Two Weeks to Rome: Group of U.S. Elected Officials Back Helga Zepp-LaRouche's 'Double Food Production' Call

PRESS RELEASE

Two Weeks to Rome: Group of U.S. Elected Officials Back Helga Zepp-LaRouche's `Double Food Production' Call

May 19, 2008 (EIRNS)—With a price hyperinflation that has suddenly cut off people in many countries from food, threatening famine and causing riots in 40 nations, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) meets in Rome June 3-5 and must dramatically change free trade policies. The head of the Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche has put out a call to the FAO conference for "doubling world food production," including eliminating both the World Trade Organization, and diversion of food crops to biofuels.

Two weeks before the conference, a group of American elected officials has come out backing Helga Zepp-LaRouche's call. Others have started to denounce ethanol diversion of corn. Support for the LaRouche statement has come from:

State Rep. Thomas Jackson, Alabama House Agriculture Committee Chairman. Jackson's resolution demanding the U.S. adopt of policy of doubling food production, ceasing ethanol subsidies, and cancelling its membership in the World Trade Organization passed the Alabama House on May 19.
Former State Senator Joe Neal, North Las Vegas, Nevada
State Sen. Joey Pendleton of Kentucky
Thomas Trigona, Mayor of Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Kareem Johnson, Council Vice President of Coatesville, Pennsylvania
Marcia Goodman-Hinnershitz, City Council of Reading, Pennsylvania
Former State Rep. Catherine Barrett of Cinncinati, Ohio
Former State Rep. LaMar Lemmons III of Detroit
Mayor Thomas Jellins of Menlo Park, California.

George McGovern: `Can't Put Hunger on Hold'

The U.S. Ambassador to the FAO from 1998-2001 and agricultural policy leader among Democrats since JFK, Sen. George McGovern, told the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC) today, that he would support all efforts to increase world food production around the FAO meeting. "We can't put hunger on hold," he said. "We have to look forward both to a larger world population, and to feeding them better."

McGovern was head of Food for Peace, the policy organization of President John F. Kennedy, and he said, "JFK developed a blueprint. We kept India alive, for example, until through the Green Revolution, it became self-sufficient in food. That has to be our food politics, worldwide."