by Marion Nestle

Search results: food policy action

Apr 2 2025

Keeping up with MAHA: RFK Jr’s latest actions

There is never a dull moment with Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s taking over the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Wall Street Journal announced this first: RFK Jr. Plans 10,000 Job Cuts in Major Restructuring of Health Department

Kennedy on Thursday said the agency would ax 10,000 full-time employees spread across agencies tasked with responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs, providing insurance for the poorest Americans and more. The cuts are in addition to roughly 10,000 employees who chose to leave the department through voluntary separation offers since President Trump took office, according to the department.

Together, the cuts would eliminate about one-quarter of a workforce that would shrink to 62,000. The department would lose five of its 10 regional offices.

RFK Jr explained what all this was about in a six-minute video) on Twitter (X: “We’re going to eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core function.”The agency said the 25% reduction in workforce would not affect essential services.

That, however, is a matter of opinion.  As Politico put itRFK Jr.’s massive cuts stun staff, leave senior employees scrambling, which, one can only suppose, is the point.

To further explain, HHS issued Fact Sheet: HHS’ Transformation to Make America Health Again.

You can read it for yourself, but here are selected items that got my attention [my comments follow]

    • FDA will decrease its workforce by approximately 3,500 full-time employees, with a focus on streamlining operations and centralizing administrative functions. This reduction will not affect drug, medical device, or food reviewers, nor will it impact inspectors. [This is hard to believe.  Many staff have already left.  Were they scientists?  Who is left who can write Federal Register notices, for example].
    • The CDC will decrease its workforce by approximately 2,400 employees, with a focus on returning to its core mission of preparing for and responding to epidemics and outbreaks. [But the first layoffs were of probationary staff of the Epidemiology Intelligence Service.  They may have been hired back, but it’s hard to imagine what morale is like]
    • The consolidation and cuts are designed not only to save money, but to make the organization more efficient and more responsive to Americans’ needs, and to implement the Make America Healthy Again goal of ending the chronic disease epidemic. [How, pray tell]
    • A new Administration for a Healthy America (AHA) will…coordinate chronic care and disease prevention programs and harmonize health resources to low-income Americans. [This could work if done right and if adequate personnel are still available]

My question here is to what end?  What, exactly, does RFK Jr plan to do to Make America Healthy Again?

So far, he has done a few things:

  • Made it clear that food companies have to stop using artificial color dyes.
  • Started talking about closing the GRAS loophole (that allows companies to say whether additives are safe)
  • Indicated that he prefers beef tallow to seed oils.

I am all for getting rid of artificial colors and closing the GRAS loophole but neither of those is a major cause of obesity and its health consequences.  Nor will replacing seed oils with beef tallow addresss that problem; both have about the same number of calories.

If RFK Jr really wants to Make America Health Again, he needs to get American eating less junk food and more real food.  Yes, food colors are a marker of ultra-processed foods but they are mainly in candy, confectionary, and kids’ cereals.

I’m eagerly waiting to hear what RFK Jr plans to do to help Americans reduce calorie intake, reduce intake of ultra-processed foods, stop smoking, avoid drinking too much alcohol, become more physically active, and eat more vegetables.

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Mar 25 2025

Keeping up with U.S. food politics

It’s not easy to figure out what’s happening on the food front in DC these days, but a lot of it does not sound good.  Here are a bunch from last week.

I.  Food Bank Support. USDA stops $500 million worth of shipments of food to food banks.

Food banks across the country are scrambling to make up a $500 million budget shortfall after the Trump administration froze funds for hundreds of shipments of produce, poultry and other items that states had planned to distribute to needy residents.

The Biden administration had slated the aid for distribution to food banks during the 2025 fiscal year through the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which is run by the Agriculture Department and backed by a federal fund known as the Commodity Credit Corporation. But in recent weeks, many food banks learned that the shipments they had expected to receive this spring had been suspended.

II.  Line speeds in meat processing plants.  USDA announces “streamlined” meat processing.  This is USDA-speak for increasing line speeds in processing plants, something terrifying to anyone who cares about worker safety and food safety.  As Food Safety News puts it, this is unsafe at any speed—again.

Once more, policymakers are making the same catastrophic mistake. Once more, industries are downplaying risk while lives hang in the balance. Once more, we are choosing efficiency over responsibility…It’s a reckless increase in processing speeds that threatens to overwhelm the very safeguards meant to protect both workers and consumers.

