Grocery Mfgers of Am GMA

surprisingly evil-ish

see GMA2 / FOOD

includes National Grocers Association, who seem to be up to a surprising degree of no good, all i mean (eg beef origin label)

:{see also agribiz, GMO

}:

==

intercept

...Sense About Science does not always disclose when its sources on controversial matters are scientists with ties to the industries under examination.And the group is known to take positions that buck scientific consensus or dismiss emerging evidence of harm. When journalists rightly ask who sponsors research into the risks of, say, asbestos, or synthetic chemicals, they’d be well advised to question the evidence Sense About Science presents in these debates as well.

iN 2002, DICK TAVERNE, an English politician and business consultant, founded Sense About Science “to expose bogus science,” he explains in his memoir, “Against the Tide.” Through his consulting work, Taverne had cultivated relationships with energy, communications, food, and pharmaceutical companies. Sense About Science’s early sponsors included some of Taverne’s former clients and companies in which he owned stock.

Taverne must have known the power of media narratives about science firsthand, because he had experience with the tobacco industry, which labored mightily to change the conversation about its product in the face of evidence that cigarettes were lethal. According to internal documents released in litigation by cigarette manufacturers, Taverne’s consulting company, PRIMA Europe, helped British American Tobacco improve relations with its investors and beat European regulations on cigarettes in the 1990s. Taverne himself worked on the investors project: In an undated memo, PRIMA assured the tobacco company that “the work would be done personally by Dick Taverne,” because he was well placed to interview industry opinion leaders and “would seek to ensure that industry’s needs are foremost in people’s minds.” During the same decade, Taverne sat on the board of the British branch of the powerhouse public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, which claimed Philip Morris as a client. The idea for a “sound science” group, made up of a network of scientists who would speak out against regulations that industrial spokespeople lacked the credibility to challenge, was a pitch Burson-Marsteller made to Philip Morris in a 1994 memorandum.

It’s not hard to identify traces of this approach in Taverne’s later work. Writing in his 2005 book, “The March of Unreason,” Taverne complained that “eco-fundamentalists” and fearmongers had fomented a backlash against science and technology, which had in turn produced a “multiplication of health and safety regulations.” That yearBritish Petroleum donated 15,000 pounds to Sense About Science, and Taverne argued in the House of Lords that as much as 80 percent of global warming might be attributable to solar activity, even though that theory had been discredited two years earlier. Taverne, who stepped down as chairman of Sense About Science in 2012, did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.

Sense About Science established an American affiliate in 2014, under the direction of a Brooklyn-based journalist named Trevor Butterworth. In financial documents, Sense About Science claims Sense About Science USA as a sister organization “with close ties and similar aims.” High-profile scientific publishers, as well as such reputable institutions as the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and the Columbia Journalism Review, have promoted Butterworth’s services to scientists and journalists.

From 2003 to 2014, Butterworth contributed to the website of an organization called STATS, a nonprofit that promoted statistical literacy. STATS had its own connections to the tobacco industry, in this case through founder Robert Lichter,a conservative political scientist and now a communications professor at George Mason University. Lichter also co-founded and continues to run the Center for Media and Public Affairs, which Philip Morris hired in 1994 to survey news reports about tobacco as part of its strategy, outlined in a memo from March of that year, to counter “personal and public bias” in stories about cigarettes’ health risks.

[pix “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming” by Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, S. Fred Singer.

Photo: Heartland Institute

Lichter, like Sense About Science’s Tracey Brown, has argued that industry money doesn’t necessarily taint the science it supports. In 2003, a congressional report charged the George W. Bush administration with stacking a government committee on childhood lead poisoning with industry scientists. Lichter appeared as an analyst on CNN and said, “Studies have found that scientists who have consulted for industry do not differ in their assessment of risks, of health risks, from scientists who have not consulted for industry.” Lichter did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment or citations to these studies.

