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The USDA has announced its implementation of President Trump’s Whole Milk for Health Kids Act.

This act (see Federal Register notice):

• Removes requirements that school milk be fat-free or low fat, flavored or not.
• Permits schools to also offer whole and reduced-fat milks, flavored or not.
• Excludes the saturated fat in milk from counting toward limits.

Bottom line: This act of Congress allows schools to offer full-fat chocolate milk.

As you might guess, the International Dairy Foods Association is thrilled:

 IDFA applauds USDA for moving quickly to put the law into effect and provide school nutrition directors and school milk processors the certainty they need to offer students the nutritious milk options that best meet their nutrition needs. For too long, federal regulations limited schools’ ability to offer the milk options students prefer and are more likely to drink.

Should we care?

Here is a quick comparison of one-cup portions (from USDA Data Central).

• Nonfat plain milk:  84 calories, 0.1 grams saturated fat, 12 grams sugars
• Nonfat chocolate milk: 160 calories, 1.5 grams saturated fat, 25 grams sugars
• Full-fat chocolate milk: 208 calories, 5 grams saturated fat, 24 grams sugars

Thus, it has taken an act of Congress to allow schools to offer milk with more saturated fat and more calories.

Why?  Because the dairy industry thinks it can sell more milk to school kids if that milk is higher in fat and sugar-sweetened.

Selling more chocolate milk in schools is a long-standing goal of the dairy industry.

As I wrote on this very topic in 2009,

• Schools represent sales of 460 million gallons of milk – more than 7% of total milk sales
• More than half (54%) of flavored milk is sold in schools
• Chocolate milk is a key growth area for milk processors

So this act has little to do with the health of America’s children, and everything to do with compensating for failing sales of milk.

How serious a problem is this?  In the greater scheme of problems affecting school meals in the U.S—lack of adequate funding, no kitchens, poor equipment, supply chains that don’t work, inedible USDA commodities—I can’t get too upset about adding a few grams of saturated fat to kids’ diets, much as I would prefer that they were getting their calories from fruits, vegetables, A that this is the kind of thing our current Congress is concerned about—the health of the dairy industry, not of kids.

A CORRECTION OF SORTS

A reader reminds me that the new school food rules that go into effect by 2025-2026 (at the earliest) call for no more than 10 grams of added sugars per 8 ounces of flavored milk.  This standard will apply to whole as well as reduced or no fat milks.

Let me start with a summary from Food Safety News:

The final four in the [meat] consolidation game are:

• JBS – This Brazil-based food giant is the world’s largest beef processor. It owns facilities that slaughter and pack over 20,000 cattle per day in the U.S.
• Tyson Foods – Known for chicken, Tyson is also the second largest U.S. beef processor. Their five beef plants process thousands of cattle daily.
• Cargill – This agribusiness conglomerate is the third largest U.S. beef packer and also owns one of the nation’s largest feedlot operations, Cargill Cattle Feeders.
• National Beef – Majority owned by Brazilian meatpacker Marfig, National Beef operates three U.S. packing facilities that process thousands of cattle per day.

Those are the four companies that control about 80 percent of the U.S. beef market, and there is no reason to believe that any of them are satisfied with their share. American consumers are paying some of the highest, inflation-adjusted prices for steaks and hamburgers than at any time in history.

The Trump administration says it is taking this on.  In a series of announcements on X (formerly Twitter), USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins says:

We must work to address this to protect our ranchers and consumers. @POTUS  and this administration are focused on promoting fairness and competition — ensuring our producers have options and a level playing field.

Not only that, she adds,

Half of these meatpacking giants, including the largest meat packer in the world, are either foreign-owned or have significant foreign ownership and control, making them a threat not just to our cattle producers, but a threat to America itself.

Here’s what she says they doing about it:

We’re putting forward short- and long-term solutions through the @USDA  Beef Plan and a major DOJ investigation into anti-competitive practices ordered by @POTUS.  Food security is national security.

And what is the USDA Beef Plan?  This will enhance disaster relief, increase grazing access, and build demand.

Anti-trust regulation?

Not a chance.

Last week, I wrote about what I consider to be a national tragedy: the splitting up and relocation of crucial USDA units.

The latest is USDA’s renaming, splitting up, and relocating the Food and Nutrition Service, the agency responsible for running SNAP and other food assistance programs.

USDA’s actions:

I.  Rename the Food and Nutrition Service; it is now to be The Food and Nutrition Administration

Translation: Serving low-income Americans is no longer part of USDA’s mission; management is.

II.  Split the FNA into multiple units.

Translation: Make sure food assistance is splintered and uncoordinated.

III.  Relocate the units into widely separated areas.  Child nutrition programs go to Dallas, TX; SNAP and safety go to Kansas City, MO; research goes to Raleigh, NC; emergency management goes to Denver, Co; retailer compliance goes to four cities–Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, and New York.

