For years now, numerous commentators (myself included) have made comparisons of the food industry with Big Tobacco. The most recent example should become the poster child for how the most egregious tactics of tobacco companies are alive and well. Last month came the announcement that the American Beverage Association (the lobbying arm of soft drink companies) was donating $10 million to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Why Philadelphia? Could a proposal to place a tax on soft drinks have anything to do with it? Here’s how the Philadelphia Inquirer explains it:

When City Council was considering a soda tax last spring, doctors from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia testified about the dangers of sugar-sweetened drinks. On Wednesday, the hospital announced that it would expand its obesity program with the help of $10 million from the very industry that produces them.

What a coincidence. Maybe not. The paper continues:

The industry first made the offer last spring, when City Council members were debating Mayor Nutter’s proposed 2-cent tax on every ounce of sugar-sweetened beverages sold in the city. The tax was projected to bring in $20 million for obesity-prevention measures and more money for the general fund. The idea fizzled in May without going to a vote.

Can’t imagine why. At least industry followed through on its bribe. The paper also notes: “The three-year grant is the inaugural gift from the Foundation for a Healthy America, a nonprofit created by the American Beverage Association.”

The American Beverage Association, which represents powerful companies such as Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, has lobbied for years against such commonsense policies as getting soda out of schools. Now the policy debate has shifted to soda taxes, an issue that industry finds more threatening than any other. Ongoing sales of Coke and Pepsi rely almost entirely on the products’ cheapness. Companies hate any government meddling in their competitive price points.

So here’s the game plan: create a front group – the Foundation for a Healthy America (how touching) – and funnel corporate money into it. Out the other ends comes tax-deductible grants to anybody who gets in industry’s way. There’s a name for this: it’s called buying silence. And guess who championed it? Back in 2006, I interviewed Richard Daynard, law professor at Northeastern University School of Law and veteran of the tobacco wars. Here’s an excerpt worth revisiting:

Another tactic we are seeing from the food industry is philanthropy. For example, we have PepsiCo and Coca-Cola funding educational programs in schools. What parallels do you see here with tobacco companies?

It’s very interesting. Phillip Morris was a very active philanthropist. They particularly gave money to minority organizations, and basically bought silence. [Meaning that in exchange for donations, recipient groups would not speak critically of industry.] There have been a number of articles written about how the tobacco companies bought silence, particularly from black organizations. They also would advertise very heavily in minority media; one of the few national companies to do it. It resulted in the black organizations and the black media basically not getting the word out that they were among the principal victims of this industry. They also advertised in early feminist publications, such as Ms. Magazine when that was the leading feminist magazine. So they bought Gloria Steinem’s silence. They bought a lot of peoples’ silence by buying ads.

Sound familiar? A $10 million donation may be a lot of money for a children’s hospital, and some good will likely result from the funds. But it’s a drop in the bucket for the soft drink industry, a small cost of doing business and a worthy investment. Especially because the proposed beverage tax was projected to bring in $77 million in just one year, with $20 million specifically allocated to obesity prevention programs. And with no strings attached. Somehow I doubt we will see any research coming out of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia that could ruffle the feathers of the beverage lobby.

Mayor Nutter has said he won’t introduce the soda tax again this year, big surprise. Congratulations Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, you may now take your rightful place alongside Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds in the Corporate Hall of Shame.

Originally published on Appetite for Profit

Photo: Michael Tedesco via Flickr

And when capitalism and business speaks, America listens, particularly when the news is big – from politicians, to CEO’s, to the average Joe. When taxpayers were asked to dish out billions in the case of the recent banking and auto industry bailouts, ears perked and immediate action was taken to bring about long overdue and necessary change. Business could not continue under threat and no stone was to be left unturned. The banking sector was overhauled and policed while the auto industry was told to go electric or go home.

In both of these laborious examples of change, are there lessons that the sustainable food movement can learn to further its invaluable (and arguably far more laudable) agenda? Could our movement use these latest examples of change, attention and action within the economic and business realms to push through its goals?

Or can it be happening already? Take for instance the most recent case (and latest round) over the taxing of sodas and other sweetened beverages – a food category laden with processing and central to the debate over high fructose corn syrup – where business rhetoric coupled with a state of urgency has gotten a great deal of airplay, from CNN to the Colbert Report.

When Americans heard that their tax dollars will be going toward a comprehensive health-care system overhaul at a cost of nearly $1.2 trillion and that taxing sweetened drinks (a large culprit in the rise of obesity and chronic disease in the nation) could make up for about $24 billion of that, goals of the sustainable food movement reached the halls of Congress.

Although the sweetened beverage and soda tax debate is far from over and the idea may prove to be one of the fifteen options for bankrolling health care reform listed by the Senate Finance Committee that gets thrown to the wayside, at least an important subject of the sustainable food movement was heard. And this could just be the beginning. The soda tax debate could be used as platform for further and deeper analysis of our food system in the coming years.

And how about the salmonella scare? The real strength of food sustainability’s goals came not so much during the outbreak as it did in the aftermath. When it was unveiled that the recall could cost producers and small businesses up to $1 billion in economic losses, 2,100 products were pulled off shelves (one of the largest recalls in U.S. history), 683 sickened people needed care, PR budgets were blown, stock prices plummeted, and millions would be needed in settlement costs, the blame game began to turn toward better regulation of our food system and a reassessment of the FDA. Here again, sustainable food began to hit the mainstream – or at least peered its head a bit more.

In both of these examples, the language of business and economics helped open the door for the case of sustainable food and changes to our food system. How much more could be achieved if sustainability proponents used business rhetoric as a tool and powerful ally in the transmission of their ideas? Why not fight business with business?

This can be accomplished in light of the two greatest challenges facing the Obama Administration today: health-care and climate change. Sustainable food advocates must be ready and waiting in the wings for these debates, business-speak in tow, for climate change and health-care are undoubtedly the next Bear Stearns and General Motors, but on colossal scales. And so incredibly enmeshed are the goals of sustainable food with the foreboding perils of climate change and health care that these could be the next great opportunities for change to be made in our food system.

We don’t need Michael Pollan and others to tell us again. Diet plays a large role in chronic disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S.  Chronic diseases are responsible for about 75% of health care costs or about $975 billion. Obesity costs New York state $242 million per year in public and private medical expenses and diabetes patients pay nearly $2000 per year in drug store expenses. And a similar list can be made for our climate woes.

These facts provide some great ammunition. We can discuss taxes. Required government spending for these problems will affect not only our generation’s tax burden, but the tax burden of future generations as well. We can discuss investment, job creation and revenue streams. Just as the auto industry is leaning on electric vehicles and land is being transformed into space for harnessing wind energy, sustainable food systems and processes can be assessed in the transformation to new green economic sectors and green jobs. And we can discuss growth. Sustainable food need not be anti-science and anti-innovation, it’s model can instead lead to a new ways of making and distributing food in the 21st century.

Speaking and communicating in the language of business and economics, unfortunate or not, is a necessity in the fight to change our food supply. Whether discussing the morality over school lunches, the ideals of locally grown and distributed food, or fair and decent wages and labor conditions, business rhetoric must be kept at the tip of our tongues. Whether good or bad, economics and business are and forever will be at the heart of how our country operates and communication of messages will work a whole lot better when money takes the drivers seat. Just remember, taxes will always get ‘em talking.