WASHINGTON – On Tuesday, a coalition of more than 20 groups announced the launch of the Food Before Fuel Campaign, an effort to urge the U.S. Congress to revisit food-to-fuel polices.

According to a statement from the American Meat Institute, the coalition includes environmental, retail, hunger, Hispanic and food industry groups.

The AMI said that Congressional policies mandate the conversion of more than one-third of all U.S. corn to ethanol, with additional subsidies and tariffs further promoting the diversion of food to fuel. Food policy experts broadly agree that these policies have contributed to record food price inflation, and the International Monetary Fund reports that U.S. food-to-fuel policy is responsible for more than 30 percent of food price inflation globally, the meat industry group claimed.

“There is certainly an ongoing debate over the best way forward on biofuels,” said J. Patrick Boyle, president and CEO of the AMI. “Our obligation as a nation must be to find fact-based policy answers that take the science and the economics into account. American consumers, our domestic food industry, and the environment we share depend on our being able to reexamine our policies and find the sustainable answer.”