Barack Obama has picked Tom Vilsack, former Governor of Iowa, to be the next Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). He’s certainly not the best choice; however, I think Vilsack may be a choice holding forth a reasonable hope of significant change. I’m glad that Obama didn’t select Charles Stenholm, a former Texas congressman with a long history of defending animal abuse, who had sought the position with support from the factory farming industry. 

As Iowa’s Governor, Tom Vilsack took steps to protect animals, including vetoing a bill that allowed dove hunting. He has a mixed record on policies affecting industrialized agriculture. He vetoed a bill, which would have prevented Iowa from establishing stronger environmental standards for factory farms than the federal government, but he has also compromised with big agriculture, supporting weak environmental protections and genetically modified foods. 

As the governor of Iowa (a major animal agriculture state), Vilsack faced heavy pressure from agribusiness. In his role as the USDA Secretary, he’ll continue to hear from factory farming interests, but he’ll also be accountable to a larger population of citizens, (including family farmers, rural communities, humane advocates and consumers), who are increasingly concerned about the harms of industrial animal farming. In the coming months and years, it will be critical for concerned citizens to be in touch with Tom Vilsack and to advocate for more humane and sensible agricultural policies. 

For years, our tax dollars have subsidized an abusive and wasteful system that brutalizes billions of animals, and is a leading cause of our planet’s most pressing environmental problems (including global warming) and human health risks (including heart disease and cancer, respectively the number 1 and number 2 killers in the U.S.). But it doesn’t have to be this way. 

Barack Obama was elected by a nation demanding change in Washington, D.C. He campaigned on principles that our government should serve the interests of the entire population, not just the wealthy few, and he has been critical of government policies that support large scale factory farms at the expense of rural communities and our country’s health. It is now time to manifest those sentiments in law, and for the USDA to support change from the bottom up. 

Tom Vilsack has spoken about the importance of revitalizing rural America, establishing energy and food security, addressing climate issues and eliminating our addiction to foreign oil. These goals can be advanced by eliminating our government’s support of industrialized animal production, which is inefficient and squanders vast quantities of fossil fuel, water and land resources, and it also destroys rural neighborhoods. Our new USDA Secretary should encourage community based food production and distribution and promote a greater availability and consumption of fresh, whole food, including fruits, vegetables and other healthy plant foods. Doing so would help improve our nation’s deteriorating health and prevent egregious animal cruelty that is commonplace in factory farming. 

Obama has criticized government subsidies to “corporate megafarms.” Hopefully, Vilsack will share Obama’s concerns about unfair support for wealthy agribusinesses in U.S. farm policy. If Vilsack steps up to the plate and challenges the status quo in Washington, D.C., he has the potential to be one of the best Agriculture Secretaries ever. But he’ll need to serve a wider constituency than those traditionally supported by USDA, and he’ll face serious obstacles, ranging from institutional inertia to agribusiness’s entrenched influence. It will be absolutely critical for all of us to be engaged – to fight factory farming and support efforts to enact policies that are consistent with humane values, and that help bring about a just, sustainable, healthy food system. 

It has been said that democracy is a participatory sport, and as the new administration comes into power, we should take that to heart and be actively engaged.