Dr. J. Larry Brown of the Harvard School of Public Health is the nation’s leading scholar studying hunger in the United States and one of the country’s most articulate and prominent anti-hunger advocates. Last week, he delivered a speech to the Maine Nutrition Council’s conference on hunger, from which this text is excerpted.

Our job is not going well. Those whose nutritional well-being we care about, the children and adults for whom we advocate, are not getting our best efforts -- and certainly not what they deserve. I believe that as the nation prepares to elect a new president, perhaps one who truly cares about social justice and meaningful opportunity, we need to raise the bar substantially.

Let me put this in context. Recently I received a message from an aide to a congressman whom I know and respect deeply, a congressman who has been a dear friend of the national hunger community. I was asked to share any innovative ideas I have about impacting hunger in a particular state.

But, the messenger noted, give us ideas that don't cost any money and don't require changes in governmental policy.

Now, contemplate it: An aide to a progressive political leader from a progressive state that wants to do something about the terrible problem of hunger -- without utilizing the tool of government policy, and without expending any funds. It's sort of like wanting to fight cancer with good intentions and no resources, or to defend the nation's borders with song books and good will.

However shortsighted this approach may be to addressing hunger, good people like this don't make such proposals unless public expectations of the possible are unreasonably low. Nobody really expects that our nation's leaders will bring an end to hunger. As a consequence, good people do what they feel they can ... even when it means taking small steps around the margins.

So this is where we are today. The nation's nutrition community -- particularly those of us who work to end hunger -- are in a pickle. We are boringly familiar, taken for granted by Congress and the president. We are now an accepted and predictable part of the national landscape.

Our issue has been mainstreamed to the point that hunger is no longer considered intolerable. We have so few teeth that political leaders need to do little about the pervasive hunger problem that now is endemic rather than epidemic in nature. ... In short, we have lost our way.

During the last decade, charitable giving through food banks across the nation has increased almost 100 percent. Last year, over two billion pounds of food were donated -- about seven pounds of food for every person living in the United States! Yet even this gargantuan effort would feed each hungry American for only a few days.

Federal officials seldom talk any more about ending hunger as a national goal. Instead, they focus on the more limited goal of "reducing hunger" or of mounting "public-private partnerships." Such references typically were followed in the Clinton years with the notion that government can only do so much. In other words, do not expect any serious policy initiatives to end hunger.

In the Bush years, the rhetoric is a bit more honest, albeit far more chilling in its import: don't expect government to end hunger because it is now the responsibility of what the president calls "faith-based charities." It's not unlike the Depression-era approach of alms houses and soup kitchens: just let them live at the mercy of hand-outs.

This rhetorical shift on the part of policymakers conveniently removes the onus on them for bringing the U.S. into the pantheon of modern nations that have ended widespread hunger. We no longer aspire to be like other western democracies that protect their people from hunger through adequate public policies. With hunger in the U.S. now more and more a responsibility of private charity, elected and appointed leaders, from the White House to Congress to federal agencies, can wash their hands of a moral scourge unprecedented in other wealthy industrial nations.

Unfortunately, this lack of political will and public leadership is abetted by the rhetoric of some private charitable hunger organizations. In past years, the nation's largest hunger charity declared that "we have a job that should not exist," and that "only governmental policy can end hunger." That view had the benefit of being accurate and direct.

But it has now changed its tune. This national hunger charity now holds itself out as an "equal partner" with government in "addressing hunger."

This declaration makes two notable points: Hunger is no longer to be ended but simply addressed (hopefully reduced but nevertheless allowed to continue). And it says that charity is now a full partner with government and on an on-going basis. The standard of making America a hunger-free nation is out. Hunger charities now dot our communities as ubiquitously as fast-food chains.

Today, the ethos of charity so permeates our thinking that one frequently hears food bank representatives claim that they do a better job than government anyway. The irony is that this often is true, at least in terms of how responsible they feel for protecting people from hunger.

