainable food service advocates  enterprises need to actively engage with partners from agriculture resource conservation and nutrition to add their unique and critical contribution to this larger shared goal third a comprehensive approach to building a sustainable food industry must see the food system as part of the larger society in which it operates in our communities food agricultural and nutrition are linked and inseparable from climate management biodiversity and eco systems and to regional economies and livable wages all of these factors interact to impact our public health and quality of life this is the province of sustainable communities and the larger goal of sustainable development within a given food service operation sustainability means thinking up and down the supply chain and across the life cycle of its products and services and out into the communities and regions that are working to sustain the quality of life finally in addition to incorporating sustainability practices into our food service industry it is critically important that these practices are seen as an integral part of education and learning within a broader culture of sustainability in higher education sustainable food practices must be complemented by curriculum research and public engagement that strengthens sustainable food systems in our communities by cultivating the capacity of students in all fields to advance sustainability in their civic and professional lives we can ensure that the goals of energy independence and climate stabilization benefit from and contribute to the equally important goals of food security and environmental and public health education is the key to empowering and inspiring the creative problem solving that can sustain and improve the quality of life for all americans what is common to all these efforts that we are engaged in related to food energy and the environment and quality of life is collaboration built around shared goals that are in everyone's interests those shared interests lie in the fact that reducing greenhouse gas emissions so called mitigation is absolutely necessary but insufficient to address the issue we must simultaneously adapt to regional impacts of an already changing climate by building resilience into the systems that sustain our communities including food systems so five points just to summarize here in closing that these we think are based on our experience principles that could help guide a national policy framework one support regional approaches to food and agriculture that reflect the diversity of ecology and culture and the opportunities two link food and farming to health nutrition and poverty reduction three support research for sustainable approaches to biofuels that must reflect the best scientific assessments across the full life cycle of those fuels fourth support responsive land grant universities we have a marvelous network in place including cooperative extension that can really contribute to these problems and solutions and finally support sustainability science with the recognition from the national were aimed at getting us over to the capitol to cast four votes and time is running out for us to get there is it possible for you twenty five minutes i hate to do this congress is manic depressive and this is not a sustainable way of doing business but this is the way it is i come here today as the executive director of the chez panisse foundation and more importantly as the mother of two young children when you have children you begin to worry about a lot of things and what they eat or food is one of them the chez panisse foundation gets its name from a restaurant that wholly supports two farms and eighty five others by buying locally seasonally and sustainably it was started by a woman named alice waters alice is also the founder of the chez panisse foundation we are a separate nonprofit and our work is to support educational programs that use food to educate empower and nurture youth to build a more sustainable future twelve years ago we started an organic kitchen and garden program at a public middle school to build a model that would change the way children relate to food we wanted to show them how their food choices have both an impact on their health the community and the environment today the edible schoolyard is a program in which every child participates in growing harvesting cooking and sharing food at the table children learn about where their food comes from and math reading and writing they learn about proportionality with recipes and science with soil experiments and history through ancient grains that they harvest they turn the compost pile and the scraps from the kitchen classrooms go into it the original vision for the edible schoolyard was to include a school lunch program for all students not just a healthy lunch but a delicious one that is made from local seasonal and sustainable ingredients our schools in berkeley like other schools in america before we started this work were serving frozen lunchmeat sandwiches in packages something called encheritos which i am still not sure what they are and chicken fingers that no doubt had traveled what is the typical one thousand five hundred miles to get to our cafeteria so we funded a chef to work inside the school district to begin to make changes not just taking the bad things out but focusing on buying locally it was an important part of our strategy and our vision lots of districts are trying to change their food and take fat out or lower the sugar but they are not looking at their local sourcing and we knew that local seasonal and sustainabl grown foods would be better for the environment and they would simply taste better for kids ripe juicy tomatoes in the late summer tangerines in the winter apples in the fall lettuces in the spring we had a vision they would lure children into our cafeterias but could the district our public school district afford these changes they had a policy that said they should do it but would they really do it so two years later we have a salad bar in every school much of which is organic free breakfasts for all students and organic milk at lunch thirty percent of our produce is organic and actually regionally or locally procured we compost and recycle in all of our kitchens sixteen of them and we have moved away from metal containers serving buffet style with compostable trays and in some schools with real pla the foundation does not pay for any of the food costs we supported the cook in the development of new menus procurement systems and in evaluation it sounds quite simple buy locally and make real food it is as right as rain but we face many challenges can you imagine that when we started we had to teach people who were making the food how to use a knife can you imagine that we do not have a stove in our central kitchen that serves five thousand meals a day can you imagine that we could not even buy from a farm from the farmers market because we had no place to store his or her produce and no way to purchase directly from them finally what do you think you can make for lunch that is nourishing and delicious that is less than a dollar despite these challenges we have made progress and i do believe it can be done in other places for school districts it requires more incentives and better policies when a fruit cocktail meets nutritional guidelines set by the usda i think we have a problem we need stronger language in the farm bill to support the local purchasing of all food not just fruits and vegetables and we need investments or loans to help farmers grow real food broccoli instead of just corn for corn syrup we need pilot programs to show that this can be done in other parts of the country