Before STATS was dissolved in 2014, and its web site adopted by Sense About Science USA, it received regular grants from free-market sources. Between 1998 and 2014, STATS received $4.5 million, 81 percent of its donations, from the Searle Freedom Trust, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, Donors Trust (a fund largely sustained by Charles Koch), and other right-wing foundations. Searle, which describes its mission as promoting “economic liberties,” gave STATS $959,000 between 2010 and 2014. Anti-regulatory foundations, including these, spent over half a billion dollars between 2003 and 2010 to “manipulate and mislead the public over the nature of climate science and the threat posed by climate change,” according to a 2013 study by Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle.

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wITH THESE ROOTS, Sense About Science should not surprise anyone when it promotes anti-regulatory voices on issues like asbestos. In a 2006 brochure called “Science for Celebrities” and purporting to correct misperceptions about synthetic chemicals, Sense About Science offers John Hoskins, a toxicologist formerly of the Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit at the University of Leicester. Under the rubric “Toxic effects depend on dose,” Hoskins reassures us: “Away from the high doses of occupational exposure a whole host of unwanted chemicals finds their way into our bodies. Most leave quickly but some stay: asbestos and silica in our lungs, dioxins in our blood. Do they matter? No!”

More than two decades ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the International Agency for Research on Cancer declared asbestos a proven human carcinogen. Since then, as countries continue to mine asbestos, industry groups have argued that certain varieties, including chrysotile and crocidolite, are not so toxic. In response, several groups, including the Collegium Ramazzini, an international body of occupational and environmental health experts, have issued consensus statements warning that no form of asbestos is safe at any dose. In calling for a universal ban on all forms of asbestos in 2010, the Collegium Ramazzini observed that the asbestos industry’s attacks on evidence that “irrefutably” links its product to cancer “closely resemble those used by the tobacco industry.”

Brown maintains that Sense About Science has not disagreed with the scientific consensus on asbestos, and she notes that dose and type of exposure are the issue. But when I asked Hoskins why his position differed from the scientific consensus, he shrugged over email, “Once upon a time the consensus was that the earth is flat.” Hoskins further replied, “Unfortunately, to say that within a population low-level exposure of many chemicals must be dangerous is not borne out by reality, much to the chagrin of those who live in the fantasy world of ‘chemical-free.’ ”

Hoskins’s résumé states that he has represented the Chrysotile Institute in “discussion with the governments of several countries.” But he did not disclose this relationship to the Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Public Health journal when he co-authored two scientific papers disputing claims that chrysotile or crocidolite caused a rare cancer in exposed populations. When his industry ties came to light, the journal issued errata for both papers to disclose this competing interest. (Hoskins denies any conflict of interest, insisting that his role in authoring the papers was confined to providing information the other authors requested. Yet all but one of the other authors had also failed to disclose their asbestos interests, which now appear in the errata.)

Soon after the first paper appeared, eight public health researchers wrote a letter to the editors of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Public Health expressing outrage that the journal would publish a paper with “gross mistakes” and “no scientific content.” A group that included many of the letter’s signatories asked the journal to consider retracting the second paper, citing “seriously misleading information.” But the journal’s editors declined to retract the papers, which remain in the technical literature, casting doubt on the scientific consensus that all forms of asbestos are hazardous to human health.

IT’S HARD TO make a case for the safety of a substance like asbestos, which most people know causes cancer. Other commercial products are easier to defend, not because they are less hazardous, but because consumers are not as familiar with the evidence questioning their safety and utility. Scientists have known since 1997 that flame retardants, for example, can cause cancer. These brominated and chlorinated chemicals are used in a wide range of consumer products, including nursing pads and car seats. For more than three decades, studies in animals and humans have linked them to cancer, developmental delays, and other serious health problems. By 2010, the evidence was so persuasive that nearly 150 scientists from 22 countries signed a statement warning that flame retardants “are a concern for persistence, bioaccumulation, long-range transport, and toxicity.” Flame retardants’ fire safety benefit not only remains unproven, the scientists asserted, but the chemicals form highly toxic byproducts when burned.

