Civil Eats

An effort to get American children to eat more fruits and vegetables should, even in hyper-polarized Washington, be a no-brainer.  Last week, Congress declared pizza sauce to be a vegetable in school lunches.  Now, major food manufacturers are escalating their attacks against healthy food calling proposed food marketing guidelines “job killers” that will devastate the American economy.   Read More

“And it means ensuring that the policies being shaped at the Departments of Agriculture and Interior are designed to serve not big agribusiness or Washington influence peddlers, but the family farmers and the American People.”  President-elect Barack Obama, December 17, 2008, Chicago, Illinois.

The message was one of hope, the words of a newly elected President echoing the Populism of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the promise of John F. Kennedy.  It stopped there, the delivery of the promise fell short. Read More

“Lobbyists won’t find a job in my White House.” President Obama assured us with this claim upon inauguration. And yet he just nominated to two key posts “Big Ag” industry power brokers, who come straight from the chemical pesticide and biotechnology sectors. While they may not be registered as lobbyists, both men come from organizations representing powerful agribusiness interests, which every year spend millions of dollars in lobbying to advance their companies’ chemical and transgenic products. Read More

Last night Rachel Maddow interviewed the notorious corporate public relations hit man Rick Berman, best known for heading the Center for Consumer Freedom and for starting numerous websites that pose as fact havens while he is most likely being paid by the corporate interests pushing high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, tanning beds, tuna fish and more. Why don’t we know who is footing the bill? Because Berman orchestrates a cadre of non-profits to represent corporate political aims, and they do not have to reveal their donors. Maddow pointed this out at the top of the interview, and again after Berman was given the chance to correct the record and chose then to defend trans fats — leading Maddow to prod him to reveal to her audience at least the fact that someone was paying him to take sides on the issue. It’s worth watching, take a look here: Read More