Currently browsing posts about: Lobbies

Politico reports: White House invites 46 farm, food groups to discuss MAHA report

The MAHA report, as I’ve written, could have enormous implications for food system businesses.  The problems it describes with the health of America’s children call for policies that could reduce profits for companies that, for example, produce seed oils, food products with color additives, and ultra-processed foods in general.

The secretaries of HHS and USDA have promised to soon issue dietary guidelines to reduce intake of such foods.

Food companies making products targeted by such views are unlikely to be happy with the report.  If past history is any indication, they will lobby for exceptions, exemptions, and delays, and will insist that the proposed measures have no scientific basis (which some indeed do not), violate the First Amendment, and will cost jobs—the playbook that worked for such a long time for the tobacco industry.

The Politico report is behind a paywall, but Helena Bottemiller Evich obtained a list of who has been invited and writes the details in FoodFix: White House holds flurry of industry meetings in wake of MAHA drama. 

Her list shows separate meetings for fruit and vegetable producers and trade groups, and those for meat and dairy, restaurants, grocers, beverage companies (Big Soda), commodity groups, and Big Ag.

Oh to be a fly on those walls.

It’s hard for me to believe that this administration will do anything to reduce business interests, and early indications are that RFK Jr is merely calling for companies to take voluntary actions, and individuals to take personal responsibility—neither of which is likely to have any chance of Making America Healthy Again.

I look forward to seeing what they do with the dietary guidelines and the next MAHA Commission report on policy—both expected by the end of the summer, apparently.  Stay tuned.

• Interest groups spent more than $523 million on Farm Bill issues between 2019 and 2023.
• Agribusiness spends more on lobbying than the gas or oil industries.
• 561 groups reported lobbying on Farm Bill issues.
• Agribusiness players donated $3.4 million to election campaigns, mainly to members of the House and Senate Ag committees.

The AARP (at $15 million) and Feeding America (6 million) are the main lobbyists for public health issues, but their expenditures pale in comparison to that of the top contributors.

Lobbyists must disclose spending and on what, but not their positions.  These, you have to guess, but that’s not hard to do.

Resources

Scotland

The Food and Drink Federation of Scotland is lobbying the government to stop proposals to restrict promotion of HFSS snacks, ostensibly because of inflation.

The industry would like the government to “help ensure the future success of our vital industry by investing in productivity and supporting food and drink businesses on the journey to Net Zero.”

Spain

Spain’s new dietary guidelines recommend limits on meat consumption: a maximum of 3 servings/week of meat, prioritising poultry and rabbit meat and minimising the consumption of processed meat.”

This is a big deal because Spain currently has the highest consumption of red meat in Europe.

European Union

Scientists and health professionals for Nutri-Score, the front-of-package labeling scheme that originated in France, are trying to get it accepted throughout the EU.

They are collecting signatures on a petition to the Europen Commission. 

In an email, Serge Hercberg, the originator of Nutri-Score, writes

The objective of this Group aims to defend science and public health against lobbies and to remind the EC that Nutri-Score has been the subject of numerous studies following a rigorous scientific process justifying its adoption…The lobbies, totally denying science, have managed in recent months to spread at European level their false arguments through platforms, think tanks, associations, web media, lobbying agencies and events organised by permanent representations of certain states to EU.

He invites experts to support this effort.  Information is on the website here.

You can sign on through the contact page.  The more, the better he says.

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The Access to Nutrition Initiative (ATNI) published a report, Spotlight on Lobbying 2022 just in time for Christmas.  I am just getting to it.

ATNI has been commissioned to benchmark the world’s 25 largest F&B companies’ lobbying-related commitments, management systems, and disclosure against the Responsible Lobbying Framework (RLF). The RLF was developed to help organizations adopt corporate practices that ensure their lobbying activities are legitimate, transparent, consistent, and accountable, while providing the opportunity for other, more resource-constrained groups, to lobby in the public
interest.

Note that this report focuses on corporate promises and internal practices.  It does not evaluate what the companies are actually doing to influence nutrition policy.

The results?  No surprise, “current practice is far from the standard set in the RLF.”

Of course it is.  Why would companies want to stop lobbying when it is so effective in protecting their profits.

The report mentions the major issues:

• Taxes on unhealthy foods
• Marketing restrictions, particularly to children
• Mandatory front-of-package labels
• Food-based (rather than nutrient-based) dietary guidelines.

I hope its next lobbying report will document how these companies are fighting every one of these public health initiatives.

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For some reason, I’ve only just run across this account of food industry lobbying in the UK.

The introduction explains what the paper is about:

In this Discussion Paper, we examine the interactions of businesses with three major UK government departments, identify  weaknesses in the current disclosure process, and compare UK procedures with the more stringent disclosure requirements in two other English-speaking countries, Ireland and Canada, which tend to produce more specific and transparent data.

The authors are not trying to stop food industry lobbying; they just want it to be disclosed and at least as transparently as is required in Ireland and Canada.

