USDA to oversee school snack food: Senate ag chair

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Agriculture Department would be given the power to regulate all food sold in schools -- including vending machine snacks -- when Congress renews child nutrition programs, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee said on Tuesday.

Chairman Tom Harkin said he hopes the committee will start work on legislation to reauthorize school lunch programs in October or November, with a goal to conclude the work by the end of the year.

"I can tell you it won't be this month," Harkin told reporters who asked when work would begin. He said precedence must go, for now, to his work on health care reform and on drafting the annual federal spending bills.

Agriculture Committee work on child nutrition will begin with a draft that gives the USDA the authority to oversee all food in schools, so nutrition programs are not "undermined" by junk food in vending machines, Harkin said at a confirmation hearing for the head of the USDA's nutrition programs.

Earlier this year, Harkin co-sponsored a bill focused on setting nutritional standards for food in school vending machines and stores to combat childhood obesity rates.

Kevin Concannon, the Obama administration's nominee to run USDA's food and nutrition programs, told Harkin he wants to work with other federal and state agencies to address health issues caused by poor eating habits.

"It's a cultural thing. We've evolved to this over the past 30 or 40 years, and it's going to take efforts on a number of fronts," Concannon said.

Roughly 17 percent of school-age children are obese, triple the rate in 1980 and "an epidemic in the United States," says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.