The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“TRIBUTE TO ALICE WATERS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the Senate section on pages S9194 on Sept. 6, 2001.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TRIBUTE TO ALICE WATERS
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, today I pay tribute to an extraordinary American and Californian, Alice Waters, who has revolutionized our approach to food and the way we eat.
I congratulate her and her flagship restaurant, Chez Panisse, for reaching the milestone of being in business for 30 years. While sustaining a successful restaurant for all of these years is significant, Alice's broader contribution to our culture in the past decades is unparalleled.
While I have known and admired Alice for many years, I am astonished when I consider the effect she has had on our country. Alice has cultivated programs and integrated food and gardening into imaginative projects as ways of fostering love, growth, responsibility and respect of life and work.
Alice's disciples and her philosophy of fresh, local and natural, have spread throughout our land. A remarkable number of protegees have opened their own path-breaking restaurants and have become culinary artists themselves. But her influence goes far beyond the kitchen. Due to the leadership of Alice and her restaurant, Chez Panisse, the National Restaurant Association reports that over 60 percent of the top American restaurants now mention organic ingredients on their menus. Alice worked to pass the Federal organic food law and has helped define new U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines for school lunches.
Alice has written and co-authored many cookbooks, which provide more than recipes. They have helped to spread her philosophy of food into American home kitchens. She has founded gardening projects at the San Francisco jail and the Edible Schoolyard at Berkeley's Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, where she established a curriculum that brings organic gardening into classes and where the results of the children's gardening are used in the school's lunch program. The students who participate not only learn valuable skills but also cooperation and responsibility.
Alice believes that as Americans change their thinking about food, America will change for the better. Alice has said about our children that ``Most families in this country don't even eat one meal a day with each other. So how are we going to pass on our values to them if we don't eat with them?''
While Chez Panisse has been graced with many talented people over the years, the one constant has been Alice. She has poured her life into Chez Panisse and into what it represents, and we are all the richer for it.
I am proud to know Alice and I wish her, her good works for our community and nation, and Chez Panisse another 30 years of continued success.
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