Written by Stephanie of Sustainable Cooking for One.

We’ve all heard that “the private is public”. But, have you ever heard the phrase used about the food we eat and the way it is regulated? As least as much as politicized topics like women’s rights, food is always crossing the borders between the private and the public spheres. While we often engage with it in the private sphere (the home, the mouth, the tummy) here on Daring Kitchen and our own individual blogs, I would bet lunch that fewer of us engage as actively with the public spheres, particularly the regulatory arena. My challenge to you, dear blog readers: comment on the mother of all governmental* blogs!

The Federal Register is the where all the rules proposed by different agencies are posted for public feedback. The agency is required to review and consider all comments submitted on each proposed rule. Have I lost you? Come back for the example! Take, for example, when Congress says something along the lines of “yo, grocers, label your foods with the countries where they were grown. Yeah, and do it by 2010.” The agency, like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), then sits down and writes up the details. Those details are called the PROPOSED RULE and it is posted online for you, upright citizen, to review and comment on. After consideration of your thoughtful opinions, the FDA then goes on to publish the RULE that tells grocers how to label that food. Basically, your comments help determine how our laws are turned into the actions that form our food system.

The Federal Register is often stuffed with interesting food and nutrition topics. A quick search often reveals a wide variety of options. A few items currently open to comments include a proposed rule for gluten-free labeling (docket #: FDA-2005-N-0404-0135), another proposed rule requiring clear labeling of injected solutions into meats and poultry (docket #: FSIS-2010-0012-0001), and another about health claim of heart disease and a certain class of plant chemicals (look at some “healthy margarine” the next time you’re in the grocery aisle). Why do we care? Well, I must eat gluten-free food, so having food labeled gluten-free actually be gluten-free is incredibly helpful. A cook who cares about meat quality, or anyone who is watching their salt intake, cares about the injection of salt solutions into their meat. Try searching for “food” or “agriculture” or “nutrition” and see what you find! Tip: select “proposed rule” and comment period “open” when you view your search results to narrow the topics listed.

Rules affect your food at every level of production. On the shelf, the packaging is regulated. In the processing and packaging factories or warehouses, rules determine how your food is handled (safe temperatures, clean equipment, anyone?). Food imported into the US undergoes some level of regulation to minimize the importation of pests with it, and hopefully to prevent contamination with substances like banned pesticides or toxins. Organic standards are regulated via rules, so changes to requirements for allowed substances or animal living conditions are posted on the Federal Register. Your local farmer is very much affected by a wide range of rules: from conservation funding to how small producers access loans to buy seed for the season. Rules cover marketing, from the famed milk mustache commercials to the questions of children and fast foods or sugary cereals. The children’s marketing has not yet been regulated via a strong rule, but we’ll see.

So, you have a busy life, right? You might browse over to the Federal Register once in a while, but it’s not going to make the daily or even the weekly to-do list. Fortunately, there are plenty of organizations and smart bloggers who are willing to help. I’ve been known to post up a comment on my blog, or at least a call to action. Marion Nestle writes regularly about nutrition and the rules and regulations that affect our food system. Food and Research Action Center covers a range of efforts oriented around hunger, while the Center for Science in the Public Interest is more nutrition and health oriented.. If you have a stronger interest in production, both the National Sustainable Agriculture Committee and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy have active blogs with regular calls to action. Occasionally, environmental organizations will also adopt a food or agricultural issue, but I’m not going to recommend them for non-environmentalists (feel free to contact me if you would like additional suggestions.) As we come to the next Farm Bill, the food policy world will start hoppin' and it's a great time to get involved.

In the meantime, let us Daring Kitchenites take up the challenge! Post a link to your blog (or comment on the Federal Register) in the comment section to inspire your fellow bloggers.

*Sorry, my background is an US policy, so I can’t offer much for those of who are elsewhere. I’d be interesting in hearing your experiences with other governmental policies though.