… with the launch today (March 7) of the Plant Based Foods Association, a new collective voice is set to join the fray. Organized by its executive director, food and public health attorney Michele Simon, the group’s goals will be similar to those of its animal-based counterparts: public education, media outreach, and lobbying—only in this case it will seek to change the policies that put eggs, meat, and dairy front and center.

“The deck is stacked against plant-based foods because they cost more and people can’t find them,” Simon told Quartz. The new association, she says, is aimed at “leveling the playing field.” To do that, the organization will educate retailers and foodservice companies about these products, Simon says, and it has hired Elizabeth Kucinich, who previously served as policy director at the Center for Food Safety and as director of government affairs at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, to represent the group in Washington as its policy and partnerships consultant. (Kucinich is the wife of ex-congressman and former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, and she helped form the Congressional Vegetarian Staff Association.)

You may  know Michele as the author of the excellent report: Food Stamps: Follow the Money, and the book Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back and as president of Eat Drink Politics, a watchdog consulting group.

This is going to be helpful to food advocates to have this focus  in D.C.