Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission, along with three other Federal agencies (FDA, CDC and USDA),  released a set of proposed voluntary guidelines for marketing food to children to reduce sugars, fats and salts and increase fruits, whole grains and vegetables in the diets of American youth. In 2008, led by Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Tom Harkin (D-IA), Congress asked for the recommendations to address the nations’ growing obesity crisis among our nation’s youth.

Studies show that one third of all children aged 10 to 17 are overweight or obese. In the past three decades rates have more than doubled among kids aged 2 to 5 and more than tripled among those ages 6 through 11. The incidence of “adult onset” diabetes in children and youth has more than doubled in the past decade.

A coalition of major manufacturers of processed foods, fast-food chains, and the media industry that depends on their advertising dollars are spending millions to derail the proposed guidelines. The FTC has already started to trim the proposal in response to the lobbying blitzkrieg but industry wants to go ever further. They want to use an industry designed scheme that would declare Chocolate Lucky Charms, Marshmallow Pebbles and Cookie Crisp cereals as healthy.

But despite industry claims these guidelines are not mandatory regulations; they are voluntary guidelines developed by an independent committee of nutrition experts about how we can improve children’s health.

That hasn’t stopped industry predictions of economic disaster. According to comments filed by General Mills’ to Interagency Working Group “the economic consequences [of the guidelines] for American consumers and American agriculture would be devastating.”  They also predict “severe” economic consequences for the media industry and their employees.

They argue that the voluntary guidelines would cause consumers to eat more fruits and vegetables produced in other countries and therefore fewer grains grown in America. According to research funded by the Grocery Manufacturers of America “demand for fruits and vegetables would increase by 1009 percent and 226 percent respectively” resulting in almost $500 billion more spent on imported food and $30 billion less on domestically grown grain.

Even if the voluntary guidelines were that effective and their study was accurate, it’s audacious marketing spin to turn an overwhelmingly positive victory for public health into a big government, job killing attack on freedom.

Another industry-funded study claimed that the voluntary guidelines would result in the loss of 74,000 jobs. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, found the study riddled with “implausible” assumptions, historical inconsistencies and incomplete analyses of potential impacts to both the industry and economy as a whole.   For example, the industry study assumes, without justification, a 20 percent decline in advertising and completely ignores the likely scenario in which companies shift advertising to other products or audiences. It also ignores the fact that there has been no negative economic impact since industry adopted its own guidelines in 2006. In fact, EPI concludes that the guidelines could have no impact on jobs or could even lead to job growth in other parts of the economy.

Finally, General Mills adds that the food companies’ $1.6 billion in advertising expenditures “would go up in smoke.” “$1.6 billion in economic activity cannot disappear without an impact on people’s jobs and livelihoods,” they wrote.

While it’s impossible to believe that food conglomerates wouldn’t redirect their advertising dollars, it’s even harder to think that media companies wouldn’t find other buyers. In fact, they’ve done it before. When Congress banned tobacco ads on T.V. and radio in 1970 media companies stood to lose $220 million in annual cigarette advertising. Like their counterparts today, the networks, and broadcasters associations lobbied hard alongside big tobacco against the ban.

The media industry did fine. Total T.V. and radio advertising sales has increased every year before the ban and after. According to media analysts, in 1969 ad expenditures on T.V. and radio were $4.85 billion. In 1972, they were $5.7 billion.

For decades, industries have opposed laws, rules and even basic consumer information that have made us all healthier. At every step they predict disaster but, in fact, they respond with new ideas and innovations and we all benefit.  These voluntary guidelines merely suggest a path that industry should embrace and applaud.

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.

We have gotten a New Deal, albeit one that is more protective of those who caused the economic and agricultural crises than of those who suffer from them.  We have also gotten a new version of  “The Best and the Brightest” in the Obama Administration and their faulty counsel extends beyond war into food and trade policy.

The campaign promises were not worth the notepads they are written on. The promises were broken and business at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will carry on much as it did during the Bush Administration.

Instead of going outside the agribusiness and agrochemical industries, Obama has kept the revolving door spinning and appointed the very lobbyists and special interests he said would find no home in his administration.