III.  Food safety rules.  FDA puts food safety rule on hold

In an announcement on March 20, the Food and Drug Administration said it intends to publish a proposed rule “at a later time.” The rule has already been published and approved and was set to go into effect Jan. 1, 2026. The rule was mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act, which Congress approved in 2010.

The food industry has been pushing back against the rule since before it was written, citing expenses. Industry groups applauded the FDA’s postponement of enforcement of the rule.

IV.  Seed Banks.  DOGE is trying to fire staff of the USDA’s National Plant Germplasm System, which stores 62,000 seed samples.

In mid-February, Trump administration officials…fired some of the highly trained people who do this work. A court order has reinstated them, but it’s unclear when they will be allowed to resume their work.

On the other hand, a few useful things are happening.

V.  Infant formula. FDA launches “Operation Stork Speed to Expand Options for Safe, Reliable, and Nutritious Infant Formula for American Families.  This will involve

  • Increased testing for heavy metals and other contaminants.
  • Encouragement of companies to develop new infant formulas
  • Reviewing baby formula ingredients
  • Collaborating with NIH to address research gaps

This is in response to the loss in availability of infant formula due to contamination at an Abbott plant.  I don’t see anything in this initiative aimed at enforcing food safety rules in production plants, or anything about the ridiculous pricing of infant formula, which can range four-fold for essentially identical products (all infant formulas have to meet FDA nutrition standards).  See: FDA’s main page on Infant Formula.

According to FoodFix, this announcement came after RFK Jr. met with the CEOs of major formula makers, but before Consumer Reports issued a report finding “concerning” levels of heavy metals in some infant formula products.

USA Today reports:

The FDA’s testing is ongoing. To date, it has completed testing of 221/340 samples, which at this time, do not indicate that the contaminants are present in infant formula at levels that would trigger a public health concern.

VI.  Chemical contaminants in food. FDA has published a Chemical Contaminant Transparency Tool.  This gives action levels for each contaminant. Presumably, the 221 tests gave results that did not exceed those levels.

Comment

I’m not seeing much about Making America Healthy Again, beyond encouraging the elimination of artificial colors and trying to do something about the GRAS loophole, which lets companies essentially self-determine whether additives are safe.  Those are both worth doing, and have been a long time coming.  I still want to see this administration take strong action on:

  • Ultra-processed food
  • Food Safety
  • School meals
  • Support for small and medium farms

The cancelling of funding for the Diabetes Prevention Program, a 30-year longitudinal study, seems at odds with MAHA.  I hope the funding gets restored quicky.

Nov 13 2024

UK House of Lords issues report on how to fix food systems

The House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee has a lengthy (179 pages) new report ‘Recipe for health: a plan to fix our broken food system’.

Key finding: Obesity and diet-related disease are public health emergencies costing society billions in healthcare costs and lost productivity.

Key recommendation: The Government should develop a comprehensive, integrated long-term new strategy to fix our food system, underpinned by a new legislative framework.

Key actions (selected):

  • Require large food businesses to report on the healthfulness of their products
  • Exclude businesses making unhealthful products from policy discussions on food, diet and obesity prevention.
  • Tax products high in salt and sugar; use revenues to make healthy food cheaper.
  • Ban the advertising of less healthy food across all media.

No recommendation on reducing intake of ultra-processed foods?  Despite finding the link between ultra-processed foods and poor health outcome “alarming,” the report ducked the issue and recommended only to fund more research.

It also advised reviewing dietary guidelines with ultra-processed foods in mind.

Still, the recommendation to keep food businesses out of public policy discussions is a good one, not to mention taxes and advertising bans.

This, mind you, is the House of Lords.  Impressive.

LINKS

Sep 18 2024

How the food industry fights soda taxes

The Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI) has issued this new report.  It’s well worth a look.

By now, soda taxes are well established to decrease consumption and raise revenues that can be used for social purposes.  As you might imagine, the soda industry does not like such taxes.  As the report explains,

Recently, Big Soda has adapted their [the cigarette industry’s] playbook and shifted their approach from outrightly opposing SB [sugary beverage] taxes to favoring weaker SB tax standards. This report highlights different actions and narratives employed by the industry and demonstrates how these strategies follow a global playbook, including:

  1. Proposing weaker taxes tailored to favor industry interests at the risk of public health.

2. Threatening and challenging governments that have passed an SB tax.

3.  Delegitimizing evidence to distort perceptions about SB taxes.

4.  Stigmatizing SB taxes through economic arguments.

5.  Taking advantage of and using vulnerable populations and environmental concerns to avoid the SB tax.

Under Strategy #5, for example, the report provides this information:

The report offers advice about how to counter industry measures by “(1) protecting the tax design to ensure it will have an optimal public health outcome, (2) safeguarding the policy decision-making process from undue influence and (3) leveraging opportunities for civil society to defend SB taxes.

