Home--News
Junk Food Companies Lobby Hard Against Regulations
By Gary Ruskin and Juliet Schor
The Nation
August 12, 2005
In recent months the major food companies have been trying hard to
convince Americans that they feel the pain of our expanding waistlines,
especially when it comes to kids. Kraft announced it would no longer
market Oreos to younger children, McDonald's promoted itself as a
salad producer and Coca-Cola said it won't advertise to kids under
12. But behind the scenes it's hardball as usual, with the junk food
giants pushing the Bush Administration to defend their interests.
The recent conflict over what America eats, and the way the government
promotes food, is a disturbing example of how in Bush's America corporate
interests trump public health, public opinion and plain old common
sense.
The latest salvo in the war on added sugar and fat came July 14- 15,
when the Federal Trade Commission held hearings on childhood obesity
and food marketing. Despite the fanfare, industry had no cause for
concern; FTC chair Deborah Majoras had declared beforehand that the
commission will do absolutely nothing to stop the rising flood of
junk food advertising to children. In June the Department of Agriculture
denied a request from our group Commercial Alert to enforce existing
rules forbidding mealtime sales in school cafeterias of "foods of
minimal nutritional value"--i.e., junk foods and soda pop. The department
admitted that it didn't know whether schools are complying with the
rules, but, frankly, it doesn't give a damn. "At this time, we do
not intend to undertake the activities or measures recommended in
your petition," wrote Stanley Garnett, head of the USDA's Child Nutrition
Division.
Conflict about junk food has intensified since late 2001, when a Surgeon
General's report called obesity an "epidemic." Since that time, the
White House has repeatedly weighed in on the side of Big Food. It
worked hard to weaken the World Health Organization's global anti-obesity
strategy and went so far as to question the scientific basis for "the
linking of fruit and vegetable consumption to decreased risk of obesity
and diabetes." Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson--then
our nation's top public-health officer--even told members of the Grocery
Manufacturers Association to "'go on the offensive' against critics
blaming the food industry for obesity," according to a November 12,
2002, GMA news release.
Last year, during the reauthorization of the children's nutrition
programs, Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois attempted
to insulate the government's nutrition guidelines from the intense
industry pressure that has warped the process to date. He proposed
a modest amendment to move the guidelines from the USDA to the comparatively
more independent Institute of Medicine. The food industry, alarmed
about the switch, secured a number of meetings at the White House
to get it to exert pressure on Fitzgerald. One irony of this fight
was that the key industry lobbying came from the American Dietetic
Association, described by one Congressional staffer as a "front for
the food groups." Fitzgerald held firm but didn't succeed in enacting
his amendment before he left Congress last year.
By that time the industry's lobbying effort had borne fruit, or perhaps
more accurately, unhealthy alternatives to fruit. The new federal
guidelines no longer contain a recommendation for sugar intake, although
they do tell people to eat foods with few added sugars. The redesigned
icon for the guidelines, created by a company that does extensive
work for the junk food industry, shows no food, only a person climbing
stairs.
Growing industry influence is also apparent at the President's Council
on Physical Fitness. What companies has the government invited to
be partners with the council's Challenge program? Coca-Cola, Burger
King, General Mills, Pepsico and other blue chip members of the "obesity
lobby." In January the council's chair, former NFL star Lynn Swann,
took money to appear at a public relations event for the National
Automatic Merchandising Association, a vending machine trade group
activists have been battling on in-school sales of junk food.
Not a lot of subtlety is required to understand what's driving Administration
policy. It's large infusions of cash. In 2004 "Rangers," who bundled
at least $200,000 each to the Bush/Cheney campaign, included Barclay
Resler, vice president for government and public affairs at Coca-Cola;
Robert Leebern Jr., president of federal affairs at Troutman Sanders
PAG, lobbyist for Coca-Cola; Richard Hohlt of Hohlt & Co., lobbyist
for Altria, which owns about 85 percent of Kraft foods; and José "Pepe"
Fanjul, president, vice chairman and COO of Florida Crystals Corp.,
one of the nation's major sugar producers. Hundred-thousand-dollar
men include Kirk Blalock and Marc Lampkin, both Coke lobbyists, and
Joe Weller, chairman and CEO, Nestle USA. Altria also gave $250,000
to Bush's inauguration this year, and Coke and Pepsi gave $100,000
each. These gifts are in addition to substantial sums given during
the 2000 campaign.
