From toxins to nutrition: Senator Booker’s bill to transform school lunches

NJ Senator Cory Booker, a member of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, is an advocate for small family farms that are being put out of business by Big Ag and is concerned about the lack of readily accessible fresh, healthy food in the most prosperous country in the world. At the time of his appointment to the committee in February 2021, Nikita Biryukov, a writer for the New Jersey Globe, quoted Senator Booker expressing his concerns:

Our food system is deeply broken. Family farmers are struggling and their farms are disappearing, while big agriculture conglomerates get bigger and enjoy greater profits. . . . Meanwhile, healthy, fresh food is hard to find and even harder to afford in rural and urban communities alike. In the richest country on the planet, over 35 million Americans from every walk of life are food insecure.

Senator Booker has introduced bills to protect farmers, farm animals, and the country's citizens, both before and after his appointment to the committee, such as,

• ‍Farm Systems Reform Act of 2020 (FSRA)
• ‍The Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act of 2022 (IAA)
• Justice for Black Farmers Act of 2023
• The Food and Nutrition Education in Schools Act of 2020

Senator Booker's most recent bill is the Safe School Meals Act (SSMA) written to ensure that children receiving school lunches are provided with the safest and most nutritious foods possible.

School lunch program feeds millions of students

As their children sit down for lunch in school cafeterias across the country, parents assume that the school lunch program provides them with nutritious meals. While some parents may merely be happy that they don't have to prepare lunch for their children, other families rely on the lunch program to provide the only full meal their children will have that day. Since so many parents of limited means rely on school lunches, a criticism of school shutdowns during COVID was that poor children were not receiving meals generally provided by the school lunch program. Thurston Domina, Professor of  Educational Policy and Organizational Leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, expressed concern that the poorest children wouldn't have access to nutritious meals.

Thanks to the National School Lunch Program, 30 million U.S. children – some 60% of all school-aged kids – regularly eat some combination of breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks at school. Federal subsidies ensure that school meals are affordable for all children to stave off hunger and malnutrition.

. . .

Based on my research on how schools provide meals for poor children, I worry that these closures [to stop the spread of the coronavirus] might leave some of the nation’s poorest children without access to nutritious meals.

Domina provided the graph below to show the great proportion of families that rely on free meals for their children.

School lunches found to be toxic, lacking nutrition

In 2022 Moms Across America (MAA) decided to find out what was in what they described as “[t]hirty million genetically modified school meals” served daily. Of the 43 lunches that they had tested, all of them contained heavy metals, most contained glyphosate, a majority contained other harmful pesticides, and all of them were extremely low in nutrition.‍

     ▪ 10% of the samples contained a known aviary contraceptive, Nicarbazine.
     ▪ 93% of the school lunch items contained carcinogenic, endocrine disrupting, and liver disease-causing glyphosate.
     ▪ 74% of the samples contained at least one of 29 harmful pesticides.
     ▪ 4 Veterinary drugs and hormones were found in 9 school lunch samples at levels up to 130.76 ng/g.
     ▪ 100% of the school lunch samples contained heavy metals at levels up to 6,293 X higher than the EPA’s maximum levels allowed in drinking water.
     ▪ The majority of the samples were abysmally low in nutrients.

MAA also explained its concern about GMOs in the lunches.

. . .  School lunches contain many GM crop ingredients such as corn, soy, and sugar from sugar beets and are processed with GM oils such as canola and soybean oil. Most genetically modified crops are engineered to withstand toxic chemicals such as glyphosate, glufosinate, dicamba, and many more harmful chemicals. 

Will the government change things?

Pointing a finger at the federal government's negligence in failing to ensure that school lunches are safe to eat, and noting the fact that the federal government has been captured by Big Ag and Big Chem, MAA feared that its concerns would go unheeded.

Testing school lunches for glyphosate, pesticides, heavy metals, hormones, and nutrients is something our federal government agencies should be doing. These test results should be made publicly available. Moms Across America is clear that the federal government is primarily in the pockets of Big Ag and Big Chem, so these actions are unlikely ever to be taken.

Senator Booker’s bill to remove toxins from school lunches

Senator Booker heard the concerns of America's moms and has taken action on this issue. The senator introduced legislation to remove "toxics [sic]" from school lunches and increase support for regenerative agriculture. He referred to the MAA study as the impetus for his bill "Safe School Meals Act" (SSMA), which addresses heavy metals, pesticides, harmful additives, and chemicals in food packaging.

The bill would place limits on heavy metals, ban certain pesticide residues, trigger the safety reassessment of food additives including artificial food dyes that have been linked with health harms, and ban the use of PFAS, phthalates, and bisphenols in school meal food packaging. The bill would increase the funding available for schools to purchase safe school meals.

