Catholic Relief Services President Ken Hackett today urged Congress to preserve the $600 million safebox in the Senate version of the 2008 Farm Bill. The measure is designed to guard against drastic cuts in food aid programs that are combating chronic hunger around the world.

Catholic Relief Services and more than a dozen other humanitarian agencies support the safebox as a way to protect vitally important food aid programs that increase food security over the long term. Such initiatives enable extremely poor and chronically hungry people to feed themselves and break out of the cycle of poverty and hunger.

Food aid is used to fund agriculture programs that help farmers increase their yields and grow more marketable crops. It is used for "food for work," which increases employment in communities while improving infrastructure. It is also used in school feeding initiatives that provide an incentive for parents to send their children to school. Food aid programs help improve the health of mothers and young children, offering a chance for a better future.

The Senate safebox mandates that $600 million of the food aid budget be used exclusively for these development programs, with no exceptions. Supporting a safebox, however, does not mean turning a blind eye to emergency needs. CRS and other advocates of the safebox say that the Administration and Congress must provide adequate resources to fund both short-term and long-term food aid requirements.

"This is presented as a zero-sum dilemma, and it's not," Hackett said. "We need to provide resources for both short-term emergencies and the long-term grinding poverty that is taking even more lives. Tragically, every 3.6 seconds another person dies of starvation. This is unconscionable. We won't break the cycle of hunger unless we attack the root causes.

"The fact is, if food aid were funded at the $2 billion required for the usual U.S. contribution to global needs, instead of the $1.2 billion that has been requested in recent budgets, there would be no controversy. There would be enough money to maintain these vital food aid programs and to respond to unanticipated emergencies."

Catholic Relief Services is the international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. The agency provides assistance to people in more than 100 countries and territories based on need, regardless of race, nationality or creed. For more information, please visit www.crs.org.

Contact: John Rivera CRS Communications jrivera@crs.org 410-951-7399 443-604-2918 (cell)