For example, to safeguard policy decisions, it advises:

Avoid participating in public-private partnerships, especially those claiming to mitigate the “economic damages” of the SB tax through false solutions. This is the entry point for corporations to take a seat at the policy-making table and meddle with the design and implementation of the tax.

Soda taxes are up for renewal in Berkeley and are under consideration in Santa Cruz.  Stay tuned.

May 1 2024

New York City’s food initiatives

I’m having a had time keeping up with all the things the New York City food policy office is doing to improve the city’s food system, so I asked for, and got, an impressive list.

For starters, it has a plan: Food Forward NYC: A 10-Year Policy Plan

And its done a 2-Year Progress Report

The office published or supports the publishing of other city reports:

It announces a new grant to the Department of Corrections to train prison foodservice workers to prepare plant-based meals

These are on top of initiatives to:

The Mayor’s Office of Food Policy has a remarkably low profile.  Trying to find out who’s in it and what they are doing is not easy, which is why I wanted to try to get a handle on it.

I think Kate MacKenzie and her handful of colleagues are doing impresssive work, not least because of their outreach and partnership with multiple city agencies.

Impressive, indeed.

Mar 19 2024

European Big Ag in action

Science Magazine has this editorial headline: Reverse EU’s growing greenlash**

After several weeks of violent protests, European farmers have achieved a tactical triumph that does not bode well for the future of environmental policies.
Let’s stop right here at “farmers.”  This is not the right word.
This editorial is talking about industrial agricultural producers—Big Ag—not small organic farmers using regenerative principles.
The editorial continues, “In response to the demonstrations, the European Commission has
  • Enacted a derogation in the European Union’s (EU’s) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to set aside 4% of farmland for biodiversity and landscape protection,
  • Withdrawn a bill to halve pesticide use,
  • Removed a target to reduce agriculture emissions by 30% by 2040, and
  • Called for further changes in the CAP to loosen environmental requirements.”
The editorial points out (my translation) that the EU spends about a third of its annual budget on subsidizing industrial agriculture.  This gives Big Ag plenty of political clout, making it “”impossible to modify the CAP in ways that reduce the environmental impact of modern agricultural practices and promote sustainable farming..”
Its bottom line: “Such capture of government by an interest group is dangerous.”
Well, yes.  If this sounds familiar, consider the US farm bill.  Its support money goes to Big Corn, Big Soy, and Big Ethanol fuel.
In this system food for people doesn’t stand a chance, and forget about mitigating climate change.
Alas.
**Thanks to Brian Ogilvie, a historian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, for alerting me to this.
Mar 5 2024

How the food industry exerts influence II: climate scientists (meat industry)

In my Monday postings of industry-funded studies of the week, I mostly have stopped listing the names of authors because I view industry influence as a systemic problem, not something to be blamed on individuals.

But a recent article on meat industry influence on climate change science, sent to me by one of its authors, focuses on two individual recipients of meat industry funding.

The study: Morris, V., Jacquet, J. The animal agriculture industry, US universities, and the obstruction of climate understanding and policyClimatic Change 177, 41 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-024-03690-w

The 2006 United Nations report “Livestock’s Long Shadow” provided the first global estimate of the livestock sector’s contribution to anthropogenic climate change and warned of dire environmental consequences if business as usual continued. In the subsequent 17 years, numerous studies have attributed significant climate change impacts to livestock. In the USA, one of the largest consumers and producers of meat and dairy products, livestock greenhouse gas emissions remain effectively unregulated. What might explain this? Similar to fossil fuel companies, US animal agriculture companies responded to evidence that their products cause climate change by minimizing their role in the climate crisis and shaping policymaking in their favor. Here, we show that the industry has done so with the help of university experts….Here, we traced how these efforts have downplayed the livestock sector’s contributions to the climate crisis, minimized the need for emission regulations and other policies aimed at internalizing the costs of the industry’s emissions, and promoted industry-led climate “solutions” that maintain production.

