Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack speaks at the Organic Trade Association annual policy conference today in Washington, asking them to fight proposed changes in the school meal programs.. (Organic Trade Association/Erika Nizborski)

In highly personal terms today, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack appealed to members of the Organic Trade Association to lobby against the changes that appropriators are planning to reduce schools’ obligations to feed healthier food to children in meal programs and in school vending machines.

The House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee on Tuesday approved a measure to require USDA to grant waivers to schools whose meals programs have been losing money for six months.

The Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up the fiscal year 2015 Agriculture Appropriations bill on Thursday, and Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., is scheduled to offer amendments to relieve the schools from some of their obligations.

“One thing I know about myself is that I was well fed when I was a child,” Vilsack said, adding that he has a photo showing him as a “plump little kid” and that his parents adopted him in the orphanage because his weight made them think he had been well fed.

But as a result of those early eating habits, he said, “I have struggled with my weight all my life.”

If the new school meal standards are not kept in place, Vilsack said, it will be a signal to kids that they have been “relegated to doing it on your own.”

“As a guy who has been relegated to doing it on my own for 63 years, it is not easy.”

The proposed changes to the school meals programs are bad for both the 30 percent of children in danger of being overweight or obese and the 17 million children who live in homes where their parents or guardians are not sure where food will come from every month, Vilsack said.

If the government reneges on the healthier food requirements passed under the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, he said, it is a signal that “we” are not going to implement a commitment to providing the next generation of Americans with at least one healthy meal per day.

The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, he noted, passed the Senate without a dissenting vote.

“I think it is outrageous that we are taking a step back,” Vilsack said.

The secretary acknowledged that the issue “doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with organic,” but he added, “If you don’t use your voice, if you don’t use your power to convey a sense of outrage to taking a step back in this commitment,” then opponents “will win up there in that building,” he said, pointing from the meeting site at the Newseum to the Capitol.

“It is a challenge that this group — apart from all the other issues — you ought to be forcefully engaged in,” Vilsack concluded.

Organic Trade Association members are scheduled to visit 150 Hill offices on Thursday.

Laura Batcha, the executive director of the Organic Trade Association, said the group had already established an organic-specific agenda for the meetings with members and staff and it did not include the school meals changes.

But Batcha said she would not be surprised if members decided to bring up the school meals issue or respond to questions about it.

“In general we are about good food,” she said.

Meanwhile, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said Tuesday she is unhappy with the school meals changes and some other provisions of the House appropriations bill.

She said the bill “unwinds the landmark child nutrition law, which was also passed with bipartisan majorities, by undermining efforts to improve the health of school children.”

Stabenow also said she was opposed to the provisions “to gut conservation and energy programs that passed in the farm bill with wide bipartisan majorities.”

“These irresponsible cuts to some of the most important farm bill programs cannot be allowed to happen,” she said.

“If that weren’t enough, the House bill vastly underfunds the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is tasked with making sure our financial markets do not suffer another collapse like they did in 2008,” Stabenow said. “When Congress passes laws with strong bipartisan majorities, the appropriations bills must reflect the will of Congress and the letter and the spirit of those laws.”