White Potato Exclusion

Recently USDA excluded the white potato from the Women, Infants and Children or WIC program. Randy Hardy is the President of the National Potato Council says excluding the white potato from the program just has no good reason.

HARDY: No, there is no good reason. They say we're going to go with the science. The science they're using is from the mid-90's which basically said that human consumption of starches was too high. Follow up information that was done in 2005 and 2010 says the opposite, that adults and children are not receiving enough starchy vegetables in their diet so they say they are using the science but they're not using he most recent science.

Hardy says they are not giving up the fight to get the potatoes included in the program.

HARDY: We have gone to the supporters, the ones that led the fight, Representative Simpson and others and we have drafted a letter both to House members and Senate members, gone office to office trying to gather support, sent a letter to Secretary Vilsack asking him to reconsider and perhaps put it in the omnibus bill that would reallocate money to buy white potatoes in WIC and provide us with a more sufficient reason why we were excluded from WIC.

He says it is important for the public to get behind this and reach out to their local representatives.

HARDY: That would probably have more impact than anything we can do at the legislative level at this point. If they were to hear from a group of women who are currently using that program and say I want white potatoes, that would have more impact than we can asa a potato industry.

That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.