The authors describe the ways the meat industry interacts with the work of two university researchers.  Both researchers, they report:

  • have received significant research funding from industry groups
  • lead university centers that receive funding from industry groups
  • have been employed by an industry group as consultants
  • have received awards or travel from industry groups
  • have failed to disclose industry funding in instances where it is the norm to do so
  • have presented to policymakers at an industry-sponsored event
  • have produced work referenced in public comments submitted by industry groups to regulatory agencies
  • have co-authored publications with industry employees
  • have published repeatedly in industry-funded journals
  • have been referenced by industry groups in industry advertisements
  • have published traditional and social media in support of industry interests
  • have minimized the industry’s role in climate change
  • have challenged the need for regulations or promoted policy changes in ways that are favorable to industry

And there’s more:

Nicholas Carter sent me a copy of his and the Freedom Food Alliance’s report on meat industry efforts to deflect its role in climate change: Harvesting Denial, Distractions, & Deception: Understanding Animal Agriculture’s Disinformation Strategies and Exploring Solutions.

This analysis focuses on key strategies, including tactics to deny, derail, delay, deflect and distract6 meaningful discussion of the key issues, as well as methods that generally are intended to confuse and create doubt in the minds of policymakers and the general public.  It is common for the animal agriculture industry to challenge the necessity to shift to a plant-based food system, question causation, dispute the messenger, and contest suggested proplant-based policies.

Carter also sent an article about this study from DeSmog: Meat industry using “misinformation: to block dietary change, report finds.

He notes: “Relevant to all this to is the ironic timing of $4 million more just rewarded (announced yesterday) to Mitloehner and the CLEAR center.”

His comments on this irony:

Yes, feed swaps & quicker fattening can lower some methane, albeit with tradeoffs, but this ignores the far bigger opp. for shifts in demand & supply away from the highest methane-polluting practice.

Comment: In partnerships of this type, the sponsoring industry typically wins.  Much research shows that individual recipients of industry funding do not believe it influences the design, conduct, or interpretation of their studies, despite substantial evidence that it does. The role of beef methane emissions is an existential threat to beef sales.  The industry, understandably, is doing all it can to undermine concerns about its role in climate change.

Jan 4 2024

The food movement rising: targeting the Farm Bill

One of the big issues in food advocacy is how to develop coalitions broad and strong enough to demand—and achieve—real change.  Thousands of organiations are working on food issues, local, regional, and national.  But for the most part, each works on its own thing, with its own leadership and staff, competing with all the others for limited funding.

This is why the work that the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is doing to organize support for Farm Bill change is so important and so exciting—the cheeriest food news possible.

Here’s the headline:  Nonprofit Groups Award $2.2 Million to Equip Frontline and BIPOC-led Organizations to Engage in Food and Farm Bill Debates:  With 15 Organizations Collaborating to Select 28 Grantees Across the Country, the Effort is Among Largest Participatory Grantmaking in Food and Farming to Date.

As Congress continues to negotiate the next food and farm bill, a group of organizations with expertise in agriculture, labor, climate change, food security, and nutrition have announced a first of its kind effort to uplift the voices of food and farmworkers, marginalized farmers, and frontline communities in the farm bill process. Through a participatory grantmaking process, the groups awarded $2.235 million in grants to support 28 grassroots groups. The grants will support capacity building, organizing and advocacy efforts around the food and farm bill.

I had not heard about this and wrote Dr. Ricardo Salvador, director of the Food and Environment Program at UCS, the group behind this initiative.

He explained:

This got started (publicly, at least) with this note last summer to Biden (we continue to work with his team at EEOP, with whom we have regular meetings.) In that opening salvo you’ll see the broad categories on which our initial 170 members were able to agree. An example of how we’ve put this to use are our wedging labor issues into the farm bill debate, which as you know has steadfastly been resisted until now on grounds of jurisdiction. The pandemic’s meat processing horrors gave us traction. Just before the recess, we started to press collectively for the coherent set of reforms embodied in over 30 marker bills that would update the farm bill to more accurately reflect 21st century priorities. The farm bill extension is giving us extra time to work on this.

The history of farmer coalitions goes back a couple of hundred years in the United States to agrarian and grange movements.  But real farmers (as opposed to corporate) have been too small and too dispersed to gain enough political power to change the system.

The UCS project wants to work with farmers who have a real stake in federal policy and want to do something about it.

This is ambitious.  But UCS is going about this in an especially thoughtful way, which makes me think it has a change of succeeding where other attempts could not.

This effort deserves enthusiastic applause and support.

I will be watching what UCS and its grantees do with great interest.  Stay tuned.