He insists that while there is a prevalence of heavy metals and harmful chemicals in our food supply, school lunches must meet higher standards. This could be accomplished by supporting regenerative agriculture and incorporating the nutrient-dense foods produced into the lunch program.

While toxics are ubiquitous in the food system, the school meals program should be held to a higher standard. Organic and other regenerative farmers have been growing safe, nutrient-dense food for decades, and numerous manufacturers already avoid toxic ingredients and packaging materials. This bill would support these responsible growers and manufacturers by connecting them to the $17 billion National School Lunch Program. The SSMA would make certification to sell into the school meal program free for small producers and manufacturers. It would also provide grants to manufacturers to switch to toxic-free packaging and grants to producers to remediate their soil and water. The bill would also expand National Organic Cost Share Certification to all eligible farms and lift the cap to cover 100% of certification costs, up to $3,000.

Heavy metals

MAA explained that heavy metals cause many neurological and physical problems.

The metals, along with glyphosate, are found in fertilizers and other petrochemicals. Studies have shown that these petrochemicals contain heavy metals, such as arsenic, cadmium, barium, and aluminum. The chemical residues, especially glyphosate, do not wash off. The heavy metals in the fertilizer leach into the soil, are taken up into the crop, and are found in wheat, corn, soy and many other food ingredients.

Heavy metals have been shown to cause mental retardation, neurocognitive disorders, behavioral disorders, ADHD, respiratory problems, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. 

Following are some of the many ways that aluminum causes damage, listed by Rodef Shalom 613 (RS613):[1]

     ▪ Inhibits over 200 important biologically important functions
     ▪ Interferes with the body’s use of calcium, magnesium, Vitamin K, and hydrogen
     ▪ Induces DNA damage
     ▪ Interrupts bone formation resulting in spontaneous fractures
     ▪ Can accumulate in the body when bypassing the gastrointestinal barrier (as with vaccines), resulting in aluminum overload
     ▪ Negatively impacts the male reproductive system

Removing heavy metals from food may not be enough to prevent the significant health issues that they create since some are also found in vaccines. Some vaccines still contain mercury (particularly multi-dose vials) and many vaccines contain aluminum as an adjuvant. Unlike metals and chemicals in food which pass through the digestive tract and are largely eliminated, the dangerous materials in vaccines are injected into an arm or leg, bypassing the digestive system. The body doesn't have a good way of eliminating them and they may travel throughout the body, lodging in different organs and the brain. 

Mercury (in multidose vaccine vials) is a known neurotoxin, as is aluminum. Individually, they are harmful; together, the synergistic effect makes them much more lethal, as Activist Post related.

Understanding the ramifications of heavy metal potentiation is illustrated in this: According to Dr. David Ayoub, MD, “…aluminum will make whatever amount of mercury you have in your system even more toxic.”  Dr. Ayoub’s website is an excellent resource. The following is what potentiation is all about:

"A small dose of mercury that kills 1 in 100 rats and a dose of aluminum that will kill 1 in 100 rats, when combined have a striking effect: all the rats die. Doses of mercury that have a 1 percent mortality will have a 100 percent mortality rate if some aluminum is there. Vaccines contain aluminum."

RS613 also highlighted the synergistic danger of mercury present in flu vaccines and aluminum in DTaP vaccines which may be given to pregnant women and children, in its paper “Aluminum Adjuvants in Vaccines: What you should know about the safety science” (page 7).

…Rigorous and replicable studies (in different animal species) have shown evidence of EtHg [mercury] and Al toxicities. More research attention has been given to EtHg and findings have showed a solid link with neurotoxic effects in humans; however, the potential synergic effect of both toxic agents has not been properly studied. Therefore, early life exposure to both EtHg and Al deserves due consideration.

Focusing only on school food, Senator Booker's bill calls for the FDA to set safe limits for heavy metals in school lunches.

. . .  The limits would be based on a threshold of reasonable certainty of no harm to school-age children from aggregate exposure. If the agencies fail to set these limits within 2 years, the limits will automatically be set to non-detectable until the agencies can determine a safe level of exposure.

However, this is the same FDA that has allowed heavy metals in vaccines. RS613 reported (Aluminum Adjuvants in Vaccines, pp 8-9) on the May 2000 National Vaccine Program Office of the Department of Health and Human Services “Workshop on Aluminum in Vaccines.” Scientists at the conference could not determine how the FDA decided on the allowable amount of aluminum in vaccines and expressed concern that the metal is eliminated from the body very slowly, as is evidenced by these excerpts of their conversation from the workshop transcript:

“Dr. Gerber: Michael Gerber, National Institutes of Health. “Norman, the standard of .85 milligrams of aluminum per dose [allowable in each vaccine] set forth in the Code of Federal Regulations, can you tell us where that came from and how that was determined?

