Currently browsing posts about: Lobbies

Here’s one place where the MAHA and Food Justice movements agree: on glyphosate.  Here is a post from thefoodbabe (@Vani Hari):

LOBBYING

This refers to U.S. Right to Know’s Bayer lobby tracker.

Federal disclosures show Bayer reported spending $9.19 million on lobbying Congress and the executive branch in 2025, which includes fees paid to at least 13 outside lobbying firms. As of the fourth quarter of 2025, 45 lobbyists were registered to lobby for Bayer under the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

The tracker comes from Stacy Malkan’s reporting: Tracing Bayer’s ties to power in Trump’s Washington; From lobby firms to top officials, a look at how Bayer built access and secured favors

The White House invokes the Defense Production Act to guarantee supplies of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides. Regulators reapprove dicamba, a Bayer herbicide twice blocked by federal courts, and clear the way for new pesticides containing toxic, persistent PFAS “forever” chemicals.

And the U.S. Justice Department urges the U.S. Supreme Court to erase billions of dollars of Bayer’s liability for its glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer – placing the weight of the executive branch on the side of a foreign company against thousands of Americans who say Bayer’s products caused their cancers.

Over the past year, the administration under President Donald J. Trump has delivered a string of victories to Bayer, the German agrichemical and pharmaceutical giant that merged with Monsanto in 2018 to become the world’s leading manufacturer of genetically modified seeds and pesticides.

REVOLVING DOOR

The term refers to government regulators taking jobs with corporations and vice versa.  US Right to Know reports:

The Trump administration yesterday handed Bayer another win, urging the Supreme Court in a new brief to side with the German pesticide company in a high-stakes legal case that could wipe out thousands of cancer lawsuits and potentially billions of dollars in liability tied to glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer.

Three out of nine U.S. officials who signed the brief previously worked for law firms that have represented Bayer, raising questions about whether the Trump administration is providing special favors and benefits to Bayer and siding with a foreign corporation against Americans with cancer.

COMMENT

It’s pretty amazing what Bayer gets away with.  Despite Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s insistence that glyphosate is carcinogenic and needs to get out of the food supply, he has now backtracked on that.  In his backtracking statement, he says:

Unfortunately, our agricultural system depends heavily on these chemicals. The U.S. represents 4% of the world’s population, yet we use roughly 25% of its pesticides. If these inputs disappeared overnight, crop yields would fall, food prices would surge, and America would experience a massive loss of farms even beyond what we are witnessing today. The consequences would be disastrous.

This sounds like he’s looking out for farmers.  But glyphosate is used in industrial agriculture, not small- and medium-sized family farms, and certainly not in organic and regenerative farms.  As an herbicide, it’s used on feed for animals and fuel for automobiles.  It’s also used for drying wheat and oats.  It should not be used for food for people at all.

Why is this still allowed?  The Bayer Lobby Tracker makes that clear.

In my post last week, “The government is actively promoting meat and dairy intake,” I said

The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans actively promote meat and dairy intake, especially full-fat dairy.  The USDA has long acted as a marketing arm of those industries through its research and promotion (checkoff) programs.

I then noted that this government takes promotion to new levels through its milk mustache ads and pronouncements that we have ended the war on protein (protein has long been understood as a euphemism for meat).

I ended with this comment: “I chalk all this up to the extraordinary lobbying power of the meat and dairy industries.”

Whew.  Did that ever get a response.

Readers raised two issues:

I.  The guidelines and inverted pyramid give equal weight to plant foods.

That’s not how I read them.  I see them as giving lip service to plants but prioritizing meat.  They visually present meat most prominently in the interactive graphic at realfood.gov.  Subsequent statements of the USDA and HHS secretaries also support this view.  And then there are the authors with financial links to beef industry groups who wrote the scientific reports relevent to meat.

II. This is not about meat industry lobbying; it is about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s ideology.  Well, yes.  That too.  “Ideology” refers to belief systems that structure views of the world.  Everybody has them.

