While farmers and ranchers strongly support work on agricultural sustainability, there is no scientific basis for incorporating sustainability concepts in federal dietary guidelines, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF).
In comments regarding the scientific report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, AFBF noted the government’s dietary guidelines strongly influence policy development, program administration and delivery and the educational message directed toward American consumers with respect to food and nutrition issues. That makes it imperative that the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) base the guidelines on well-established, widely accepted scientific evidence.
“Unfortunately, the scientific report of the advisory committee goes well beyond its designated scope of work, delivering a report that strongly suggests the committee would base dietary guidelines on more than health and nutrition considerations. The report includes an extensive section on the topic of sustainability, citing a need ‘to have alignment and consistency in dietary guidance that promotes both health and sustainability,’” Farm Bureau said, quoting directly from the report.
Not only is the concept of sustainability too vague to merit inclusion in the work of a committee that has explicitly been directed to be concerned with the concrete issues of human nutrition, the committee’s reliance on highly flawed reports and research—like the United Nation’s 2006 report, Livestock’s Long Shadow—is not a sound basis for a fair and objective discussion of the issue.