Sense About Science has long relied on dubious numbers to insist on the efficacy of these chemicals. In 2006 it published a pamphlet on “misconceptions about chemicals” in which it claimed that British laws requiring flame retardants in furniture had reduced fire deaths by 20 percent, citing a 2000 European Commission report called “Flame Retardants.” A European Commission press officer told me she knows of no such report. “The reference to the 20 percent reduction in fire deaths is repeatedly quoted in papers and publications from flame retardant industries and associations, and they always refer to ‘Flame Retardants, DG Environment Video 2000,’ which we cannot find.” On the contrary, she told me, it is simply “not possible to correlate fire deaths to non-flammability requirements.”

Who did make the claim? Flame retardant industry trade groups, including the European Flame Retardant Association and the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum, run by Philip Morris’s longtime PR firm Burson-Marsteller. The U.S.-based Citizens for Fire Safety also repeated the claim until it disbanded, following revelations in 2012 that leading flame retardant producers ran the organization, not the grassroots group of “staff and volunteers committed to national fire safety” its literature asserted.

The same year, Sense About Science again called on John Hoskins, identified as an independent toxicologist, this time to fact-check a study that found potentially carcinogenic flame retardants in sofas. In his response, Hoskins wrote: “The bottom line is that danger of fire is many, many times greater than any imagined danger from chemicals used to prevent it.”

“Everything I wrote about flame retardants was taken from published works,” Hoskins told me. “Reviewers at the time found nothing to criticize and I have had no comment from the thousands of people who must have read the pieces.”

Sense About Science reprinted its guide on chemicals in 2014. “The trade-off between fire risk and toxicology is changing, and we represented that newer precautionary thinking in our most recent publications,” Brown, the group’s director, told The Intercept in an email. The new guide acknowledged “allegations of side effects” from flame retardants, including persistence in the environment and toxicity to humans and animals. But it also retained the unsupported claim that regulations requiring the chemicals saved lives. The guide even retained the text that countered concerns about traces of flame retardants found in children’s bodies by asserting that because the chemicals protected children from death or injury from fire, “To fail to expose them to such chemicals could be regarded as negligent.”

Scientists who reviewed human studies had come to a different conclusion the year before. They warned that although such links were impossible to prove conclusively, the evidence suggested that children’s exposure to flame retardants could have serious health consequences, including neurobehavioral and developmental problems. The scientists called for regulatory oversight.

:{

}:OF ALL THE controversial chemicals in the public eye, the one Trevor Butterworth, Sense About Science USA’s director, has most fervently defended is bisphenol A, a**compound used to make plastics**. BPA is found in hard plastics, the lining of canned drinks and foods, thermal receipts, and other consumer and industrial products, including cigarette filters. Manufacturers produce billions of pounds of BPA each year. Its market value is projected to reach $20 billion by 2020. And numerous studies and scientific consensus statements have linked BPA, which can interfere with hormone signaling, to developmental and reproductive disorders.

Leading reproductive biologists released a consensus statement in 2007 warning that “the wide range of adverse effects of low doses of BPA in laboratory animals exposed both during development and in adulthood is a great cause for concern with regard to the potential for similar adverse effects in humans.”

Two years later, while working for STATS, Butterworth published a 27,000-word investigation sharply questioning the validity of the scientific studies and news reports about BPA’s health effects. Butterworth’s central claim was that a handful of scientists, journalists, and environmental activist groups had ignored good science in a crusade to paint BPA as “the biological equivalent of global warming.” He singled out a widely acclaimed special report by Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporters Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger called “Chemical Fallout.” These reporters, he claimed, relied on flawed studies by independent researchers and unfairly dismissed the industry-funded studies that found no harm. But the independent studies were not, in fact, flawed. Regulators just didn’t consider them useful, because, like many such academic studies, they didn’t measure toxicity but tested hypotheses about how BPA could alter living systems.

BPA trade groups have long insisted that the substance is metabolized too quickly to cause harm. Butterworth cites a 2009 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study that measured BPA concentrations in newborns to make the same case. The study, he argues, “provides important evidence that infants — even those born prematurely — are able to detoxify BPA in the same way as adults.”