I, for example, am ideologically in favor of the dietary guidelines’ advice to eat real food and avoid highly processed food, but ideologically opposed to advice to prioritize animal protein over plant protein.  I would argue that the vast preponderance of research supports that view.

People holding other ideological views disagree, evidently.  They pick different studies to read and come to different conclusions.

Two members of the nine people writing scientific reviews for the guidelines assure me that their reviews are unbiased.  But those reviews invariably reflect the ideology of the people who wrote them.

As I often point out, nutrition research is impossible to control rigorously, unless you lock people up for extended periods of time.  That is why the best controlled studies, those done in monitored metabolic wards, can only be done for a few weeks at most.  Diets are complicated; eaters are complicated; research is complicated.  Complicated research requires interpretation.  Interpretation depends on the interpreter’s particular ideology.

That is why appointing a diverse committee to look at research questions has its benefits; people with differing ideologies have to work out points of agreement.

I will say this for RFK, Jr.  He makes his ideology clear.  It prioritizes personal experience over science.

My ideology: We need science to distinguish anecdote from fact.

Let’s agree that on the meat priority issue, RFK Jr’s ideology fits well with meat industry objectives.

The meat industry has a long history of lobbying around dietary guidelines (see my book, Food Politics).

I have not seen specific reports of meat industry lobbying around the new dietary guidelines.  Apparently, no lobbying was necessary.

The alcohol industry must be exceptionally powerful (that’s why it is regulated by the Treasury Department, which cares about revenues, rather than an agency of Health and Human Services.  Its lobbying is highly effective, especially when it comes to Dietary Guidelines.

That is also most likely why the Senate Agriculture appropriations bill contains this clause [my emphasis]:

SEC . 759. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) were tasked with providing findings and recommendations on alcohol consumption for the purposes of inclusion in the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans as required by section 772 of division A of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 (Public Law 117–328): Provided, That the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Agriculture shall only consider the findings and recommendations of the NASEM report in the development of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and further, both Secretaries shall ensure that the alcohol consumption recommendations in the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans shall be based on the preponderance of scientific and medical knowledge consistent with section 5341 of title 7 of United States Code.

To understand what this is about, consider the NASEM and two other reports on alcohol that came out recently.

As I discussed here previously,

I.  The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Review of Evidence on Alcohol and Health says moderate drinking

• Reduces all-cause mortality (moderate certainty)
• Reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease (moderate certainty)
• Increases the risk of breast and colorectal cancer (but can’t decide about others)

My summary: OK, moderate drinking increases breast and colorectal cancer, but reduces risks for heart disease and overall mortality—a net benefit (unless you happen to get one of those cancers).

II.  The Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, says in his Advisory on Alcohol and Cancer Risk

• Consuming alcohol increases the risk of developing at least 7 types of cancer.
• The causal relationship between alcohol consumption and cancer is firmly established.

My summary: Oops.  Alcohol absolutely increases the risk of at least 7 cancer types.

III.  The report from the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD).  

• Males and females who consumed 1 drink per day had an increased risk of liver cirrhosis, esophageal cancer, oral cancer, and injuries, but a lower risk for ischemic stroke…females had a higher risk for liver cancer and a lower risk for diabetes mellitus when they drank 1 drink per day…even infrequent high per-occasion drinking may eliminate the lower levels of risk for ischemic stroke.
• Alcohol use is associated with increased mortality for seven types of cancer (colorectal, female breast, liver, oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, esophagus [squamous cell type]). Increased risk for these cancers begins with any alcohol use and increases with higher levels of use. Women experience a much greater risk of an alcohol-attributable cancer per drink consumed.

My summary: Oops again.  Everyone, especially women, who drink any alcohol at all is at higher risk of 7 cancer types.

As reported in Vox and Stat, HHS is withdrawing this report and sending it to report heaven, as if it never existed.

Reuters says the forthcoming Dietary Guidelines will not mention alcohol.

For the background on all of this, see my previous reports:

• The alcohol saga continues
• Alcohol in the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines: the rumors  (this one has a table of previous alcohol recommendations)

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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