NATIONAL DAIRY COUNCIL

“FUEL UP TO PLAY 60” CAMPAIGNBLOGGER CONFERENCE CALLWELCOME:SUSAN CARTER,UNITED STATES DAIRY ASSOCIATIONSPEAKERS:KAREN KAFER,VICE PRESIDENTOF HEALTH PARTNERSHIPS AND NUTRITION AFFAIRS,NATIONAL DAIRY COUNCILTOM VILSACK,SECRETARY,UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTUREJEAN RAGALIE,EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT,DAIRY MANAGEMENT INCORPORATEDFRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2009

Transcript by Federal News ServiceWashington, D.C.

SUSAN CARTER: Good afternoon everybody and thank you for joining us. I’m SusanCarter and I’ll be your moderator for today’s blogger teleconference. It’s our first one that we’vehad here at USDA with our new media. So thank you for participating and joining us.Today’s subject, the Fuel Up To 60 or the “Fuel Up To Play 60” or FUTP60 campaign.And that’s going to be our topic of discussion this afternoon. And specifically, if you know,recently, there has been signed a memorandum of understanding between the National FootballLeague, the Dairy Management Incorporation, and the Department of Agriculture. And what itis to do is to showcase the importance of healthy eating and physical activity.Someone here that knows more about this than I am and someone that you’re probablyvery familiar with is Karen Kafer. And she is the vice president of the health partnerships andnutrition affairs for the National Dairy Council. And I’ll be introducing her in one second to getus going with today’s discussion. But first, if you do want to participate and ask questions of our panel, all you have to do is indicate that by pressing *1 on your telephone pad and that will let usknow that you want to get in on the discussion.And now we turn it over to Karen.KAREN KAFER: Thank you, Susan. Well, on behalf of the National Dairy Council, itis my pleasure to welcome everyone, including our esteemed speakers and also the health andnutrition bloggers on the call today. Thank you for joining us. We’re very excited to be herewith USDA to discuss “Fuel Up to Play 60,” a social marketing campaign to help fight childhoodobesity.USDA recently joined the National Dairy Council and the NFL as well as multiple healthand nutrition organizations and several major corporations. Together, we will expand the “FuelUp to Play” program and bridge a common desire to improve child nutrition and wellness byempowering youth to make positive changes for themselves and changes in their schoolenvironment.By starting with youth in the school environment and bringing in public and private partners, we have a tremendous opportunity to lay the foundation for adopting healthy habits thatwill last a lifetime well beyond the four walls of the school building. So joining me to tell youmore are U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Jean Ragalie, the executive vice president of dairy health and wellness for the National Dairy Council.And as Susan mentioned, after their remarks, you will have the opportunity for questionsand answers. Also after the call, the audio and text transcript will be made available on our blog,thedairyreport.com as well as on USDA’s Web site.

So now, I am truly honored to introduce our first speaker, Secretary of Agriculture TomVilsack.SECRETARY TOM VILSACK: Well, thank you very much and I want to welcomeeveryone to this historic opportunity for us to reach out to the blogging community and to beginthe process of better educating all of America about the important necessities of better nutritionand physical activity. And I want to thank, first and foremost, the National Dairy Council andthe National Football League for beginning to develop what I think is a relatively unique partnership, which has spawned a number of years in which the Dairy Council has beensupporting nutritious eating and the NFL obviously interested in physical activity.This partnership and the willingness to expand it to include USDA is really an excitingopportunity for us to focus on better nutrition. We are obviously focused on making sure thatchildren in America understand the necessity of eating better and also understanding theimportance of having 60 minutes of physical activity each and every day.There are multiple reasons for this, the most significant of which is that we are currentlydealing with a third of our youngsters in America today either obese or at risk of being obese.These are youngsters who will no doubt suffer serious chronic illnesses as they get older, if theyaren’t already dealing with juvenile diabetes. And so as we deal with the concerns that we haveabout health-care costs, this is one way in which we can significantly reduce long-term health-care costs by making sure that our youngsters are better consumers of more nutritious food.We at USDA have a responsibility because we provide school lunches and school breakfasts every single day during the school year. And we recently asked the Institute of Medicine to take a look at the nutritional value of our meals. And what we found was that themeals that we’re currently serving are probably too heavy on sugar and salt and not enoughfruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products.Too many empty calories, not enough nutritional punch to the meals that we are serving,which is why this partnership with the NFL and the National Dairy Council gives us anopportunity to enhance our message, to expand and amplify our message of better eatingopportunities and also to solicit the support of the people of the United States in encouragingmore resources from Congress under the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act, which will bediscussed and debated this year in Congress. This is the act that basically funds the school lunchand school breakfast programs.We also know from the research that the National Dairy Council and the NFL have doneis that far too few schools in the country today provide for physical – opportunities for physicalactivity, physical education classes being limited or non-existent. And so the whole notion of basically fueling up to play 60 is a great message.And these are great deliverers of the message: the dairy farmers of the United States whoare working very hard every single day to provide nutritious dairy products; the NFL obviouslyinterested in professional athletics. And having some of these athletes come into our schools andsome of the dairy farmers come into our schools and better educate and connect with youngsters