Translation: Get rid of experts on food assistance who actually know how to make these programs work and who care about ending hunger in America, especially among women and young children.

IV.  Keep the overall FNA administrator in Washington, DC.

Translation: Give the appearance of oversight, now impossible given the geographical dispersion.

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins posted this announcement on X (formerly Twitter).  Note her Trump-capitalized explanation:

We’re moving the NEW Food and Nutrition Administration out of DC and into the heartland where it belongs. Shifting staff CLOSER to those they support, makes us MORE efficient and responsive to the millions of families touched by USDA nutrition programs. Delivering faster, better service for families who need nutrition assistance and stronger support for American farmers who grow the food on their tables. We are laser focused on serving the American people with greater efficiency. And this reorganization will do just that.

Yeah, right.

My translation: USDAis systematically doing everything it can get away with to destroy SNAP, decrease participation, and make it impossibly difficult for eligible low-income Americans to enroll in food assistance.

You don’t agree?  Watch what happens to SNAP enrollments.

Decreases are already happening, as shown by ProPublica’s data from Arizona.

If USDA doesn’t have staff who know how to do things, people will not be able to enroll.  And that’s the whole point of the renaming, reorganization, and relocation.

Additional thoughts

• Former USDA official Jerry Mande wrote in a post on X, “during Trump’s 1st term USDA spent about $18m to move FNS to Braddock Pl. USDA signed a 15 yr lease in 2020. Those $$ are being squandered.”  His post also includes GAO data on the loss of experienced staff at USDA.
• GAO report on the effects of moving USDA on staff expertise in the Economic Research Service.

• An earlier 2022 GAO report on why relocating USDA units was not a good idea
• Congressional Research Service report (2026) on authority for USDA’s reorganization

It’s deja vu all over again.

During the Trump I administration, I wrote repeatedly about the tragic relocation of the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) to Kansas.  As I said, the Government Accountability Office confirmed my analysis.

Why tragic?  I don’t have anything against Kansas, but expecting long-time residents of the Washington, DC area to uproot their families to move there seemed designed for only one purpose: to gut the ERS of its experts and to force it to stop producing sophisticated—and honest—analyses of inconvenient food issues.

In this, the move succeeded admirably.  Many experts quit.  Some were rehired to the DC area, but as far as I can tell, the ERS has never recovered.  It continues to publish routine statistical data, but the analytic reports have stopped.  This is an enormous loss to my work in particular, but also to society.

Now the USDA is doing it again, and finished the job on ERS.

Last week, the USDA issued two press releases on the relocations:

I.  USDA Advances Reorganization and Restructuring of the Research, Education, and Economics Mission Area to Improve Efficiency and Better Serve American Farmers

This effort refocuses REE’s structure on mission delivery—streamlining operations, strengthening leadership accountability, and positioning resources closer to the agricultural communities USDA serves. The updated structure will be guided by five core principles: strengthening leadership accountability, reducing organizational complexity, ensuring consistency across agencies where appropriate, leveraging emerging tools and technologies, and aligning clearly with USDA’s priorities.

II.  USDA Announces Food Safety and Inspection Service Reorganization, Establishes National Food Safety Center in Iowa

This one says pretty much the same thing.

Let me translate what the USDA is really doing.

It is moving the hub of the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to Urbandale, Iowa where it will establish a National Food Safety Center with about 200 employees relocated from Washington, DC (if they agree to move).  It also is relocating employees to Fort Collins, Colorado, and to a Science Center in Georgia (ditto).

Ostensibly, this is to bring FSIS closer to its constituents to strengthen “its ability to protect public health and ensure the safety of the nation’s food supply.”

In practice, the moves will gut the agency, destroy its expertise, and disable it for years to come.

That has to be the intent.

Add these to the 27,000 people who have already left USDA since Trump II, 37% of its staff.  Surely, some of those people helped get the agency’s work done.

Who will be hired to replace the people who choose not to relocate?  I’m guessing those who go along with the current administration’s ideological agenda.

As I said, tragedy.

A reader, Jennifer Windh, has done some serious investigation of loopholes in USDA’s school food rules that allow lots of ultra-processed snacks to be sold a la carte (“competitive foods”) outside of the USDA’s school meals program.

USDA’s nutrition tandards also apply to competitive foods: Smart Snacks in Schools.

The final rule for these standards, effective as of 2016, sets requirements or limits for whole grains, saturated and trans fat, sugar, sodium, and calories.

This sounds good, but as Jennifer Windh found out, even though snacks are required to be either 50% whole grain or have as a first ingredient fruit, vegetable, dairy product, or protein, the rules allow for plenty of loopholes.

She summarizes the findings of her investigation in The Smart Snacks Loophole: How Junk Food Companies Target America’s Students in School.

One reason for the loophole is the generous sugar standard: “Acceptable food items must have ≤35% of weight from total sugar as served.”

