Table Talk : Policy Maker : Ellen Haas: A Beltway Outsider Moves Inside

Summer is the most peaceful season here in the midst of Mendocino County’s vineyards and orchards, as fruit matures to the verge of ripeness and little work needs to be done until harvest. The July heat slows life down as well, adding to the stillness.

Ellen Haas, however, doesn’t have time for reveries or solitude. At the moment she is involved in debating the weighty issues of the food world: nutrition, affordability, sustainable agriculture.

The occasion: a gathering of top chefs, environmentalists and consumer activists. The place: Fetzer Vineyards’ state-of-the-art organic garden and culinary center known as Valley Oaks.

But midway through a session on improving children’s diets, Haas reluctantly bolts out of the meeting room. An assistant has just reminded her that it is time for yet another appointment on this one-week visit to California.

Ranking U.S. Department of Agriculture officials do not normally mix with chefs, organic farmers and winemakers on the latter’s home territory. Traditionally, these interests are in conflict as the USDA routinely promotes--and favors--conventional farming represented by the nation’s massive grain interests and meat industries.

But Haas, the USDA’s Assistant Secretary for Food and Consumer Services, is the kind of government official who has been willing to defy bureaucratic convention. (Americans may remember the USDA’s Food and Consumer Services as the agency that attempted to classify ketchup as a vegetable during the Reagan Administration.)

“Why am I here?” She answers her own question. “Well, we have a magnificent opportunity to dramatically change the health of children through our school lunch initiative. And central to the proposal is to improve the taste of food served to kids. Chefs can be partners with USDA in helping us make the change . . . because if cafeteria food doesn’t look good, children won’t eat it.”

Haas takes exception to any suggestion that attending an organic farming conference complete with gourmet meals and vintage wines is elitist or inappropriate.

“These people are far from being fancy. They roll up their sleeves. They get their hands dirty. And vineyards are a part of American agriculture,” she says. “We can’t make the changes we have proposed with just the traditional interests who have dominated the policy arena in the past. We will meet with all interests. . . . And being here also helps to get out of the bureaucratic vacuum (in Washington).”

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Haas is one of the most powerful women executives in the Clinton Administration, overseeing programs with an annual budget of $39 billion covering food stamps, the National School Lunch Program and the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program (WIC).

Haas, in fact, is fond of saying that one in six Americans is touched by the USDA feeding programs under her control: 27 million Americans receive food stamps, another 25 million children receive federally subsidized school lunches or breakfasts, and seven million women are enrolled in WIC.

Only Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala’s $286 billion budget eclipses Haas’ total among major federal agencies or departments currently run by women.

In the early stages of the Clinton Administration, Shalala, Attorney General Janet Reno, Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner were among the women who became recognizable Washington personalities. Not Haas--agriculture and food issues normally take a back seat in the national news cycle. But she is raising her profile dramatically by changing the philosophy behind the cornerstones of America’s anti-hunger programs with an emphasis on healthy eating rather than just feeding.

And Haas’ path to the USDA is different from that traveled by virtually all her colleagues in the executive branch--women or men.

Sixteen months ago, Haas made the unlikely jump from shoestring consumer gadfly to top federal official. At the time, she traded in her dingy office at Public Voice for Food & Health Policy, a Washington-based advocacy group, for a palatial corner suite at the USDA headquarters.

The move from firebrand to administrator overseeing a multibillion-dollar budget is unusual even for the federal government’s revolving doors. Consumer groups are rarely, if ever, the proving ground for big-time Republican--or Democratic--appointees. More likely, the pinnacle for consumer advocates is a few minutes on network television attacking the vested interests.

Even so, Haas seems perfectly suited to her post. She has worked in and around Washington her entire career. In a sense, she is a Beltway insider who has made a living as an outsider, a self-appointed advocate for a long list of consumer issues.

And she has a ready explanation for those who say she was not qualified to jump from a $1-million-a-year consumer-advocacy operation to her current responsibilities and huge budget.

“The measure of a person who does public policy is getting results and making a difference for people,” Haas says. “At Public Voice I was able to expend small financial resources to help consumers on major issues such as beef grading, seafood inspection, nutrition labeling. We did that by identifying the issues, documenting, researching, and then communicating about them. To have had to manage on small resources is beneficial; there is an appreciation of frugality in a time of deficit reduction. And I am able to make do with less.”

Haas has impeccable credentials as a consumer advocate. She was elected to five terms as president of the Consumer Federation of America and 10 terms as vice president. At Public Voice, she was instrumental in changing the government’s beef grading program so that lean meats received a more palatable classification. Changing the name to USDA Select Grade resulted in a 400% increase in sales. Prior to founding Public Voice, she was consumer director for the Community Nutrition Institute in Washington.

To suit her government tenure, Haas has modified the tactics she successfully employed as a consumerist. She is now more consensual than confrontational, a bridge builder instead of a barn burner--cautious instead of a risk taker. When necessary, however, she remains especially skilled at using the media to facilitate her agenda--now the Clinton agenda.

