Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 2/15/19

More than four months into the fiscal year, lawmakers passed a massive, $328 billion spending bill for 15 agencies. The Senate on Thursday afternoon passed the measure 83-16 and the House followed in the evening, voting 300-128 to clear it.
The sweeping border security and appropriations bill, H.J. Res. 31 (116), includes a number of mandates and funding priorities, yours truly writes.

First, the numbers: Funding for the foods side of FDA would total over $1 billion, which is about $30 million more than Trump had requested for fiscal 2019 that began on Oct. 1. The USDA is getting just under $20 billion.

Special requests: The legislation directs at least $15 million of FDA money to be used for inspections of foreign seafood processors and imported seafood.

About $3 billion of the appropriations budget would be allocated to the USDA's Agricultural Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture (up from $2.75 billion in fiscal 2018). Lawmakers are directing the extra money to go toward areas like cotton ginning, poultry, sugar beets, aquaculture, greenhouse technology and nutrition.

An attempt to block ERS, NIFA move: Democrats on the House Appropriations agriculture subcommittee weren't able to work in stronger language to stop the relocations of USDA's Economic Research Service and NIFA altogether. Instead, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), with the backing of more than a dozen other Democrats, on Thursday reintroduced a bill that would prevent all such moves.

Revamping the Dietary Guidelines: Congress, in a new provision in the spending package, asked USDA to report on how it is modifying its approach to drafting the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, published every five years. The report must come within six months and lawmakers also gave the department more than $12 million through September 2021 to develop the guidelines.