Alert

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.), chairman of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education and Related Agencies, today commented on a joint announcement by the Secretaries of the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Agriculture that reverses an earlier effort to redefine how dietary guidelines are developed.

“It was the right decision for the Administration to reverse course and take environmental sustainability out of the equation in determining dietary guidelines,” said Blunt. “I heard from a large number of groups who had significant concerns with the proposed dietary guidelines the Administration released that would have drastically expanded the scope of the advisory committee well beyond nutritional and dietary information. I have stated from the outset that the advisory committee should stay within the statutory requirements and make recommendations based only on sound nutritional science and not issues they don’t have the authority to consider. The Administration has determined that is the proper course of action and I am glad they reassessed their position.”

Earlier today, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell and USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the 2015 dietary guidelines, “will remain within the scope of our mandate in the 1990 National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Act (NNMRRA), which is to provide ‘nutritional and dietary information and guidelines’…‘based on the preponderance of the scientific and medical knowledge.’”

Blunt joined a letter in March to Burwell and Vilsack to express concern for redefining the scope of the dietary guidelines beyond nutritional science and Blunt questioned Secretary Burwell on this issue at a hearing on Capitol Hill in April.   As the subcommittee chairman that funds the Department of Health and Human Services, Blunt added language in the Labor/HHS Appropriations bill that passed the full committee to prohibit the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans from moving forward unless they are solely nutritional and dietary in nature and based on a preponderance of scientific evidence. The language, which was also included in the Senate Agriculture Appropriations bill, and similar to language in the House Agriculture Appropriations bill and House Labor/HHS Appropriations bill reads:

Sec. 230. None of the funds appropriated in this Act may be used to issue, promulgate, or otherwise implement the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans edition unless the information and guidelines in the report are solely nutritional and dietary in nature; and based only on a preponderance of nutritional and dietary scientific evidence and not extraneous information.