Dear U.S. Metric Association fellow members,
Wow! I had a great conversation with a high-ranking USDA officer just a
bit ago regarding my inquiry to USDA about their status of compliance
with direction to metricate the agency.
I got a personal phone call just now from Mr. Michael Kelly, Deputy
General Counsel at USDA. I had copied the Metric Office at NIST on my
emailed correspondence with USDA/FSA and Elizabeth Gentry at NIST called
Mr. Kelly. Just as I hung up the phone, I got a message from Elizabeth
telling me about her end of the preceding NIST-USDA interaction on this
inquiry of mine.
Mr. Kelly told me that he investigated and found that NIST had asked
four years ago about the USDA metric officer charged with metricating
USDA and ensuring that they complied with the annual reporting
requirements of EO 12770. At that time USDA told NIST they had no one
assigned that responsibility and that they would tell NIST when they
found someone to take that on. Nobody was found or assigned to do that
job and no report went back to NIST. Elizabeth Gentry's inquiry started
that process all over just now. USDA still has nobody filling that
function. Mr. Kelly thought perhaps it should fall into the laps of
someone in the USDA's cadre of economists or statisticians but everyone
he spoke to (economists and statisticians at USDA) told him that "most
government agencies were just ignoring the Executive Order."
Early on I found that I had to do a quick review of pertinent
legislation with Mr. Kelly. He was unaware that the Omnibus Act of 1988
had strengthened the Metrication Act of 1975 and that this is what led
to Pres. George Bush (the elder) signing out Executive Order 12770.
I told Mr. Kelly about some of the agencies I knew that were complying,
about the progress toward metric-only labeling in this country, and so
forth. When I mentioned buying 20 kg bags of dog food he was amazed and
asked "how big is that [in pounds]?" Like most Americans, Mr. Kelly was
fairly uninformed about what I have termed "The Silent Revolution"
taking place in our country and which is metricating it.
I complimented the USDA highly in my conversation with Mr. Kelly. They
have done admirably well over the decades in providing education and
materials to farmers and farm product concerns in improving our
agricultural and food handling practices. Much, if not most, USDA data
is already collected and analyzed in terms of hectares, metric tons, and
kilograms. Research is almost entirely metric in its reporting. Someone
at USDA is sitting there translating the data and research into
non-metric form "for the sake of the user", much as the National Weather
Service does. Therefore, I suggested, in addition to economists and
statisticians at USDA, the folks who design educational materials for
them need to be brought into the loop so the USDA can educate their
users about applicable metric units. In fact, I averred, the USDA needs
a top-down approach to metricate itself. I also bragged on the newspaper
in our small county in Tennessee that is carrying a metric column I
provide to help educate the local folks.
Mr. Kelly gave me two names and addresses to write to at the top level
of USDA on this matter. His time was limited so I could not get in all
the points I would have liked to, but I did point out the current move
to permissive metric-only labeling and I did point out two of the
agencies/departments in our government that work in metric units. In
all, we spent about 20 minutes in conversation.
Elizabeth, thank you very much for your prompting USDA to respond to my
inquiry! That got me a high-ranking officer instead of a front-desk
jockey at their customer service bureau. I like your suggestion of
bringing up NIST SP 814 but I will have to leave that to you for
follow-up. I ran out of time with Mr. Kelly, who was indeed very
patient, responsive, and interactive. I suggest that you phone him to
thank him for responding personally and that you tell him about the NIST
support documents. Also, please reiterate my thanks for his personal
attention and time in our phone conversation this morning. Mr. Kelly was
uninformed about the progress any other US agency has made; he nearly
felt that nobody was metricated or moving towards metrication in the
federal government. Perhaps you can clear away such mis-impressions at
all agencies by an across-the-board NIST announcement. Can you give gold
stars to the leading agencies? Host an annual conference where you hand
out an award? Maybe you could give the best agency and the agency making
the most improvement each a gold-anodized, metal meter stick for
"measuring up".
It was a pretty busy morning on my quiet little Tennessee farm. I need
to go out to do some bush hogging now. I've got at least a hectare of
grass to trim down.
Jim
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(H) 931.657.3107
(C) 931.212.0267
