This Federal Pork Is More Nourishing Than Usual : Food: To ease swine surplus, USDA will buy $30 million worth of ham and ground pork to serve up in school cafeterias.

Students can expect more ham and ground pork at the school cafeteria this fall because a hog surplus is helping write the menu.

*

Following pleas to Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman from hog-state lawmakers, the department said June 21 it would buy $30 million worth of pork for the National School Lunch Program and other feeding efforts.

Pork, with its tubby reputation the industry is paying millions of dollars to try to change, hardly seems the commodity of choice for a department that also wants to cut the fat in school meals.

But USDA and industry say that, to the contrary, pork is leaner than ever before, deserving a place at the tables where 26 million children eat each day.

Besides, a law in place since the 1930s requires the department to help boost farmer prices by purchasing commodities. Although the money falls short of the billions used to subsidize crops, it makes an impact on farmers’ pocketbooks and the futures market.

Public Voice, a consumer group that has campaigned for leaner lunches with more fruits and vegetables, says the purchase shows that USDA puts the interests of agribusiness ahead of schoolchildren and consumers.

“This is yet another example of the tail wagging the dog over there,” said Art Jaeger, communications director for Public Voice.

Even if pork may be leaner than some beef products, the group says, the pork is potentially crowding out a yet leaner commodity.

“This purchase is very consistent with our goals and missions,” says Ellen Haas, undersecretary of Agriculture for nutrition and a founder of Public Voice. “There is a place for pork products, beef products, in a healthy diet.”

Al Tank, vice president of public policy and trade at the National Pork Producers Council, says it’s wrong to exclude pork from a healthy diet, especially considering the progress in making hogs leaner.

“We think this is an extremely important shot in the arm for pork producers,” he said. “It also reflects on, we think, the partnership we have with USDA to produce and supply a high-quality healthy product for schoolchildren that they want to eat.”

The fresh-frozen hams and roasts are 95% fat-free, while the ground pork is 82% lean, he said, noting that the Agriculture Department in the past five years has required leaner products.

Seen the other way, the ground pork is 18% fat. By comparison, lean hamburger is 22.5%, with a three-ounce patty giving one-third the recommended daily limit for fat.

For farmers, the purchase can mean a 60- to 70-cent increase in the price of each 240-pound hog sold over a three-month period--not bad when multiplied by 23 million hogs.

School lunches are big business, closely watched by most commodity groups. After all, schools get more than $4 billion each year in direct payments from the Agriculture Department, including the cost of free and cut price lunches for poor children.

They also get about $650 million in foods purchased by the department. On top of that, the agriculture secretary has $300 million available for special commodity purchases to provide disaster relief or drain off surpluses.

Matters will change little if the full Congress goes along with the House Republican bill turning school lunches over to the states. The measure says 9% of the grants to states would be in the form of commodities.

Last school year, the department bought more than $185 million worth of frozen beef, nearly $50 million worth of frozen pork and more than $17 million worth of canned meats, both beef and pork.

Included in that total was a special purchase of more than $48 million worth of beef roasts and hamburger announced in July, 1994, to help cattle producers weather a surplus.

And if students recalled getting more salmon croquettes than usual, that was because the government bought $9.9 million worth of canned fish to draw down supplies.