both the lunch piece and the education piece we need more funding for food we have to stop thinking of food as cheap jamie oliver i was recently with him another chef from the u k held up an ipod and he said would you want to buy this ipod if it just cost twenty dollars no you would question where it came from and you would question what it was made of we should be thinking about the same thing with food for our children do we really want to buy the cheapest beef the beef recall the largest in history with one hundred and seventy three million pounds of beef should be a lesson to us we need more funding for training and for school gardens because we have learned at the edible schoolyard if they grow it and cook it they absolutely will eat it finally it requires leadership at all levels of government and in our schools budgets are tight but we can pay now or pay later i do not need to tell you about the obesity crisis facing our children and the cdc's telling us that this generation will be the first to die younger than its parents i end with how i introduced myself as a mother who cares about what kind of world my children will liv children learn eating habits when they are very very young i have a son who is one and a daughter who is three fortunately my daughter loves peas she saw a basket of them recently at chez panisse and she asked to take a handful of them out of the restaurant with her as we left s more mama more but at the same time she goes to a daycare center in oakland where there is a lunch subsidized by the federal government that gives her fish sticks and chocolate pudding for lunch there is something wrong with this picture when a mother tries to do the right thing but the government sends a different message i am so honored to be here testifying before this committee it means that government our leaders are connecting the dots between the food system and the environment between our children's health and the health of this economy what we feed our children matters the national lunch program serves thirty one million children a day we have a choice about what to feed them thank you for connecting your efforts to create energy independence and to stop global warming with our efforts to make a very simple meal chair recognizes the gentleman from missouri mister cleaver for a round of questions lights in the offices be turned off at a reasonable hour whatever that may be until we can go back and retrofit all of the offices with motion detector lights we do not really have any choice other than to mechanically but that is an inconsistent pattern it does not work i think a better solution would be to work with the architect of the capitol to implement a night lighting policy we have already worked with the architect to reduce the run time on the fans for example  for the heating and cooling systems we have reduced the run time by fourteen percent which in turn you know is having an impact on our carbon footprint and on our overall operations we are also trying to install better their day and we have had to go back and retrofit every one of them some buildings like the capitol leak like a sieve i mean there is no other way to describe it that is just because we have had a hodgepodge development so we have very old very aging infrastructure where for a long time no one made any improvements in the heating and cooling systems in the metering or in any of the other aspects of building operations so we have a long ways to go to be able to address that our carbon footprint of ninety one thousand tons for a community a small city of seven thousand  people in the district is probably larger than normal but i do not think that it is too outrageously high there are other bigger institutions like georgetown and gw but most of them have buildings that are a lot newer than most difficult challenge in attempting to green the capit beard that is an interesting question i think there were really two big problems the first was getting our arms around all of the factual situation what is our carbon footprint luckily the general accounting office had been asked to prepare that information a couple of years ago and they made it available to us so that solved that problem i think the second problem has been getting people to realize that they have to do business in a different way that is everyone from members and other agencies like the architect of the capitol or the senate or the capitol police or whomever it may be and our employees  need to do business in a different way but it is not that expensive it is not that difficult and it certainly does not take new technology it is all off the shelf and we are not doing anything different than any other major corporation or institution in america are there any other commercial cafeterias that close the loop for procurement consumption and disposal as the house cafeteria does mister beard i do not know of any in the washington d c area rutgers university has a very good one  york has pretty modern facilities but i do not know of any others in the d c area that have taken the kind of steps that we have the chairman how have you been able to create a corporate model sustainable  in a better environment and the food is better it is fresher and we are getting on a per capita basis greater attendance at the cafeteria than we have had in the past i do not know how that will work out know you want to make available the best product you can to the employees who work here and to the members and to our guests that we possibly can if we are willing to invest a little bit to do that we will get money back on the back end it cost us for example ninety thousand dollars to purchase and install the  are we actually expanded ourselves a little bit more than we originally intended but with some additional modifications and some processes with the in vessel systems we are able to handle things the chairman how many facilities like that are there in the around community concerns about potential aspects that maybe there might be some odor or maybe there might be some additional traffic or as to the aesthetic appearances of an outdoor composting facility where you see the piles and that sort of thing instead of an enclosed in vessel type of system the chairman so what are the opportunities for expansion ms millner well in an urban area what we are looking at is the variety of different in vessel systems that are available within the united states so that is what we are looking at what is the most efficient type of system for the food type operations particularly how do they compare with regard to gaseous emissions that impact global warming what are their energy costs for operating them because they obviously do utilize some kind of forced aeration so that has to be taken into account the chairman so can you answer that can you deal with that question for a second what are the expenses related to composting ms millner the expenses are the capitalization if you are talking about a brand new facility if they have to get a facility up and going it is whatever is required for the permitting of that facility then there are operations and maintenance costs in addition to any of the capital items for the equipment that you need to purchase to move the materials around the chairman how commercially profitable is the compost after it has been processed ms millner that depends on what they decide to do in the beginning i often tell people you have to start with the end in mind in that  say that if you are really looking to produce a very high end horticultural product then you need to do certain things within the steps in making that product to get to that very high end you can ask a very large price for that because horticultural