Slim, fit and the same weight as at Forest Hills High School in New York City, Haas, 54, is immaculately tailored, often in vividly colored business suits. She wears her jet-black hair straight and down to the shoulders. She laughs when retelling how often people are surprised at her trim appearance, expecting, instead, that the person in charge of the nation’s school lunch program should be “some 250-pound bureaucrat with a hair net.”

From 1982 to 1993, Haas was founder and executive director of Public Voice. The group’s priorities included food safety--such as the need for a mandatory, comprehensive seafood inspection program--and nutrition. Interestingly, Haas was a frequent critic of the food stamp, school lunch and WIC programs that she now administers. School lunches, she said, were too high in fat and sodium, food stamps were inaccessible to the rural poor, and not enough low-income women were enrolled in WIC to improve pre- and post-natal care.

Upon her USDA appointment, food industry representatives openly feared she would immediately turn long-standing government nutrition policy upside-down. They were wrong. She still needs more time.

On June 8, Haas and USDA Secretary Mike Espy announced that the Clinton Administration plans to reduce fat content in federally subsidized school lunches to 30% of total calories. Saturated fat will be reduced to only 10% of total calories. Sodium counts must also be modified.

The changes may mean a dramatic reformulation of school cafeteria food. Fried chicken, hamburgers and pizza are likely to be supplanted in lunch rooms by more fresh produce, pasta, bread and seafood. The emphasis on reduced-fat diets for school children earned Haas the derisive name of “National Nanny” by one meat industry trade group.

Even so, the proposal is the first significant revision of school lunch nutrition requirements in half a century.

Haas, a one-time history teacher, researched the National School Lunch Program, which dates to the 1940s, before the proposal was issued. The idea for federally subsidized meals arose during the Truman Administration after an alarming number of young men were rejected for World War II military service because of nutritional deficiencies.

In the decades since, undernutrition has lessened while overconsumption has become the major health problem, she says.

“Diet is related to at least half of all the major chronic diseases, and adults acquire their eating habits by age 12,” Haas said as a way of emphasizing the importance of school lunches.

Yet, even in its current form, the proposed USDA changes did not satisfy some of Haas’ biggest supporters, including those at her former consumer group, Public Voice. Chief among the complaints are that the proposal, as announced, does not go into effect until July, 1998.

Haas responds by saying there is still time to make changes--including the starting date--before a final regulation is issued and that the public-comment period on the Clinton school lunch plan does not close until September 8.

Despite an initially chilly reception from food industry groups, Haas has thrived at the USDA and may soon get a promotion and new title. Legislation is pending in Congress that, in addition to a major reorganization of the USDA, would elevate Haas’ current position to undersecretary.

The change is not mere window dressing but more accurately reflects the fact that Haas’ Food and Consumer Services represents about 60% of the USDA’s total annual budget. Furthermore, the programs she administers have either retained their present funding or were actually increased in the 1995 federal budget--a significant accomplishment for any agency, but particularly so at athe USDA where major budget and staff reductions are expected in other areas.

While 16 months as assistant secretary has not dampened Haas’ energy, it has softened her rhetoric. Sniping doesn’t work when major speeches need to be cleared through Agriculture Secretary Espy’s office and, on some occasions, by the policy staff at the Clinton White House.

“I’m comfortable in my role,” she says back in her Washington office during a recent interview. “Everyone (at this level) has their speeches approved and I have been very comfortable with that from Day 1 and I am comfortable being part of the team. . . . I need to keep focused on the purpose of this job, and that is to improve the health of children, not to criticize.”

Her scripted remarks parallel the Clinton Administration’s philosophy of reinventing government and reforming health care. But when speaking extemporaneously, as she did at a press conference earlier this year in San Diego, Haas may resort to the language of consumer champion on food safety issues, her prime focus at Public Voice.

“We have an inadequate system of consumer protection for seafood. The bottom line is that we (the federal government) are not doing enough to protect consumers,” Haas says. “Whether we are serving fish, meat or diary foods to kids in school lunch, we must ensure that they are healthy foods. (The USDA) is a stake holder in (food safety) problems. . . . The USDA spends $700 million a year in food purchases (that are then distributed) for school lunch and that makes us a big and important consumer. Our views need to be heard.”

Yet, on other food safety controversies she equivocates.

Although her view was different as a consumer advocate, Haas says that serving school children milk from cows treated with the recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone drug, or BGH, is not an issue.

“BGH was approved by FDA and there is nothing indicating that it is unsafe,” she now says. “Milk is a major component of school lunch but it is not vital. There is no reason for us to get involved with the (science) in any additional way.”

The same goes for irradiated foods.

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She says that government departments such as hers must rely on companion regulatory agencies to investigate and approve new technologies. “These are Food and Drug Administration issues and we have to assume that the FDA does an objective review.”

After 20 years as a consumer advocate, Haas has gained a feel for politics and compromise.

