United States Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins ‘94 and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited Texas A&M’s AgriLife Phenotyping Greenhouse and toured facilities on A&M’s campus on Tuesday, April 29. Following a tour of the greenhouse, the secretaries spoke at a press conference.
Their visit was announced on Monday as a joint effort between the Department of Health Human Services and the Department of Agriculture to improve national wellness. Protestors from Hands Off!, a nationwide protest movement against President Donald Trump, were present outside the press conference for the duration of the event.
“Nutrition must drive what we are doing to build a better tomorrow,” Rollins said. “For our state, for our country and, frankly, for our world. … It’s important to note that this is unprecedented — our partnership. It’s not partisan, it’s not Republican versus Democrat. It really is making America healthy again, and making American agriculture great again.”
Rollins was the first woman to serve as the A&M student body president. Her son, mechanical engineering sophomore and junior Yell Leader-elect Luke Rollins, was present at the press conference alongside other members of the Corps of Cadets. Rollins and Kennedy have previously collaborated on changing school lunches and improving children’s health.
“When I was a boy, we had the best food in the world,” Kennedy said. “We were regarded as the healthiest people in the world. Today we are the sickest. We have the highest chronic disease burden.”
Kennedy, a previous independent candidate for president in 2024, is a proponent of President Donald Trump’s Make America Healthy Again committee. The committee aims to study and lower rates of chronic disease in adults and end childhood chronic disease.
“Nearly 100 million Americans are obese in a country of 340 million,” Rollins said. “And the instances of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other diet-related diseases are on the rise, particularly in children and adolescents.”
Rollins and Kennedy plan to release the 10th edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans in late summer or early fall, and described the new guidelines as nonpartisan and user friendly, with an emphasis on local and whole foods.
Under Kennedy, the Department of Health and Human Services has cut over $3 billion in federal research funding, which A&M relies on for healthcare and agricultural research. In response to a question about the cuts, Rollins expressed her dedication to local farmers and ranchers and proposed that programs that combine healthcare and agriculture would be prioritized for federal funding.
“There is no surprise to anyone here that we have been going through a lot of realignment and reorganization in the federal government,” Rollins said. “I think there is no question that the research we saw today is a game-changing, world-making, country-specific priority importance, and ensuring that those programs continue at full funding — if not more funding, if they’re really meeting their mark — is a part of what we’re working to do at USDA and across the government.”
Rollins noted that the 100th day of President Trump’s second term in office is Wednesday and said that she considered the fact that the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will no longer support soda and snacks as a major victory for her department. States may still request waivers to be exempt from federal rules.
“We’ve been working very closely with the governor of Texas, with public health officials in Texas,” Kennedy said of the nationwide measles outbreak that has killed two children. “We’ve provided them with enormous support from the CDC — all the support they’ve requested for vaccines and for alternative medicines. These are not fringe medications, these are medications that sick people should get.”
Kennedy listed clarithromycin and aerosolized steroids as treatments for measles, which are both described by the American Academy for Pediatrics as unproven and dangerous to the health of children.
“We have an autism epidemic in this country,” Kennedy said. “100,000 kids a year are diagnosed with autism. … Those are the concerns that the press should be covering. Every child who gets measles gets a headline. … Why aren’t people writing about the autism cases? 100,000 kids who should not be getting it.”
Kennedy has previously stated the rise of autism cases to be environmental, while scientific literature has attributed the rise to increased detection methods. Measles cases are often widely reported due to the United States declaring the extremely contagious disease eradicated in the early 21st century due to high levels of vaccination.
“Without food security, meaning without the robust production and work of our farmers supported by organizations like Texas A&M’s College of Ag and Life Science and AgriLife, we no longer have — if we don’t have food security, we no longer have national security,” Rollins said. “This is a much, much, much bigger effort than just creating an incredible crop of corn that is nutritious and can feed some people. This is about national security and about America retaining its position in the world.”
Alfonso A. Gonzalez, P.E. Class of 92 • May 1, 2025 at 4:02 pm
RE: second picture (“Protestors”). It is sad to see a group of radical kids in the background of the picture. The signs these young people are holding in the air are in line with Marxists ideologies. These young people have no idea of what they are doing; simple; they are lost.
Our nation was founded on Judeo Christian values. Our funding fathers drafted a close to perfect instrument known as the U.S. Constitution. This document provide us with a structure including checks and balances to keep our government small. This structure, which some critics relegate to an experiment, was the design of magnificent men. This structure created a close to perfect nation; a republic. Thank you for the bold vision and courage of our founding fathers we get to enjoy our current status. We remain as the most powerful nation in the world, and I hope we can preserve it for at least another 100 years. Its preservation rests on the hands of the next generation of leaders and citizens; which signals directly to your responsibility.
Regarding the signs. The EPA is one of many departments which our Federal Government created to pacify utopian ideologies. These days the Federal Bureaucracy is a beast that requires to be fed daily. EPA, OSHA, Department of the Treasury, HUD, FEMA, Department of Education, etc…….. do not produce; these entities take away from the tax payer with the added punishment of overregulating our industry and business. Overregulation shrinks our economy and as a result it impoverishes our nation. This is the vicious cycle that can lead to the implosion of our nation; therefore, unsustainable.
I would like to congratulate the young men and women that have been able to recognize that our nation is slowly making a return to our founding values. For the sake of our preservation, I encourage you to keep on the right path by putting God first, cherishing our Constitution, and working hard everyday.
This is the humble opinion from an experienced man.