“Is That Your Final Answer?”
Question: Which of the following is a colostrum? A: the first Roman breast pump; B: a technical term for latching on; C: shrimp cocktail; D: a mother’s first milk.

The answer is “D”--and it was one of the many questions posed to participants in a 'quiz show’ titled “Who Wants to Be a Breastfeeding Expert?” The 'quiz show,’ sponsored by the Food and Nutrition Service’s Western Regional Office in San Francisco, was a takeoff on the internationally-renowned show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” It was part of that office’s recent observance of World Breastfeeding Week.

“You’ve selected 'A: 12 months’ as the answer to the question 'How long should a mother breastfeed her baby according to the American Academy of Pediatrics’--and you’re right!” affirms FNS’s 'quiz show’ host Steve Pichel (right), as he poses a question to FNS’s Krister Engdahl. --Photo by Anne McGuigan

“I had just bought the board game version of 'Millionaire’ and had forced my friends to play it,” explained GeNam Wong, an FNS food program specialist in the Western Regional Office’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). “I did well--so I suggested to our Regional Office’s Baby- Friendly Committee that we use a similar 'quiz show’ format.”

That Committee, which planned the Office’s World Breastfeeding Week activities, also coordinated the creation in 1998 of that Office’s Lactation Room, which allows nursing mothers to pump and store their breast milk in a private, sanitary room with its own refrigerator, and then provide it later to their babies, away from the office. The January-February 1998 issue of the USDA News carried a story which pinpointed the locations of other nursing mothers rooms for USDA employees at headquarters and field locations around the country.

So, with the 'Millionaire’ game theme in mind, the Committee’s eight members got busy bringing it to life. For instance, FNS civil rights intern Vanessa Lei teamed up with FNS food stamp program specialist Marisa Cheung to design a 31-slide presentation that included three rounds of 10 questions each.

“Whenever I drink coffee out of this mug, I’ll be reminded of the question I missed,” laughs FNS computer specialist Teresa Schredl (right), as she shows FNS accounting technician Sylvia Dower the “Loving Support Makes Breastfeeding Work” mug she won by making it to round four in the 'quiz show.’ --Photo by Anne McGuigan

FNS food stamp program specialist Steve Pichel volunteered to host “Who Wants to Be a Breastfeeding Expert?” Pichel--who, as a takeoff on “Millionaire’s” Regis Philbin, adopted the moniker “Stegis Pichelbin” while serving as host--also suggested the development of a PowerPoint presentation so that audience members could follow along and try to guess the correct answer, much like the audience does in 'the real game.’

Wong assisted in researching the questions and answers, and later concluded that “I especially learned a lot from those questions that were statistically based or technical, like the recommended storage time for pumped breast milk.”

Fans of “Millionaire” will recall that contestants are given three lifelines: phone a friend, poll the audience, or narrow the choices to two. FNS financial management specialist Gloria Johnson-Lamar pointed out that the FNS version had its own lifelines: call upon a friend in the audience who is not on the Baby-Friendly Committee, narrow the choices to two, or poll the audience--which would then indicate its choice by clapping.

FNS’s quiz show played to an audience of 30 agency employees. “A lot of the questions were real stumpers,” acknowledged FNS food stamp program specialist Krister Engdahl. He made it to the seventh round, until he lost, when he selected “Proteins” instead of “Antibodies” when asked the question “Which of the following is an exclusive benefit of breast milk over formula?” Nonetheless, he walked away with a prize, having won a “Support Breastfeeding” T-shirt.

“This was a fun way,” affirmed FNS accounting technician Sylvia Dower, “to promote the benefits of breastfeeding and, at the same time, correct some misconceptions and erroneous information that is out there on this subject.” 

—Diana Callaway

In Minutes Instead Of Hours
“Our message to our fellow employees continues to be: don’t hesitate to brainstorm for new ways of carrying out GIPSA’s mission to our customers.”

John “Mack” Manis was referring to the role that he and Bob Crook have played, over the past few years, as 'emissaries’ to their colleagues in the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, both at its headquarters and field offices around the country, as they promoted the message to look for better ways to serve the public.

Manis, GIPSA’s safety and health manager, and Crook, the compliance officer for the GIPSA office in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, know from firsthand experience how those efforts can pay off. Manis explained that a few years back, when he was an agricultural marketing specialist based at the agency’s headquarters office in Washington, DC, he often traveled around the country, making on-site visits to grain elevators and talking with their owners.

Part of GIPSA’s mission is to provide oversight to state and private sector entities which inspect grain, being stored in those elevators, for quality and condition, including contamination by insects and odors.

“Bob and I had stopped at a regional grain elevator co-op in Farnhamville, Iowa,” Manis recounted. “The co-op director said to us, 'You’re just the people we want to talk to!’”

Crook explained that the co-op was getting its grain inspected by three different private sector inspection agencies, which were designated by GIPSA to perform official grain sampling and grading. The private sector agency doing the inspection was based on which of the co-op’s elevators was loading the grain into railcars. But those private sector inspection agencies had different work schedules with different hours, charged the co-op different fees based on varying fee schedules, and generally worked independently of each other. Plus, none of those inspection agencies could provide grain inspection services as quickly as the co-op director said he needed. “The director,” he advised, “felt this resulted in a working environment that was hard to manage and was increasingly expensive.”