She points out the irony of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s visit to an elementary school where cooks make healthy meals from scratch (parents protested his visit because of his stance on vaccination, not food).

This school, she notes, offers plenty of loophole snacks.

She is particularly concerned about the loophole for ice cream.  For this, she has analyzed sales in 12 Houston area school districts: Ice Cream at School.

Schools usually sell ice cream at the same time they serve the main meal. There is no adult present who encourages students to eat their lunch before eating dessert. As expected, most children eat their ice cream first! This spoils their appetite for the more nutritious foods on their tray. School lunch periods are short, children eat slowly, and there are many distractions as students socialize with their friends. As a result, some students eat their ice cream first and then throw the rest of their lunch away.

There is so much money to be made from school meals that sellers of ultra-processed foods are happy to reformulate their products to meet USDA nutrition standards and get their products in through the loopholes.

Obviously, the standards could use some tightening.

The big question: Will USDA tighten the loopholes when it issues new school food standards to reflect the new dietary guidelines?  Recall:  These emphasize eat real food and reduce intake of highly processed foods.

Stay tuned.

When President Trump was elected, he promised to downsize government.  He is doing that, for better or worse.  The latest move affects the USDA: GSA and USDA Unlock $1.6 Billion in Savings for Americans with Ag South Disposition.

Translation: The USDA is getting rid of the enormous, aging building it occupies across the street from its headquarters near the National Mall.

I love the positive spin: “The Ag South disposition will deliver significant value to taxpayers while advancing the Trump Administration’s objectives to reinvigorate, consolidate, and better utilize the federal real estate portfolio.”

Another account of this action reveals that two properties are involved, one of them currently housing the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), the agency that runs food assistance programs.

The USDA announced this plant last summer as part of the department’s major reorganization plan.  Its point: to relocate staff to new USDA hubs.

As explained in yet another account, this is about relocating staff:

Thousands of USDA employees have taken buyouts and left the department over the past year amid Republican U.S. President Donald Trump‘s effort to reshape and reduce the size and footprint of the federal government. The USDA has said it is planning to relocate much of its remaining staff in the U.S. capital to hubs in North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, Colorado and Utah.

From Government Executive, we learn:

The department announced the disposal of the South Building, which Rollins and other officials repeatedly described as dilapidated and mostly empty, last year as part of a larger reorganization that will push 2,600 employees out of the national capital region…USDA currently has 4,600 employees in the Washington area and is looking to shrink that number to 2,000…The department has already shed more than 15,000 employees from its initiative that allowed employees to sit on paid leave for several months before resigning.

Government Executive explains why this concerns me so much:

During Trump’s first term in 2019, the department relocated its Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Kansas City, over the objections of employees and some lawmakers. Following the move, both agencies lost more than half of their staff, leading to a significant loss of productivity from which it took the agencies years to recover. Under President Joe Biden, both agencies moved their headquarters back to Washington while maintaining their Kansas City offices.

…USDA solicited feedback on its reorganization plan last year, leading to 14,000 unique responses. Of those, 82% expressed negativity toward the plan, while 5% took a positive tone. Employees, lawmakers and stakeholders submitting the comments warned of a significant brain drain and disruptions to key farmer-support programs if the changes were implemented.

Oh no, not again.

I long considered the Economic Research Service to be the best kept secret in Washington, DC.  It produced reliable, credible analyses of food issues.  I considered it a national treasure and was devastated by its destruction (I wrote about this often on this site).  In my view, the agency has never recovered from its loss of national experts.  USDA says the FNS will remain in the DC area.

It’s hard not to see this as yet another attempt to undermine food assistance programs and make it harder for people to enroll in them.

I received this e-mailed message from the Avocado Nutrition Center, sponsored by the Hass Avocado Board (a USDA-sponsored research & promotion—checkoff—program).

Indeed, the New Pyramid does highlight avocados.  What a gift to the Hass Avocado Board!

Comment: As I’ve pointed out repeatedly (see my previous posts on these guidelines), the new guidelines and pyramid have losers (ultra-processed foods, sugars, refined carbohydrates, and even whole grains) and winners (meat, dairy, beef tallow—and avocados.  The avocado board is not missing a chance to take advantage of this.  That’s its job!

Last September, the USDA said it would stop conducting the annual hunger survey, because they were “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous.”

As I said at the time,

If you live in an Orwellian universe, you can use not measuring to pretend that food insecurity does not exist and certainly that it is not increasing as a result of your policies.

It took a long time for the anti-hunger community to achieve federal documentation of this enormous social problem.  I suppose we will now have to go back to the old days of local anti-hunger reports.  See my comments (with Sally Guttmacher) on state hunger reports.

On December 30, the USDA published the last of its formerly annual reports: 2024 Household Food Security report.

The inconvenient finding continues: food insecurity continues to rise.

And this was before the current Trump-era cuts to SNAP and increases in the cost of food and health care.

No wonder they don’t want to publish reports like these any more.