Newark, NJ — Greater than 60 New Jersey anti-hunger advocates, state and native officers, medical professionals, direct service suppliers, household farmers, agricultural stakeholders, and individuals who have personally skilled the affect of starvation, meals insecurity, or diet-related sickness submitted feedback to US Senator Cory Booker’s (D-NJ) workplace on the vital have to make wholesome meals accessible to all.
The feedback got here in response to Booker’s name for suggestions forward of the White Home Convention on Meals, Vitamin, and Well being in September and have been forwarded to the White Home. They underscored the disproportionate hurt starvation and diet-related ailments inflict on Black and Brown and low-income communities throughout the state, and proposed concepts that touched on enhancing entry to contemporary fruit and veggies, increasing federal help packages, supporting domestically grown produce, eliminating meals waste, and extra.
“I am grateful to everybody who wrote in for highlighting the urgency of those points and for his or her work on daily basis to take away limitations to accessing wholesome, inexpensive meals,” Booker mentioned. “I stay up for working with the White Home to develop complete options so that every one individuals — from rural communities to cities just like the one I name dwelling — have equitable entry to nutritious meals choices.”
Booker secured funding to convene the convention within the Fiscal 12 months 2022 authorities funding invoice. The convention goals to create a nationwide technique to enhance entry to inexpensive, nutritious meals for all Individuals.
The feedback will inform Booker’s work as a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee and chair of the Senate Agriculture Subcommittee on Meals and Vitamin, Specialty Crops, Organics, and Analysis.
As Mayor of Newark, Booker witnessed firsthand how lack of entry to wholesome meals harmed native residents. He was instrumental in bringing a number of supermarkets to the world and in addition spearheaded the creation of group gardens and concrete farms.