Monsanto stalwarts Michael Taylor, special assistant to the FDA Commissioner for food safety and Roger Beachy, head of National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).

Rajiv Shah, head of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) where his pro-biotech leanings will continue to be pushed on the developing world. Perhaps it is a good fit, as  President Obama noted “The mission of USAID is to advance America’s interests by strengthening our relationships abroad.”  However, advancing America’s interests and giving real aid to those in need are not the same thing. Advancing interests implies control and empire building.

Islam Siddiqui, Chief Agriculture Negotiator, office of U.S. Trade Representative, is a particularly troubling nomination. He is no friend of consumers, considering his most recent employment at CropLife America (CLA), the pesticide industries main trade association. As a registered lobbyist and vice president of regulatory affairs, Siddiqui was responsible for setting and selling  CLA’s international and domestic agenda which, simply put, was to weaken regulations on pesticides and agricultural chemicals worldwide.

He is no friend of farmers either, and not just organic farmers, even though he has a  long history of distaste for organic agriculture. He promotes agribusiness, chemical companies, processors and grain marketers who make their profits by buying low, processing and selling high. In his world, a farmers job is to maintain corporate profits.

As an unabashed ‘free trader” he is a strong supporter of the World Trade Organization and its ability to strong-arm countries into accepting unwanted U.S. imports. He openly derided the European Union’s rejection of hormone-treated beef, Japan’s desire to mandate labeling of Genetically Modified (GM) food and he pushed to permit pesticide testing on children. In his world consumers should be forced to accept whatever food products are thrown at them.

Forced trade, telling countries they must accept our products whether they want them or not is not trade, it is nothing short of blackmail.

His “public service”  career has been dedicated to selling more pesticides and GM seed to farmers world-wide and easing restrictions on their use. The beneficiaries of these policies were not farmers or consumers but the agribusiness corporations that Siddiqui worked for. That is not public service, that is promoting private interest.

Siddiqui has not worked in the best interests of farmers or consumers, rather he has consistently promoted the interests of multi-national corporations, grain companies, meat processors and chemical companies over those of the farmer or consumer. If appointed, why should we believe that that the leopard will suddenly be changing its spots ?

President Obama noted as a candidate “We’ll tell ConAgra that it’s [USDA] not the Department of Agribusiness. We’re going to put the peoples interests ahead of the special interests.” Just another empty promise.

Obama has tapped Roger Beachy, long-time president of the Danforth Plant Science Center (Monsanto’s nonprofit arm) as chief of the USDA’s newly created National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Created by the 2008 Farm Bill, NIFA is the new means of awarding the USDA’s external research dollars. As the director of NIFA (a nomination that doesn’t require congressional approval), Beachy will oversee the distribution of nearly $500 million in grants and other research funding. Sustainable agriculture initiatives are likely to suffer, as research dollars are awarded to projects that promote Beachy’s vested interests in biotechnology.

Islam Siddiqui, currently the VP of Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife USA, was nominated to the post of Chief Agricultural Negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. Why the president would nominate someone from the group that infamously chided the First Lady for refusing to use pesticides on the White House garden is a bit of a mystery, but perhaps it has something to do with all the money and work as a fundraiser that Siddiqui put into Obama’s campaign. This critical position is designed to use free trade agreements to open up foreign markets for U.S. agriculture goods—mostly to promote chemical-intensive, genetically modified products that undermine local food cultures in developing countries.

It’s crucial that the Senate Finance Committee hears from public witnesses while investigating his past roles. At CropLife International, Siddiqui led an initiative to weaken restrictions against fertilizers and pesticides, as part of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round of negotiations. He also served as the senior agricultural trade adviser during the Clinton administration, and pressed for getting genetically modified crops and seeds approved for commercial use in the United States.

Now the United States will continue its efforts to export the worst aspects of U.S. agriculture to other countries, many of which are deeply wary of genetically modified seeds and the impacts of toxic pesticides on their communities. Mirroring those concerns, a landmark comprehensive United Nations and World Bank- sponsored International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD) has said that one of the best ways to feed the world is to increase investments in agro-ecological science and farming.

