The Meaty Truth (17 page)

Although the FDA does not “regulate” food like the USDA does, the organization that is supposed to regulate harmful chemicals and substances being put into our food supply has outrageously failed. Rather than not allowing chemical substances into our food like the rest of the developed and industrialized countries’ organizations, the FDA has instead decided to “regulate” the amount of chemicals allowed in our food, such as arsenic and cancer-promoting growth hormones, that have clearly been proven harmful through numerous studies.

The approach that the FDA (and USDA) chooses to take is to allow your food to be contaminated up to a determined maximum-exposure level. This does not mean that there is no hazard from ingesting these
toxic chemicals or that the food you eat is free of contaminants.
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Rather, your food is deemed “safe” by the industry’s own definitions. “Safe food” is then a very relative term.

In comparison, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) that oversees food safety has a very different approach. While the USDA allows health hazards up to a level it somehow deems appropriate, the EMA only certifies use of chemicals if it is backed up by studies that prove there are zero health hazards. This is why the European countries have banned arsenic use in chicken feed. Since there is not a safe limit, the European government will not allow it to be used. In comparison, the FDA allows arsenic—a known toxin and cancer-promoting agent—in chicken feed. The tolerance level for chicken livers is up to four times as much as that for chicken breasts, thighs, and muscle tissue—the areas where arsenic is stored.
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The USDA and FDA are not representing the concerns of Americans. In a recent poll, two-thirds of Americans stated that they wanted more oversight of their food safety.
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This attitude has not changed since 2007, when the same poll was issued. As recalls increasingly hit the news, more and more people realize that there is a clear problem with our current system. Despite this desire, government organizations are increasingly not complying with American interests even after the passage of the 2010 FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. Michael Taylor, the FDA Deputy Commissioner for Food and Veterinary Medicine, stated that the public’s desire for better oversight will probably not become a reality any time soon. Shockingly, the issue comes down to funds and lack of resources. Mr. Taylor stated, “We will continue efforts to make the best use of the resources we have, but simply put, we cannot achieve FDA’s vision of a modern food safety system and a safer food supply without a significant increase in resources.”
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We have an idea to fix the lack of resources. Let’s take the billions of dollars in federal subsidies propping up the agribusiness industry and reallocate those resources to food safety. In order to achieve this solution, though, we have to get the USDA, FDA, and Congress out of the industry’s back pocket.

Congress for Sale

Shocking but true: our government and legislation is heavily “bought off” by corporations. From 2005 to 2010, the ten leading agribusiness interests spent $127 million lobbying Congress and federal agencies.
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The base of lobbyists increased to an impressive 159 people. This means there was about one lobbyist for every four members of the House and Senate. For those of us who believe in fair play and legislation that is hopefully in the best interests of consumers, we hate to disappoint you. This isn’t how bills are made and passed. Although it is illegal to sell a vote, it is perfectly acceptable and legal to vote for or against a bill based on a donor’s preferences. Time and again, the industry has proven that “changes in contribution determine changes in voting behavior.”
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Let’s take the Farm Bill, Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management (FARRM) Act of 2013, as an example to understand why our government is currently of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations. The Farm Bill is the premier legislation that regulates farm policies and subsidies. This is the bread and butter of factory farming. If subsidies got cut, factory farming would fall like a house of cards.

Over the past three years, the Farm Bill has been one of the most lobbied pieces of legislation. Although 350 organizations lobbied the bill, the American Farm Bureau and Monsanto led the charge. Over the past five years, the American Farm Bureau spent $27.9 million lobbying Congress, and Monsanto spent $36 million. In total, the industries spent $57.5 million on lobbying for the 2013 Farm Bill.
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The American Farm Bureau Federation is the organization that claims to be the “voice of agriculture,” representing the corporate interests of meat, dairy, pigs, eggs, and chickens. Yet not only does it not support family farmers, it is out of touch with much of mainstream America’s interests. The Farm Bureau is notorious for blocking and opposing environmental legislation, such as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, wetlands laws, pesticide regulations, and any efforts to curb global-warming emissions.
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Think the Farm Bureau is concerned about ensuring we have a clean and safe Earth to live on? Far from it. Rather, they are focusing solely on its corporate interests. Worryingly, the Farm Bureau has positioned itself as one of the most powerful lobbying groups in America.

Although corporations spend billions of dollars lobbying Congress, it pays off handsomely in legislation. While the FARRM Act slashed $23 billion in costs, $8 billion from food stamps, and $4 billion in cuts to conservation over the next ten years, the bill will give $7 billion in crop subsidies.
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Crops are the main components of animal feed, which is 60 percent of the cost of factory farming. It seems the food-stamp lobby and conservation efforts didn’t write big enough checks.

In politics, money obviously talks. Over the past thirty years, the number of lobbyists as well as annual spending to Congress increased from $100 million to more than $3.5 billion. In fact, each industry spends as much as $157 million lobbying Congress to support industry practices. Breaking down the numbers, for every one dollar the industry “donates” to a Congressman, the industry receives about two thousand dollars returned in subsidy payments.
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This could be because along with the American Farm Bureau, industry groups like the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Pork Producers Council, and the National Milk Producers Federation give substantial campaign donations. It is expensive to run for office, and it is well known that fundraising efforts provide ample opportunity for industry to “buy” votes. Let’s take House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Oklahoma) as an example. Among agribusiness, he is a key target and favorite. In his 2012 election-campaign cycle, he received $744,000 from agribusiness. This was almost half of his total campaign budget. Similarly, agribusiness lobbyists contributed $453,000 to prominent House Agriculture Committee member Collin Peterson (D-Minnesota) and $346,000 to Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan).
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The agribusiness lobby is extremely strategic in its approach. But it’s very easy to see how this campaign money can represent a substantial conflict of interest.

