No images? Click here Welcome back to this week's edition of the Washington Weekly newsletter - bringing you the latest and greatest policy updates from Washington, D.C.GCCA Sponsors Bryce Harlow Foundation Awards Dinner On Tuesday, May 2, 2022, GCCA cosponsored and attended the Bryce Harlow Foundation Awards Dinner where Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) was honored and received the Bryce Harlow award for his years of public service. The Bryce Harlow Foundation is dedicated to advancing the integrity of government advocacy and increasing understanding of its important role in the development of sound public policy. Their primary activities include encouraging and supporting the next generation of leaders in the lobbying, government relations and related professions through an annual, competitive and prestigious fellowship. The Bryce Harlow Fellows are working full time in lobbying firms, in corporate government affairs offices and on Capitol Hill, and studying part-time toward graduate degrees in business, law, public policy, public administration, communications and others. The fellowships include financial assistance, mentors and other educational opportunities to talented graduate students who also work full time in government, lobbying or related professions. Read more about the Bryce Harlow Foundation HERE. White House Announces Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health in September On Wednesday, May 4, 2022, President Biden announced that for the first time in over 50 years, the White House will host a Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health this September. The Conference, and the preparatory work leading up to it, will accelerate progress and drive significant change to end hunger, improve nutrition and physical activity, reduce diet-related disease, and close the disparities around them. The Biden-Harris Administration has set a goal of ending hunger and increasing healthy eating and physical activity in the U.S. by 2030 so that fewer Americans experience diet-related diseases, such as diabetes, obesity, and hypertension. The Conference will galvanize action by anti-hunger and nutrition advocates; food companies; the health care community; local, state, territorial and Tribal governments; people with lived experiences; and all Americans, and it will launch a national plan outlining how they achieve this goal. GCCA is working with the White House to identify opportunities for the cold chain industry to engage in the conference. Read the full announcement HERE. GCCA Expresses Support for Critical Supply Chain Resiliency Provisions in House-passed America COMPETES Act GCCA along with coalition partners sent House and Senate leadership a letter expressing strong support for the creation of a Manufacturing Security and Resilience Program and other critical provisions described in the supply chain resilience subtitle of the House-passed America COMPETES Act. The pandemic laid bare what many of us have known for years: American workers and consumers – and thus the American economy – depend on a robust supply chain bolstered by American manufacturers. The federal government needs dedicated funding to help manufacturers meet these challenges in times of crisis, as well as supply chain expertise and the ability to nimbly coordinate across agencies and policy silos to strengthen U.S. competitiveness, drive manufacturing growth, and ensure the continued availability, accessibility, and affordability of critical products. The America COMPETES Act contains provisions that would establish a Manufacturing Security and Resilience Program to support businesses working to develop, diversify, preserve, and improve critical supply chains and the manufacturing of critical goods. Additionally, the America COMPETES Act empowers the Department of Commerce to conduct comprehensive supply chain mapping and monitoring, provide $45 billion of financial assistance to strengthen supply chains and manufacturing, and equip the private sector with the tools and best practices needed to address supply chain weaknesses before they become full blown crises. Adopting these provisions of the House-passed COMPETES Act as part of bipartisan legislation to support American competitiveness will empower unprecedented expertise at the Department of Commerce and the ability to invest in sectors critical to the health, economic well-being, and security of our country. US to Spotlight War-Caused Food Insecurity at 2 UN events The United States said Tuesday, May 3, 2022, it will put a spotlight on the impact of the war in Ukraine and other conflicts on the diminishing availability of food and rising prices at two U.N. events later this month, an issue which has sparked fears of increasing hunger and starvation in many countries. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told a news conference that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will chair a ministerial meeting on food insecurity across the globe on May 18 to review current and future humanitarian needs. It will include foreign ministers from many regionally diverse donor nations and countries most affected by the increasing difficulty to provide adequate food to their people, she said. The United States holds the rotating presidency of the U.N. Security Council this month and the following day --- May 19 -- Blinken will chair a meeting where its 15 members “will consider steps we need to take to make sure increasing food insecurity does not drive new conflicts, instability, particularly in fragile states,” the U.S. envoy said. Russia and Ukraine together produce 30% of the world’s wheat supply, 20% of its corn, and export about three-quarters of the world’s sunflower seed oil. Worker Heat Protections Needed for ‘Climate Crisis,’ DOL Secretary Walsh Says The Department of Labor announced it would pursue a heat rule covering indoor and outdoor work eight months ago, taking comments through Jan. 26. The move followed a summer of record high temperatures across the U.S. that left Democratic lawmakers and worker advocates demanding the agency act on a heat rule—an idea it turned down during the Obama and Trump administrations. Without a heat standard, OSHA usually depends on a more-than-50-year-old catch-all law—the Occupational Health and Safety Act’s general duty clause—to cite employers for failing to protect their workers. However, judges have vacated citations in at least six of those cases because OSHA couldn’t prove the heat threat. The need for a worker heat stress prevention standard is a climate change and racial equity issue, U.S. Department of Labor officials said. “Climate change has become a climate crisis,” Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh said Tuesday, May 3, 2022 during the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s virtual stakeholder meeting on initiatives to protect workers from heat illnesses. Tuesday’s virtual forum focused on OSHA’s proposed heat illness rule and actions the agency is taking to protect workers as temperatures routinely begin breaking 90 and 100 degrees across southern tier states. 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