We don’t need more genetically modified seeds. What we need is enforcement of antitrust laws to break up monopoly control of the global food system, and fairer—not “freer”—trade arrangements to overcome poverty and hunger around the world.

The Obama administration has made tremendous strides towards encouraging the growth of the local food movement, and its connections to human health and ecological impacts. The White House organic garden and the farmers market spearheaded by Michelle Obama are important symbolic gestures, as is the USDA’s new “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” initiative. However, these latest appointments of industry insiders to two of the most influential offices that will shape U.S. food and agricultural policy at home and abroad call into question just how committed the Obama administration is to promoting sustainable agriculture and reducing hunger in the developing world.

We must also question how prepared the president is to break with past administrations’ track record of coddling special interests.

(You can see part 2 of the interview here)

Last week she also discussed Berman’s PR work, and played his group’s latest pro-high fructose corn syrup ad, followed by an illumination of many of the other non-profit front groups Berman has set up on the internets to represent corporate interests. Check it out:

(btw Rachel, “sugar” is not what they are pushing, its corn syrup — they are trying to get you to confuse the two, but they are different. One is made in a lab out of excess subsidized corn and could be called a realitively novel food while the other is a plant that humans have eaten, albeit less often and in less processed forms, for centuries.)

This is not new. There will always be loopholes in transparency, and there will always be people willing to exploit them for pay. But these attempts to confuse the public are also why it is so difficult to create a more democratic food system in which the poor are no longer forced to eat processed food at their peril, while the rich profit on their waistline expansion. Maddow points this out too — she leads into the discussion by describing what Berman is doing as “beneath the surface” of American politics, and representative of “what the country is really like and why it can’t seem to change in substantive ways.”

Indeed, these kinds of misleading PR and lobbying efforts also contribute to the intransigence in Washington. Take for example the unavoidable discussion of food safety, which rears its head every few weeks in light of the latest food recall. First and foremost, we need to have a food system that is safe for all to eat. Yet right now, the USDA doesn’t have the muscle to recall contaminated meat from supermarket shelves. Meanwhile, the USDA serves to both regulate and promote the industry, an inherent conflict of interest that keeps Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in a song and dance routine between those that want reform and the industry that wants no reform. As the New York Times reported on Sunday in front page piece tracing a particular e. coli contaminated hamburger to its victim, a 22-year old dance instructor named Stephanie Smith, who is now paralyzed from the waist down, the USDA is indeed being pulled in two directions:

The meat industry treats much of its practices and the ingredients in ground beef as trade secrets. While the Department of Agriculture has inspectors posted in plants and has access to production records, it also guards those secrets. Federal records released by the department through the Freedom of Information Act blacked out details of Cargill’s grinding operation that could be learned only through copies of the documents obtained from other sources. Those documents illustrate the restrained approach to enforcement by a department whose missions include ensuring meat safety and promoting agriculture markets.

Tom Laskawy had this to say about the USDA’s role at Grist:

Given the ability of the meat industry to use its influence, access, and power within the USDA to scale back any attempts to affect core issues like livestock farming methods, slaughterhouse line speed, and processors’ procurement practices, it’s hard to deny that its role as an industry cheerleader has left it hopelessly compromised.

Unfortunately its not just meat at the USDA, either. Check out this report [pdf] by the Center for Science in the Public Interest listing the ten most “dangerous” foods  regulated by the FDA including leafy greens, eggs, tuna, oysters and potatoes. The point of the report was not to scare the begezus out of us and get us to boycott these foods, but to show both how pervasive our food safety worries have become and underline the fact that unsafe food is the fallout of our industrial food system.

Enter legislation. A food safety bill passed in July in the House, and a similar bill is being considered in the Senate. But regulation of the livestock industry and structural changes at the USDA are not even on the table. However, this story is not going to go away until we stop the use of band-aids in the food system, and get at some of the root causes of unsafe food.

In telling the truth about Berman’s work, Rachel Maddow continues her work pulling back the layers of American politics to expose underhanded and manipulative lobbying tactics to the public. Here is hoping that she and the mainstream media continue to prod this story and give Congress ever more reasons to act to improve food safety. The health of millions of people is on the line.