"Dr. Baylor: Unfortunately, I could not. I mean, We have been trying to figure that out. We have been trying to figure that out as far as going back in the historical records and determining how they came up with that and going back to the preamble to the regulations. We just have been unsuccessful with that but we are still trying to figure that out.”

. . .

Dr. Gherardi: ”Aluminum hydroxide is very slowly eliminated as compared with many others and this may be why some people retain for a long period of time an adjuvant which has per se an immunoactivity (sic). So the persistence of an immunoactivator somewhere in the body for years can -- why not -- possibly induce immune activation -- systemic immunocativation at low levels with systemic cytokine, for instance, myalgias and so on.”

Petrochemicals

Senator Booker also addressed the issue of petrochemicals including glyphosate residues in school meals. He wrote that purchasing produce from certified organic farms would meet that requirement of,

[b]anning glyphosate, paraquat, and organophosphate pesticide residues in school meals. Certified organic farms would automatically meet this requirement.

Glyphosate, the main ingredient in Bayer’s Roundup herbicide, has been “subject to about 125,000 lawsuits over its allegedly carcinogenic effects.” Glyphosate has also been found in vaccines.

Moms Across America received preliminary screening results from Microbe Inotech Laboratories Inc. of St. Louis, Missouri, which showed:

     ▪ MMR II (Merk) vaccine had 2.671 parts per billion (ppb) of glyphosate
     ▪ DTap Adacel (Sanofi Pasteur) vaccine had 0.123 ppb of glyphosate
     ▪ Influenza Fluvirin (Novaris) 0.331 ppb of glyphosate
     ▪ HepB Energix-B (Glaxo Smith Kline) 0.325 ppb of glyphosate
     ▪ Pneumonoccal Vax Polyvalent Pneumovax 23 (Merk) had 0.107 ppb of glyphosate‍

The MMR II vaccine had levels up to 25 times higher than the other vaccines. Following our test, additional independent tests have confirmed these findings at or above the same levels. The tests were conducted using the ELISA method. 

Chemicals and lead 

Senator Booker’s bill also aims to eliminate the chemicals and lead incorporated into food packaging by,

[b]anning PFAS, phthalates, lead, and bisphenols in food packaging in school meals.

Manufacturers, at the FDA’s recommendation, have already begun voluntarily removing PFAS from food packaging. 

Lead, a known neurotoxin, has also been found in vaccines. Research by Italian scientists Dr. Antonietta Gatti and her husband, Dr. Stefano Montanari, has revealed that lead, among other heavy metals, is in several vaccines, as reported by investigative journalist Jon Rapaport and republished by Expose News.

“…the particles are surrounded and embedded in a biological substrate. In all the samples analyzed, we identified particles containing: Lead (Typhym, Cervarix, Agrippal S1, Meningitec, Gardasil) or stainless steel (Mencevax, Infarix Hexa, Cervarix. Anatetall, Focetria, Agrippal S1, Menveo, Prevenar 13, Meningitec, Vaxigrip, Stamaril Pasteur, Repevax and MMRvaxPro).” (Emphasis added.)

Food additives

Many food additives allowed by the FDA are known to cause cancer and reproductive or developmental health issues. Senator Booker’s bill would have the FDA reevaluate those additives by,

[d]irecting FDA to reevaluate food additives with known carcinogenic, reproductive, or developmental health harms, such as artificial food dyes, and ban their use in school meals prior to the completion of FDA’s analysis.‍

MSG and polysorbate 20 and 80, two food additives known to cause health issues, are also found in vaccines. They are among the dangerous vaccine ingredients highlighted by Learn the Risk.

Monosodium Glutamate [MSG]
A toxic chemical that is linked to birth defects, developmental delays and infertility. Banned in Europe.

‍Polysorbate 80 & 20
Known to cause CANCER in animals and linked to numerous autoimmune issues and infertility.‍

A way forward

Senator Booker’s bill to reform the National School Lunch Program highlights the urgent need for safer, more nutritious meals for our children. Alarm about the presence of toxins in school lunches reflects concern about the same substances in vaccines, emphasizing the need for comprehensive and uniform health standards. The "Safe School Meals Act," which aims to protect children from unsafe food, should also prompt important discussions about the safety of all substances that enter a child's body. A comprehensive approach is the best way to ensure the health of our children and grandchildren.

Related articles:

• ‍Roundup found to be 'defective cancer causing product;' Bayer to pay $2.25 billion verdict
• GMO crops - organ damage, fertility impact; DNA damage not ruled out
• Corn, soy, and GMOs – what percentage of each of these are you and the animals you eat?
• Manufacturers agree to remove 'Forever Chemicals' from food packaging - correlated with cancers
• How to mitigate PFAS damage and eliminate these 'Forever Chemicals' from your body
• Make Pharma Liable Again. Arizona Rep. Gosar seeks to amend 1986 Vaccination Act eliminating manufacturer liability‍