For their money, the industry has been able to buy into a strategy
on obesity and food marketing that mirrors the approach taken by Big
Tobacco. That's hardly a surprise, given that some of the same companies
and personnel are involved: Junk food giants Kraft and Nabisco are
both majority-owned by tobacco producer Philip Morris, now renamed
Altria. Similarity number one is the denial that the problem (obesity)
is caused by the product (junk food). Instead, lack of exercise is
fingered as the culprit, which is why McDonald's, Pepsi, Coke and
others have been handing out pedometers, funding fitness centers and
prodding kids to move around. When the childhood obesity issue first
burst on the scene, HHS and the Centers for Disease Control funded
a bizarre ad campaign called Verb, whose ostensible purpose was to
get kids moving. This strategy has been evident in the halls of Congress
as well. During child nutrition reauthorization hearings, the man
some have called the Senator from Coca-Cola, Georgia's Zell Miller,
parroted industry talking points when he claimed that children are
"obese not because of what they eat at lunchrooms in schools but because,
frankly, they sit around on their duffs watching Eminem on MTV and
playing video games." And that, of course, is the fault not of food
marketers but of parents. Miller's office shut down a Senate Agriculture
Committee staff discussion of a ban on soda pop in high schools by
refreshing their memories that Coke is based in Georgia.
A related ploy is to deny the nutritional status of individual food
groups, claiming that there are no "good" or "bad" foods, and that
all that matters is balance. So, for example, when the Administration
attacked the WHO's global anti-obesity initiative, it criticized what
it called the "unsubstantiated focus on 'good' and 'bad' foods." Of
course, if fruits and vegetables aren't healthy, then Coke and chips
aren't unhealthy. While such a strategy is so preposterous as to be
laughable, it is already having real effects. Less than a month after
Cadbury Schweppes, the candy and soda company, gave a multimillion-dollar
grant to the American Diabetes Association, the association's chief
medical and scientific officer claimed that sugar has nothing to do
with diabetes, or with weight. Industry has also bankrolled front
groups like the Center for Consumer Freedom, an increasingly influential
Washington outfit that demonizes public-health advocates as the "food
police" and promotes the industry point of view.
Meanwhile, public opinion is solidly behind more restrictions on junk
food marketing aimed at children, especially in schools. A February
Wall Street Journal poll found that 83 percent of American adults
believe "public schools need to do a better job of limiting children's
access to unhealthy foods like snack foods, sugary soft drinks and
fast food." Two bills recently introduced in Congress, Massachusetts
Senator Ted Kennedy's Prevention of Childhood Obesity Act and Iowa
Senator Tom Harkin's Healthy Lifestyles and Prevention (HeLP) America
Act, both place significant restrictions on the ability of junk food
producers to market in schools.
Interestingly, this is a crossover issue between red and blue states.
Concern about obesity and excessive junk food marketing to kids is
shared by people across the political spectrum, and some conservatives,
such as Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs and the Eagle Forum's
Phyllis Schlafly, as well as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger,
have argued for restricting junk food marketing to children. This
may be one of the reasons New York Senator Hillary Clinton has once
again become vocal on the topic of marketing to children, although
Senator Clinton has called not for government intervention but merely
for industry self-regulation, requesting that the companies "be more
responsible about the effect they are having"--exactly the policy
the industry wants.
A vigorous government response would clearly garner the sympathy of
the majority of Americans. The growing chasm between what the public
wants and the Administration's protection of the profits of Big Food
is a powerful example of the decline of democracy in this country.
Let them eat chips!
Gary Ruskin is executive director of Commercial Alert. Juliet
Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College and author of Born
to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture.
FAIR USE NOTICE. This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. India Resource Center is making this article available in our efforts to advance the understanding of corporate accountability, human rights, labor rights, social and environmental justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
|