Those of us in the national hunger community perhaps are more responsible for the current misplaced focus than is the self-serving rhetoric of political leaders. Despite our own high-minded proclamations about the unacceptability of hunger in this land, or our occasional new initiatives to address it, we largely spend our time shifting the deck chairs on a ship that is hardly moving.

By no longer believing that we can end hunger, and by lowering our sights simply to that of giving hand-outs to the hungry, the nation's hunger and nutrition communities have accepted defeat. We have accepted the paradigm of too little, too late ... and occasionally make ourselves feel good that we got Congress to pass some tepid legislation to lessen it a little.

To be fair, I want to offer myself up for criticism as well. I want to acknowledge my own failings and my own need to do more. In 1985, I first reported on the extent of hunger in America -- 20 million Americans at the time. A decade later, our center summarized the scientific research that shows the impact of hunger -- how it impairs cognitive function in children and how there is really no safe level of hunger.

More recently, we prepared the first analysis of what the nation pays by letting hunger exist, noting that we are spending over $90 billion each year to pay for a problem that could be ended by about $12 billion more in federal spending. But my efforts, and those of my colleagues, have had precious little impact on politicians or public policy. They seem to have fallen on deaf ears or, at least, very tepid political souls. Moral outrage has been lost. ... My own efforts have proved highly inadequate.

Together, we can and must do better. We need to shed our conformity and reject charity as the answer to ending hunger ... and stop acting like timid children.

First, we must recognize one truth: Domestic hunger will be ended only through governmental policy. Private charities do not have anything like government's capacity.

Second, hunger is a national responsibility, not the role of state and local government. Other nations have ended hunger as a major threat, but never has it been done on a sustained basis except through national policy.

Only government policy, applied for the protection of all, can ensure the nutritional security of a nation's people. Hungry children in Maine, hungry elders in Arizona, and hungry families in Ohio and California all need the same protection -- access to an adequate diet that they can consume at their own tables.

Third, those of us who strive to promote justice through public policy need to understand that precisely because government is not doing its job, charity is needed -- not only needed but critical. With the failure of governmental leadership, millions of households in the United States would be in even more dire straits were there no charities. ... They are our allies, whether or not we always like the occasional short-sighted rhetoric about the long-term importance of charity.

Finally, we must focus our nation and its political leaders on the urgent need to end hunger through omnibus federal legislation. This is the only goal that ultimately matters. No more distracting talk about public-private partnerships. Our elected officials can end hunger in America and they can do it quickly. This will mean holding the collective noses of the new president and congressional leaders to the grindstone.

Here are three proposed steps for your consideration:

• The charitable hunger sector will announce publicly that it intends to go out of business within the next four years. No longer will it be the willing foil that makes governmental irresponsibility possible. Feeding the hungry is not the way to end hunger, by definition. National hunger charities can deliver that message with tremendous moral authority, and prompt Congress to act according to this timetable.
• State and national hunger policy organizations will develop omnibus national legislation to end hunger in America. By strengthening the programs that already exist (food stamps, child nutrition programs and elderly feeding) we can bring an end to hunger within a year after enactment. In other words, states like Maine and organizations like yours can drive federal policy by expecting leadership from your congressional delegation.
• The national hunger community will no longer be likeable. We will be advocates rather than players. We will not accept timid political leadership. Hunger in America can be ended and we will vociferously make this the only policy standard that is accepted.

I had trepidations about giving this speech today. I know I am the closing speaker and this role usually is reserved for an upbeat pep talk about how wonderful things are and how well we all are doing our work. And the reality is that many things are good and those of you in this room are very dedicated to your work and to ending hunger. But our nation is not moving in that direction and I could not come here and act out the charade that it is. We need to raise the bar by demanding that our elected leaders get to work to end hunger in America ... both because it is the right thing to do and because we expect no less.

...Let it be said that we responded not simply with rescue efforts but that we committed to stopping the problem at its source.

...Let it be said that we responded not with concerned complacency, but that we mobilized the moral authority to end it up river at its origin. And,

...Let it be said that it all began right here, in Maine.

Dr. J. Larry Brown of the Harvard School of Public Health is the nation's leading scholar studying hunger in the United States.