producers want a reliable high quality product if on the other hand you are producing a product that you are just using for general field application for corn or for some other commodity you may not need to go to that high of an i think the greatest aspect of it is a simple example is a salad bar just having fresh local produce where kids can see and choose kids like to choose things so when they see it they want to eat it and it really makes a difference in  both their health and in the environment the chairman are you interested in expanding to other school districts ms wong absolutely we are always looking for different partners and we have been contacted by folks in chicago and in new york and in los angeles while we may not run the program for we are a very small organization we absolutely support and are trying to link up funders to support this kind of program in other school districts the chairman well let me ask this question to any of you down there what has been the response from diners as you move to this new  after tasting the food she walked around and talked to people she randomly talked to people in the longworth cafeteria she came back and said well that was a surprise i said what was she said the number one answer i got back was people were excited about being able to participate in a composting exercise they like the food but it is just as important that we are composting so i think that was to me at least one real testament i also judge the number of negative e mails i get usually when we make some kind of change around here i get a  lot i guess it is part of the job but i would have to tell you that i have not received any bad e mails now i have received e mails about we need additional information on various aspects and problems kids make a dish and they grow the food i can tell you on countless occasions i have been in there and have seen young boys and girls devouring plates of swiss chard and kale how many times have you seen that i see it every time i go down there in the winter because they have been involved in growing it and cooking it and it tastes good because it is straight from their garden that they have been growing it another story is one of the programs we implemented was a free breakfast program so we would source apples and other fruits and vegetables locally from the farmers market teachers can do it or not do it but it is available to all of the kids at one school in particular there was a classroom one teacher was too lazy to go down and get the food in the cafeteria and bring it back  up one of the young students called the food service director and said why is everyone else getting this great free breakfast with this fruit and these muffins and i don't have it so students really are noticing differences the longest line in the high school is the salad bar line satisfied customers which is ultimately the strongest test you don't usually go back for another bad meal at a restaurant that has been my experience you get only one chance the chairman yes i agree with that so savings just in the area of solid waste customer satisfaction and more people actually taking advantage of the healthier more environmentally sensitive areas do you have a sense of as we are going talking about changes and particularly when there are a few people who had decided to be cranky before they had even seen it i have been stunned at just the chatter as i dip down in there for a few minutes to try and grab something positive feedback from our office and with the young men and women on the hill who we come in contact with and with visitors this is something that i don't think has been given proper attention but we have millions of visitors who are on capitol hill every year and the opportunity to watch the modeling and the feedback that they get is an opportunity to carry that message up to this point based on the feedback from my constituents and from the folks we pick up on it has been very positive and i appreciate it i would pose a question to you mister beard and to our other panelists about the lessons that this suggests for other areas of the federal government i think it important for us to model the behavior we want from the rest of america on capitol hill but the federal government is the largest landlord landowner employer probably the largest provider of food services in the united states as you sort of run this all out it has a pretty significant potential impact i wondered if any of you had thoughts or observations from these lessons about what changes we should have in federal is now in conference but there are things in it that encourage and provide incentives for participating locally so those are important pieces of legislation that need to be strengthened as well as encouraging loans for farmers to really begin to produce  products and providing fresh food to our customers i really have to put in a plug for our vendor restaurant associates has been a fantastic vendor for the house i met with the president of restaurant associates in november and i told him that success to me would be that in a year people would come to washington d c and say we have to go to the house of representatives having greater revenues so i guess the other thing is in terms of policy i think the suggestions about the farm bill are very very interesting and very worthwhile we have actually made these changes incidentally without the benefit of getting as many products from local providers as we would like to have because of the time of the year we are in i think when you see it in the spring and in the fall  a little sign and it says our local partners what it shows is the local farms that are supplying food that day i have talked to restaurant associates about having some of those farmers come into the restaurants and you know talk some about the kinds of things that they are doing and about their products so it can build a link between our cafeterias and our suppliers the farms that we are using so there are a lot of exciting things that we can do and restaurant associates has been more than willing to participate in that ms millner i would just say there is hardly a week that goes by when i do not receive a  call from other federal agencies around here in the washington metropolitan area who would like to be able they are interested in doing the composting of food residuals and are trying to get on board with the bio  products so i think there is a huge pent up demand among the federal agencies to do that as soon as there is more composting capacity for food waste in the area i can see that going forward rather rapidly super thank you thank you mister chairman the chairman i thank the gentleman from oregon we are going to ask now each one of you to give us your best one minute summary of what you want us to remember about this phenomenon so that we can i think this sums it up alice waters said i believe there is something very wrong with the way most people in our culture relate to food and this is something that seems to me to be absolutely central to the future of environmentalism even the environmental visionaries who seem to be seeing the trees awfully well even some of these brilliant revolutionaries keep missing the forest and the forest is that learning to make the right choices about food is the single most important key to environmental awareness for ourselves are compost material you know i guess i call it my coleslaw leading us into compost so it is a life cycle and you have to think about it in life cycle terms and look at this in a much more comprehensive fashion then i think the last thing that i would say is that i would encourage you to visit the members dining room the longworth or the rayburn cafeteria