Center Calls on City Council & Mayor to Create 10,000 New Good Food Jobs by 2020

by nycadmin

Wednesday September 25 –

Food Policy Center Calls on City Council and Mayor to Create 10,000 New Good Food Jobs by 2020:

Nicholas Freudenberg,  Distinguished Professor of Public Health at the  CUNY School of Public Health and Hunter College and the  Faculty Director of the New York City Food Policy Center at Hunter College testified today before the City Council Committees on Governmental Operations and Contracts on Oversight on the New York City Council’s FoodWorks: A Vision to Improve New York City’s Food System.

His testimony was based on two Food Policy Center reports, JOBS FOR A HEALTHIER DIET AND A STRONGER ECONOMY: Opportunities for Creating New Good Food Jobs in New York City, released last month, and a second report on New York City’s institutional food system, scheduled for release in November 2013.  You can read the full text of the testimony here.

Based on the first report, Freudenberg called on the City Council, the next Mayor, employers, labor unions, universities and workforce development programs to set the goal of creating 10,000 new good food jobs in New York City by 2020. Good food jobs are jobs that pay a living wage, provide safe working conditions, and make healthier food available to all New Yorkers.  Freudenberg noted that “increasing the number of good food jobs can contribute to reducing three of the city’s most serious problems: high unemployment rates, especially among low income families; high rates of food insecurity and hunger; and rising rates of obesity and diet-related diseases.”

Based on the second report, Freudenberg encouraged the City Council and the Mayor to build on the substantial successes of improving the quality of the 270 million meals and snacks the new York City serves in schools, jails, hospitals, child care programs, senior centers and other public agencies.  He recommended that the city could achieve additional gains in health and cost savings  by further improving the nutritional quality of food served to the city’s most vulnerable populations and by using the more than $500 million a year in city, state and federal funds spent on institutional food to leverage changes in the city’s food system as a whole.

The Good Food Jobs report is available at https://nycfoodpolicy.org/research/ and the report on institutional food will be posted when it is released.  For more information on the New York City Food Policy Center, visit www.nycfoodpolicy.org

 

 

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