All of this spending means that agribusiness holds legislative power when it comes to passing or opposing legislation in its interests. This is crystal clear when we look at the proposed bills that agribusiness lobbying has had a substantial hand in defeating. For example, 2010 was a good year for agribusiness in terms of defeating environmental legislation to restore our waterways. Agribusiness—including lobbyists from Monsanto, Cargill, Land O’Lakes, and the National Turkey Federation—successfully blocked a 2010 bill that would restore the Clean Water Act’s protections to all American waterways.
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That same year, they also defeated a Chesapeake Bay restoration bill, which would have “required all polluters to contribute to restoring the ecologically imperiled health of the Chesapeake Bay, and provide billions of dollars for clean up.” Naturally, agribusiness has little interest in cleaning up its messes.
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Unfortunately, Congress also had a difficult time enacting the polluter-pay principle with corporate money in its pockets.
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While Congress and agribusiness continue to massage each other’s backs, the problem is that when it comes to the environment, we are all going to suffer the consequences. Money might fix legislation in favor of corporate interests, but we simply can’t buy more clean oceans and waterways. Once they are gone, the damage is near irreversible.

In Corporations We Don’t Trust: The Revolving Door

Not only does agribusiness put money into Congress members’ pockets to “buy” legislation, it also infiltrates the very organizations that seek to regulate it. This notion, called the “revolving door,” is where industry employees gain employment in government agencies for a short time and then often return to the industry groups. This is particularly true of the USDA. As Eric Schlosser, the author of
Fast Food Nation
, profoundly states, “You’d have a hard time finding a federal agency more completely dominated by the industry it was created to regulate.”
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It goes without saying that this creates direct conflicts of interest within the department, as the agency is notorious for employing individuals who have previously
worked at the meat and dairy corporations the USDA is supposed to regulate. This revolving door has allowed the USDA and FDA to institute lax practices that result in sh!t in your meat and growth hormones and rocket fuel in your milk.

Under the most recent Bush administration, the USDA boasted a prominent staff from former meat and dairy interest groups as well as Monsanto. In fact, about a dozen of the USDA’s top, high-profile officials had intimate ties to the agribusiness industry, covering the entire spectrum of interests from meat and dairy to Monsanto and large food-processing companies such as ConAgra.

Looking at the staff list, one would be hard-pressed to know it was in fact the USDA and not an agribusiness-lobbying group. For example, the highly acclaimed position of USDA Secretary was staffed by Ann Veneman, who served on the board of biotech company Calgene that was acquired by Monsanto. Ms. Veneman’s Chief of Staff, Dale Moore, was the Executive Director for Legislative Affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. The NCBA is directly tied to some of the largest factory farm corporations in America, such as Tyson. The Under Secretary of the USDA, Floyd Gaibler, used to be the Executive Director of the dairy industry’s National Cheese Institute. The former Senior Director and Legislative Counsel for ConAgra Foods (one of the largest food processors) was the Assistant Secretary for Congressional Relations.
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Monsanto, in particular, has cleverly placed quite a few of its thirty thousand employees into influential posts at government agencies.
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If anything, Monsanto serves as a blueprint for how to infiltrate almost every high-profile position in government to serve its own interests. Consider the following:

• Clarence Thomas, a Supreme Court Justice since 1991, is a former Monsanto lawyer.
  
• Donald Rumsfeld, the well-known US Secretary of Defense, was CEO of GD Searle & Co, which was acquired by Monsanto.
  
• Margaret Miller, a FDA branch chief in the 1990s, is a former Monsanto chemical lab supervisor.
  
• Michael Taylor, the FDA Deputy Commissioner for policy from 1991 to 1994 and the Deputy Commissioner for Foods since 2010, is a former Monsanto lawyer and served as Monsanto’s vice president for Public Policy.
  

Just to refresh your memory, the FDA approved the use of Monsanto’s rBGH growth hormone in cows during the 1990s, despite reports of rBGH’s dangerous side effects in cows and potential human-health hazards. Ms. Miller and Mr. Taylor might just have had something to do with getting that FDA approval. They also might have been influential in staving off efforts to repeal rBGH even as mounting scientific evidence from a variety of sources urged the FDA to act.

We can’t judge people by their past employment necessarily, but the implemented policies that undermine the regulatory mission of the USDA and FDA in favor of maintaining high profits for corporations says otherwise. For example, the USDA continued to support the misguided EQIP programs that give conservation money to factory farms to aid in waste management. The USDA also denied and avoided testing of mad cow disease in 2003 instead of taking measures to assure the safety of America’s food supply to consumers. The USDA and FDA have also continuously turned a blind eye to scientific research that has recorded the harm of genetically engineered foods and continued to support and push them onto unknowing consumers
without
labels.

Although the Obama administration pledged to help end the revolving door, it continues to staff former industry employees in extremely prominent positions. For starters, the USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack has ties to Monsanto and openly promotes genetically engineered crops. This could be one reason why, despite public support for labeling of genetically modified foods, the USDA has continuously failed to implement the provision. Staffing Michael Taylor, Monsanto’s former vice president for Public Policy as the Deputy Commissioner for Foods, most likely does not bode well for
the American public. Unfortunately, this administration has failed to “close the revolving door that lets lobbyists come into government freely and lets them use their time in public service as a way to promote their own interests over the interests of the American people when they leave.”
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