The CDC study he cited was designed to gauge exposure, not metabolism. BPA has been detected in the urine of nearly every American tested. Premature babies’ fragile systems make them particularly vulnerable to environmental contaminants.The researchers suspected that the use of plastic medical devices in neonatal intensive care units might expose premature infants to higher than average levels of BPA. And that’s exactly what they found: Average BPA concentrations in hospitalized premature babies were about 10 times higher than those measured in adults. The authors noted that although premature babies appear to have some ability to metabolize BPA, their detoxification pathways “are not expected to be functional at adult rates until months after birth.”

Butterworth ended his critique of what he called “the BPA is dangerous thesis” by suggesting that banning the chemical could result in greater harm: “What if some parents who turned to glass bottles for fear of … ‘leaching’ BPA drop and break them, causing injury to their babies?”

Butterworth’s arguments have reverberated across an echo chamber of free-market organizations, including Philip Morris’s product defense law firm, Koch-funded think tanks, chemical and food-packaging industry trade groups in Europe and the U.S., and an ostensibly neutral environmental health research foundation run by a chemical industry PR firm.

Reached by email for comment, Butterworth did not account for his questionable characterization of the CDC study. He said that his critique relied on the work of scientists from regulatory agencies involved in risk assessment, and that these scientists had criticized smaller studies that claimed adverse effects. He maintained that studies assessing the effects of low doses of BPA are inconsistent and unlikely to capture significant results because of methodological and statistical problems.

The year after Butterworth’s 2009 investigation, the anti-regulatory Donors Trust awarded STATS $86,000 for its “research efforts,” and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which belongs to the BPA Joint Trade Association, gave Lichter’s Center for Media and Public Affairs $10,000 for “research support.” Butterworth continued to defend BPA in news outlets and in 2013 made his case on a blog for Coca-Cola, another BPA Joint Trade Association member.

That year Coca-Cola gave more than $30,000 to Butterworth’s future partner, Sense About Science, which hosted a BPA forum the next year. (Since then, Sense About Science has not received corporate donations, which “represented less than 3 percent of our income,” Brown wrote in an email.) In the forum, a Q&A on social media,Sense About Science put forward a representative of the British Plastics Federation and a toxicologist whose longstanding ties to the chemical industry the organization did not disclose. Participants were assured that BPA posed no risk to human health. Several plastic industry trade sites praised the event. One welcomed Sense About Science’s efforts, reporting that “plastic packaging was stoutly defended.”

THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY pioneered tactics to fight regulations by manufacturing doubt about the scientific consensus that cigarettes kill. So it should be no surprise to encounter a strategy among defenders of the e-cigarette that also centers around doubt. ...

http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/fat-political-issue

There are now more than 700 million obese people worldwide, 108 million of them children, reported the New York Times recently. In Brazil, food giant Nestle sends vendors door to door hawking its high-calorie junk food and giving customers a full month to pay for their purchases. Such a deal. Nestle calls the junk food hawkers, who are themselves obese, "micro-entrepreneurs." Right.

Big Food is increasing targeting poor countries as "emerging markets" to please shareholders, supplanting their indigenous diets with fast food, packaged goods and soft drinks. In addition to creating obesity, diabetes, heart disease and chronic illnesses, the junk food supplants subsistence agriculture crops with sugar cane and GMO corn and soybeans. Even philanthropic groups like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have drunk Big Food's Kool-aid about GMOs "feeding the world." Actually, GMOs drench the fields of poor communities with toxic pesticides and pollute their waters.

Nestle's exploitation of the poor goes back more than 40 years when it convinced poor mothers to reject their own breast milk––the one thing poor mothers actually have to give their babies–– in favor of its infant formula. Activist groups say babies die in poor areas of Asia, Africa and Latin America because their mothers bottle-feed them with Western-style infant milk.