In the United States, the best (only?) way to find out about food industry lobbying is to check the Open Secrets website.  It takes some exploration to find what you might be looking for, but it’s worth the trouble for this kind of result.

Or the top ten food and beverage spenders on lobbying.

If you can find it, the site identifies lobbyists, issues, and notes the revolving door between industry lobbyists and government positions.  It’s good to know these things.

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Feed the Truth (FTT), an organization I’ve discussed previously and whose mission is to work “at the intersection of equity, democracy, and food justice to stop corporate control over the food we eat,” has just come out with the results of its new research on Big Food’s lack of transparency in political giving.

FTT attempted to discover the political spending levels of the ten largest food and agriculture corporations: ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Coca-Cola Company, JBS, Mars, Nestle, PepsiCo, Inc., Tyson Foods and Unilever.

FTT’s unsurprising conclusion: “despite the massive influence these corporations have on our health, economy, and the environment, there is very little publicly-available information about how they manipulate the political system to their advantage.”

This led FTT to develop The Food and Agriculture Corporate Transparency (FACT) Index.  This ranks the transparency of the corporations on a scale of zero to 100 on readily available disclosure of their spending on electioneering, lobbying, science, and charity.

Among the key findings:

Overall transparency scores:

• Total: 2 (Bunge, Tyson) to 39 (Coca-Cola)
• Electioneering: 0 (Bunge) to 20 (Mars).
• Lobbying: 0 (Bunge, Tyson) to 9 (Coca-Cola)
• Charity: 0 (Unilever, ADM) to 8 (Coca-Cola)
• Science: 0 (PepsiCo, Mars, Unilever, JBS, Bunge) to 8 (Nestlé)

Coca-Cola ranks highest in part because of the transparency initiative it started in response to the furor over disclosure of its role in the Global Energy Balance Network.

I could have told FTT how hard it is to get information about food industry funding of science as well as all the other ways it uses funding to influence attitudes and policy.  I had my own version of these difficulties doing the research for Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.

It’s great that FTT is bringing this problem up to date, and identifying what needs to be done about it.

Several years ago, Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of KIND bars, donated funds to create an organization, Feed the Truth, to investigate food industry influence on our food system.  I was part of a team that suggested names for members of the group’s board.  Once Lubetzky set up the funding, he has had nothing further to do with the group.  The board appointed Lucy Martinez Sullivan as its executive director.

She explains this group in a YouTube video.

As its first public action, Feed the Truth, along with Maplight, a group focused on exposing the influence of money in politics, has just published Draining the ‘Big Food’ Swamp [the Executive summary is here; the full report is here].

This report is about how the food industry exerts power.  It “exposes how the $1.1 trillion food and agriculture industry flexes its political muscle through a web of trade association lobbying and campaign spending, while operating behind the scenes to undermine public health, perpetuate inequality, and consolidate power.”

Some of the report’s findings:

• In the last 10 years, the largest 20 food industry groups spent over 300 million dollars on federal lobbying.
• Of nearly 6,300 food trade associations, the 20 largest spent more than 300 million dollars on federal lobbying in  the last 10 years.
• Half of food trade lobbying came from only three groups: the National Restaurant Association, the American Beverage Association and the Consumer Brands Association.
• The National Restaurant Association is lobbying relentlessly to block efforts to raise the national minimum wage.
• The meatpacking industry is lobbying to keep workers on the job and to increase line speeds, despite the spread of COVID-19.
• More than 80% of the food industry lobbyists at the largest trade associations are “revolvers,” or individuals who now lobby the officials and agencies they once worked for.
• The top 20 food trade associations spent more in campaign donations to members of Congress who voted to overturn the election results than those that didn’t.

Feed the Truth also launched a petition calling on PepsiCo, a major member of all three of the top trade groups, to get its money out of politics.

This report is an impressive first step for this group.  I can’t wait to see what else it will do.

Resources

• Press release
• Take action
• Social media toolkit
• Video of the projection action at USDA

This tweet certainly got my attention:

It referred to Alex Kotch’s article in the International Business Times about how White House lawyer Donald McGahn has granted a waiver of conflict of interest rules to allow Kailee Tkacz, a former lobbyist for the Snack Food Association and, more recently, for the Corn Refiners Association, to advise the USDA about the forthcoming 2020 dietary guidelines.

Ms. Tkacz also was food policy director for the Corn Refiners Association, which represents producers of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

McGahn explained that this waiver would allow Ms. Tkacz “to advise the Secretary of Agriculture and other senior Department officials with respect to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans process.”

He says “it is in the public interest to grant this limited waiver because of Ms. Tkacz’s expertise in the process by which the Dietary Guidelines for Americans are issued every five years.”

The dietary guidelines historically have issued recommendations to consume less salt and sugar.  Snack foods are major sources of salt in U.S. diets.  Soft drinks sweetened with HFCS are major sources of sugars.

USDA is the lead agency for the 2020 guidelines.

Want to make some bets on what they will say about salt and sugar (a wild guess: the science isn’t firm enough to suggest eating less of either).