“The first issue I was ever involved with as a grass-roots volunteer with the Maryland Citizens Council didn’t get to first base,” she says. “But persistence paid off. You need to put in time in order to achieve your goals. . . . After all this time, I have an understanding of history and politics and making government work for consumers.”

Ironically, the first issue of her activist career was campaigning for improvements in the nutritional content of school lunch after she saw what her two children were eating in their elementary school cafeteria.

A former colleague, Rod Leonard of the Community Nutrition Institute, calls Haas an efficient administrator, both in and out of government.

“She has done a great job building her organization,” he says. “And she has demonstrated her true great qualities: She is a tremendous organizer and has an ego as wide as the Mississippi River.”

In response, Haas would only say: “Rod (Leonard) is a fine person. . . . We have a cordial relationship.”

Haas was among the first consumer advocates to enlist many of the nation’s top chefs in support of programs to promote food safety and children’s nutrition. She also carefully courted the national media and the important players on Capitol Hill.

As a result, she moves freely within the circles of celebrity chefs, journalists and politicians, whether in Los Angeles, New York or Washington.

By contrast, previous inhabitants of her office were more likely to be former presidential campaign workers or others heavily influenced by the Washington school of partisan politics. Though responsible for the nation’s largest feeding programs, prior assistant secretaries were more concerned with pleasing food industry constituents than discussing, say, the need to reduce pesticide residues in school lunches.

“In previous administrations, food and nutrition issues were made in a vacuum as if they had no relation at all to public health. . . . I am trying to build bridges from the farms to the schools and chefs,” Haas says. “Consumers did have a stake in agriculture policy (in previous administrations) but they were looked at as intruders. Now, we make sure that consumers participate in all policy matters.”

Haas says her work with chefs, which continues in the aggressive campaign to improve the nutritional content of school lunches, is not a gimmick.

“Using chefs was a very smart move,” says Will Greenwood, executive chef at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington and one of three finalists for the Clinton White House chef. “Chefs are a viable and overlooked source of knowledge about foodstuffs and are always out trying to find the best quality.”

Greenwood, who enlisted in Haas’ Public Voice campaigns to improve seafood safety, adds: “She is very forceful in all her issues and she strikes where it hurts. . . . I knew I was being used (for publicity purposes) but that was fine with me.”

Consumer advocates need to rely on the media to present their cases, and Haas was a master of accumulating coverage without resorting to the sensationalism of some of her consumerist colleagues. Her recognition of the media’s growing interest in food is also reflected in ongoing negotiations with the Walt Disney Co. to produce television programming designed to improve children’s eating habits and food choices.

“A lot of people are intimidated and afraid of the media but I’ve always been comfortable with it,” she says. “The only way to reach the general public is through the media. And I have valued that ever since realizing that the media allows you to reach consumers in their homes without external distractions.”

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For example, in a series of four hearings across the country last year held to get public input on ways of improving school lunch, Haas was able to call on her chef contacts, such as California’s Alice Waters, to testify. Indeed, Waters can speak eloquently to the importance of child nutrition but she is also guaranteed to generate media interest in an otherwise dreadfully dull session.

“The skills I learned in working with Congress and the media are invaluable in this job,” Haas says. “You need to communicate with, and respect, the media and Congress. There are major organizations (in Washington) that don’t do either well.”

No group suffered the consequences of Haas’ media savvy more than the National Fisheries Institute Inc., a seafood industry trade association in Arlington, Va. For years, Clare Vanderbeek, an institute vice president, was assigned to follow Haas around the country to act as a one-person spin squad whenever Haas was to speak on seafood issues. The confrontations were often mismatches.

In a terse comment, Vanderbeek recently stated: “Ellen Haas is extremely skillful when it comes to bringing media attention to nutrition and food safety issues. Her leadership at Public Voice was instrumental in getting a better seafood inspection program.”

On a personal level, Haas is knowledgeable about fine food and California wine. Family dinners, she says, were important when she was a child.

“I can remember when I was 8 years old and my mom always made it a habit to have stalks of carrots and celery in a glass of cold water at the dinner table. And we always started dinner with half a grapefruit in the winter and some melon in the summer. . . . Today, I don’t cook that much but I try to make wonderful things when I do. Food is something to enjoy, something to share. It reflects family. And when you eat in a way to promote health, then you are enhancing the personal health of the family.”

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Twice married, Haas is now divorced, with two grown children who will both be entering graduate school this fall. Daughter Lisa will attend USC’s masters’ degree program in Physical Therapy and son Jason will begin the University of Michigan’s MBA program.

And she has strong opinions on single motherhood.

“The view that society couldn’t succeed unless there is a nuclear family irritates me. It’s chauvinistic. . . . The family is very important, obviously. Yet, the value of family and the value of nurturing doesn’t mean that people without kids, or unmarried people, are not good . . . but I’m not a militant about it,” she says. “I don’t like to put anyone in boxes.”

As for life beyond the USDA, she says: “I don’t think about my future; I’m not doing this job to build a career. Right now, I couldn’t be more challenged, and I believe we have an opportunity to accomplish a great deal.”