“He told us,” Crook added, “that he wanted to be able to pick up the phone and make one call, pay one fee, and generally be able to manage all those activities better. Then he asked us if GIPSA could help him make that happen.”

Manis and Crook studied the co-op’s operations and brainstormed for possible improvements. “We then concluded,” Manis said, “that we could help orchestrate a limited liability partnership, in compliance with existing laws and regulations, that would streamline the services being provided by the three private sector inspection agencies to the co-op--and yet ensure that neither those agencies nor the co-op would lose money as a result of the streamlining.”

For instance, they proposed that a portable grain inspection laboratory be built inside a trailer, which could then be towed to the loading sites of the railcars--which are used to haul the stored grain from the elevator to its destination. “Up to that point,” Crook noted, “grain samples for inspection were taken by automobile to the nearest private sector inspection agency lab--which was sometimes over 30 miles away--for testing.”

“But by grading the grain on-site, the time factor for inspections dropped from hours to minutes.”

The grain co-op put Manis and Crook’s streamlining proposal into effect--and reported that, during its first year in operation, the new system saved the co-op an estimated $250,000.

Manis and Crook were subsequently recognized by the Department and GIPSA for their 'troubleshooting’ solution. “That sent a signal to us and our GIPSA colleagues,” Manis affirmed, “that we shouldn’t hesitate to propose new ways of carrying out our mission, and that such proposals are appreciated--by the Department, by our agency, and by our customers.”

—Ron Hall

Ash And H2O Don’t Mix
YECCHHH! Who wants drinking water that tastes like burned forest?!

But that was the situation facing the 75 residents of the remote town of Atlanta, Idaho, located on the eastern edge of the Boise National Forest. Last August a wildfire burned 33,000 acres of that Forest. When the residents of Atlanta returned to their homes, following a mandatory evacuation, they found their nearly 30-year-old water system laden with ash and sediment and unable to filter those impurities out.

But on January 19 the Rural Utilities Service approved a $50,000 loan which will enable the community to pay for recent emergency improvements to its water system. “Specifically,” explained Dave Flesher, a rural development specialist with the Rural Development area office in Caldwell, Idaho, “through those emergency improvements, the community is now able to filter out that ash and sediment which continue to enter the water system intake because of that summer wildfire.”

An operator for the Atlanta (Idaho) Water Association observes how a stream of water, at the town’s water system intake facility, flows over a black plastic tarp. That tarp was placed over the intake to divert some of the ash and sediment away from the town’s water supply. --Photo by Dave Flesher

Flesher pointed out several factors which made RUS’s emergency assistance unique. “First, it’s very rare that a water system is severely damaged by a wildfire,” he noted. “Second, normally it can take up to a year for funding such as this to get approved. But because this was a rare emergency situation, the loan approval process was accelerated--to the benefit of the residents of Atlanta.”

In fact, Flesher had met with Atlanta Water Association officials earlier in November, on-site at the location of the town’s damaged water system. “At night it was five below zero outside where we were standing,” he advised. “So we all knew that it was critical that USDA help the Association install a viable, functioning emergency water system to ensure a clean water supply through the winter--until further improvements can be made to their water system this spring, using funding from other sources.”

Flesher said that RD’s recent initiative took place in conjunction with the work of employees from the Forest Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service. According to Dick Markley, an FS district ranger based in Idaho City, the hillsides surrounding Atlanta were burned and scorched by the wildfire--at a level he described as “high intensity but moderate severity.”

This water truck from the Idaho National Guard is pulling into Atlanta, Idaho to deliver badly needed potable water to the 75 residents of that remote town. Its water system was damaged because of a wildfire which roared through that region last August. But employees of RD, FS, and NRCS recently teamed up on a unique mission to help that town get its emergency water system improved enough to make it through this winter--and thereby help its residents avoid having to drink water that tastes like burned forest. --Photo by Bill Moore

“So, when the rains came,” he advised, “there wasn’t anything to hinder the flow of ash and sediment runoff, and it flowed directly into the town’s water system intake.” He described it as being like a black 'Slurpee’ moving rapidly down a hill, picking up debris as it moved.

This past autumn Markley headed up a team of FS hydrologists, from the Boise National Forest, which stabilized two hillside drainages, just outside the town limits of Atlanta but on National Forest property, under a program called “BAER,” or Burn Area Emergency Rehabilitation. “One of those drainages does supply water to that town,” explained FS hydrologist Cavan Maloney, “and the other simply drains through the town, but isn’t a water supply.”

“But they both needed to be stabilized,” added FS hydrologist T.J. Clifford. “And that’s what we did.”

In the meantime, Bill Moore, NRCS’s coordinator for the Southwest Idaho Resource Conservation & Development Council, based in Meridian, Idaho, helped coordinate efforts of various federal, state, and local sources of assistance to provide resources needed to get Atlanta’s water system back on track.

“Our Forest Service hydrologists estimate that it’ll take up to eight to ten years for the hillsides to stabilize,” Flesher advised. “But we’ll be there with the residents of Atlanta for the long-term, helping make sure that they have quality drinking water.” 

—Ron Hall