Food Before Fuel Campaign Launched with Goal of Encouraging Congress to Revisit Food-to-Fuel Policies

(American Meat Institute)

Today, AMI, together with more than 20 environmental, retail, hunger, Hispanic and food industry groups – announced the launch of the Food Before Fuel Campaign, a coalition effort urging Congress to revisit the nation’s food-to-fuel policies, a key factor in the growing global food crisis. 

Congressional policies mandate the conversion of more than one-third of all U.S. corn to ethanol, with additional subsidies and tariffs further promoting the diversion of food to fuel. Food policy experts broadly agree that these policies have contributed to record food price inflation, and the International Monetary Fund reports that U.S. food-to-fuel policy is responsible for more than 30 percent of food price inflation globally.

“There is certainly an ongoing debate over the best way forward on biofuels,” said J. Patrick Boyle, president and CEO of the American Meat Institute.  “Our obligation as a nation must be to find fact-based policy answers that take the science and the economics into account.  American consumers, our domestic food industry, and the environment we share depend on our being able to reexamine our policies and find the sustainable answer.”

 For more information on the Food Before Fuel Campaign, click here: http://www.foodbeforefuel.org/