Quinn Has Big Plans for NYC Food

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City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has vowed to dedicate the next four years to food. She has a dream that the city can create jobs, improve food quality, support local farmers, and improve the environment by bringing NYC's "food infrastructure" into the 21st century. At a press conference to announce the city’s FRESH supermarket initiative, Quinn unveiled her big FoodWorks New York plan. Over the next six months, the Council will work with experts from a wide spectrum of fields to examine every step in NYC’s food cycle: production, processing, transport, retail, consumption, and post-consumption. During her remarks, Quinn said:

In the last few years, the DOE has started offering salad bars at many public schools - a great initiative we hope to expand. To stock those salad bars they spend nearly 300,000 dollars a year to buy over half a million pounds of Romaine lettuce. But the lettuce they serve doesn’t come from New York State. It comes from California or Maryland.
The problem isn’t that we can’t find lettuce in New York State. In fact we’ve identified a farmer in Orange County who grows Romaine lettuce, and would love to sell to the DOE. The problem is, there isn’t a facility in the area to wash, cut and bag that lettuce so it can be served in schools. We have the product. We have the demand. And we’re already spending the money. All we need to do is to bring that kind of wash, cut and bag facility to the five boroughs. And wouldn’t that be a great way to put some of our now empty manufacturing space to work?

New York lettuce for kids, jobs for grownups, and a glorious legacy for Quinn—then maybe Bloomberg will skip a fourth term and she can have her turn as mayor! Details are pretty vague about this FoodWorks plan, but that's because stage one involves studying the "food infrastructure" to target weaknesses. Quinn says the Council will be passing legislation to require city agencies to report back on food related measures, and this data will help set "ambitious but achievable goals."

In the spring, she'll present the comprehensive FoodWorks blueprint, containing a list of concrete policy initiatives. Dan Barber, owner of Blue Hill restaurant, was also at today's press conference, and in a statement he said this "is not just about food access, it's about accessing the right kind of food."

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By John Del Signore in Food on December 7, 2009 4:00 PM

Comments [rss]

NannyState

If she really wants to maximize the state's agricultural potential, she should work to legalize pot.

Mordicai

Someone is going to make fast food illegal? Finally.

Snoopy

She does have a good point though. I think if we get rid of all those stupid decorative trees in Central Park and plant lettuce instead our children will be healthy and happy. Plus I have never heard of a person injured by a falling limb from a lettuce plant.

I really could go for fresh pineapple in season also.

C. Quinn, most of New York City knows you are a total asshole, so please don't reinforce those peoples opinion of you.

BotanistPrime

I'm in favor of supporting localized food production. There's no reason to burn a bunch of jet fuel and pay profit margins for things we can get locally.

longacre

What if it costs twice as much due to the difference in labor markets?

jpeditor

Shut up and eat your soylent green!

I can't wait for this bimbo to run and ruin NYC's food and restaurant industry the way Øgabe is ruining the the rest of the American economy.

Maybe now that EPA is saying that what we EXHALE NOW NEEDS TO BE REGULATED by President Training Pants Maoists, Quinn can change our diets and she can measure our farts.

ides_of_march

It's no longer a free country when politicians are telling you what you can and can't eat.

Has this bimbo ever even worked on a farm, a supermarket or a restaurant? What makes her such a f'ing expert on food other than stuffing her fat face in the public trough?

thefacts

The government has been telling you what you can and cannot eat, or drink, or smoke for well over a hundred years.

Many of these first were enacted during Teddy Roosevelt's and other Republicans' terms.

marzipan

How is she "telling" you what to eat? You don't agree with the idea, so that naturally makes her a bimbo. Way to be intellectually bankrupt... Have another hamburger.

longacre

She is saying that she's smarter than nature and centuries of specialization in the food markets. If there were a business that thought they could make money growing and cleaning lettuce in New York, without government subsidies, they'd have done it by now. We're not talking about building a space ship here...this is not a high capital industry. What she is proposing is spending tax dollars to artificially create a market.

It's one thing to say the city should try to purchase foods that actually thrive in this area, like apples and corn. Lettuce is not one of those.

longacre

All we need to do is to bring that kind of wash, cut and bag facility to the five boroughs. And wouldn’t that be a great way to put some of our now empty manufacturing space to work?

So this is a nice handjob for her real estate friends, as there is no mention of the jobs it would create. Of course not, because these are $5 an hour migrant jobs...that's precisely why the only lettuce facilities are in southern California.

brianf

are we to expect that they cant worry about more than one thing at a time? but maybe your right, why would she try to improve nutrition in school (and the local economy)? its not like nyc has a childhood obesity epidemic (or a struggling economy for that matter) on our hands or anything.

MT

Seriously? Maybe she should worry about getting more guns off the streets than getting more lettuce on our tables. The City Council is so useless it's not even funny anymore. Maybe they should to go back to naming streets and leave us alone.

brianf

are we to expect that they cant worry about more than one thing at a time? but maybe your right, why would she try to improve nutrition in school (and the local economy)? its not like nyc has a childhood obesity epidemic (or a struggling economy for that matter) on our hands or anything.

mangell

Ya also can't grow Romaine lettuce during the winter. Those kids better like apples, potatoes and squash, because what else can be grown on NY farms during the winter?