In Brazil, meat giant JBS and Coca-Cola have donated millions to congressional campaigns and McDonald’s $561,000, effectively burying dialogue about the health of junk food and its role in obesity. A few years ago, Reuters reported that the World Health Organization's Pan American Health Organization takes hundreds of thousands of dollars and "obesity" advice from junk food and soft drink companies. No wonder the advice stresses "exercise" and gives junk food ubiquity and its marketing to children and a pass.

Big Food also keeps America fat. A 2014 movie by Katie Couric called "Fed Up" exposed how the U.S. government admonishes people to eat right, while pushing the foods that make them fat, and how school lunchrooms have been bought by Big Food.

The film reveals how the egg, sugar and other Big Food industries revised guidelines generated from the 1977 McGovern Report that recommended people eat less foods high in fat and sugar to favor them and overruled Sen. McGovern.

In 2006, a similar Big Food triumph occurred. Faced with the United Nation’s WHO food recommendations that were similar to the McGovern Report, then Secretary ofHealth and Human Services (HHS) Tommy G. Thompson actually flew to Geneva to threaten WHO that if the guidelines stood, the U.S. would withdraw its WHO financial support. Yes––U.S Ag was––and is––more important than world health.

In July, the New York Times revealed the devastating toll that junk food, obesity and diabetes have on poor people in Appalachia most of whom have minimal or no health care. People in Appalachia are sicker than in Central America, said Dr. Joseph Smiddy, a health volunteer in Virginia. “In Central America, they’re eating beans and rice and walking everywhere. They’re not drinking Mountain Dew and eating candy. They’re not having an epidemic of obesity and diabetes.” At least not until Nestle gets there.

In Chicago, there is a bitter fight over a recently instituted penny-per-ounce tax on sweetened beverages. The beverage industry has spent more than $1.4 million on television ads trying to reverse the decision and cast the desire to drink high-calorie, obesity-, diabetes- and dental cavity-producing soft drinks as "consumer choice."  Poor communities, in Chicago and in the world, are the ones most hurt by soft drinks and the ones the beverage industry is now most desperately trying to enlist in the fight against the tax.

Someone on a typical 2,000-calorie-a-day diet should derive only 200 calories a day from sugar—equal to one 16-ounce soda. Yet most Americans consume at least twice the recommended amount and few people who have the soda “habit” only drink one soft drink a day.

Once upon a time, “sugar” meant sugar from sugar cane or sugar beets. But since 1980, soft drink producers have favored high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and they have been followed by most major food producers and processors. Trade restrictions in other countries to protect local sugar production made sugar more expensive to use even as U.S. farmers were growing copious amounts of corn because of farm subsidies. HFCS is also cheaper to produce, store and ship.

While HFCS is linked to obesity, diabetes, liver damage, memory problems and even possible mercury contamination, artificial sweeteners are not clearly better. An increase in the use of aspartame, found in Diet Coke, and sucralose, found in Pepsi One, actually correlated with a rise in the number of people who are obese, reported the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.

Whether in Brazil or Chicago, Big Food is succeeding in adding "poor health" to the plight of poor people.

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Special Report: How Washington went soft on childhood obesity

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Related Video

Food Fight: How the food industry outsmarted Washington - Reuters Investigates

Thu, Apr 26 2012

Related Interactive

Food industry lobbying: Money on the menu

By Duff Wilson and Janet Roberts

Washington, D.C. | Fri Apr 27, 20129:03am EDT

(Reuters) - In the political arena, one side is winning the war on child obesity.

The side with the fattest wallets.

After aggressive lobbying, Congress declared pizza a vegetable to protect it from a nutritional overhaul of the school lunch program this year. The White House kept silent last year as Congress killed a plan by four federal agencies to reduce sugar, salt and fat in food marketed to children.

And during the past two years, each of the 24 states and five cities that considered "soda taxes" to discourage consumption of sugary drinks has seen the efforts dropped or defeated.

At every level of government, the food and beverage industries won fight after fight during the last decade. They have never lost a significant political battle in the United States despite mounting scientific evidence of the role of unhealthy food and children's marketing in obesity.

Lobbying records analyzed by Reuters reveal that the industries more than doubled their spending in Washington during the past three years. In the process, they largely dominated policymaking -- pledging voluntary action while defeating government proposals aimed at changing the nation's diet, dozens of interviews show.

In contrast, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, widely regarded as the lead lobbying force for healthier food, spent about $70,000 lobbying last year -- roughly what those opposing the stricter guidelines spent every 13 hours, the Reuters analysis showed.

Industry critics also contend that the White House all but abandoned a multi-agency effort that recommended healthier food be marketed to children, even after First Lady Michelle Obama told a grocery trade group two years ago that food manufacturers needed to "step it up" to protect children.

"I'm upset with the White House," said Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Health Committee. "They went wobbly in the knees. When it comes to kids' health, they shouldn't go wobbly in the knees."

The White House disputed the characterization. Sam Kass, an assistant chef there and senior policy adviser on food initiatives, said in a statement: "We are incredibly proud of the commitments that many food companies have made, and are continuing to work with others to advocate for even more change to make sure our children are getting the healthy, nutritious food they need."

The political battles over what children eat and drink are crucial to the nation's health, experts say, because the tripling in childhood obesity in the last three decades foretells diabetes, heart disease and other illness in decades to come. America is one of the fattest nations on earth, and the Institute of Medicine, in a 2006 report requested by Congress, said junk food marketing contributes to an epidemic of childhood obesity that continues to rise. The institute is the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences.

SHORTER LIFESPAN?

Health experts and Harkin say the food industry has employed some of the same tactics as Big Tobacco in its efforts to fight stricter regulations -- chief among them the argument that the industry should regulate itself.

Although no major legislative action on childhood obesity is pending during this election year, the public debate is expected to resume next month. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will hold a conference in Washington from May 7-9 called "Weight of the Nation." It will include an Institute of Medicine update and the premiere of an HBO documentary series of the same name. Health advocates also plan a "Sugary Drinks Summit" in Washington from June 7-8.

"We haven't reversed the epidemic," Dr. William H. Dietz, director of the division of nutrition, physical activity and obesity at the CDC, said in an interview. "This may be the first generation of children that has a lower life span than their parents."

Food and beverage manufacturers and advertisers say they aren't to blame for obesity. Indeed, they say they are part of the solution.

The American Beverage Association says its members have cut 88 percent of the calories shipped to schools since 2004 by offering less sugary drinks and emphasizing water, low-fat milk and juice in elementary and middle schools. The drinks now list calories on the front of labels.

Sixteen major companies with about 75 percent of the food ads on TV aimed at children under 12 are regulating themselves under the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative of the Better Business Bureau. They are limiting ads for certain foods and adopting nutrition standards.

"It's made a big difference," said Elaine D. Kolish, the initiative director and a former head of enforcement at the Federal Trade Commission. More than 100 products have been changed or created to cut salt, fat, sugar or calories, she said. Tougher self-regulation is promised by 2014.

At the same time, Kolish said, there is no proof of "a causal effect between food advertising and obesity."

The Institute of Medicine had found strong evidence that TV watching was associated with child obesity. But researchers have found no proof that obesity is directly caused by ads for sweets or junk food.

Armed with those arguments and a bulging political war chest, the $1.5 trillion food and beverage industry has defeated soda taxes and marketing restrictions in cities and states across the nation, mounting referendums to overturn the taxes in the two states that passed them and persuading 16 states to prohibit lawsuits over fatty foods.

Reuters analyzed spending reported by more than 50 food and beverage groups that lobbied against the federal effort last year to write tougher -- but still voluntary -- nutritional standards for foods marketed to children.

The groups have spent more than $175 million lobbying since President Barack Obama took office in 2009 -- more than double the $83 million spent in the previous three years, during the Bush Administration.

The totals do not include broader lobbying efforts by theChamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and media and advertising interests that also opposed the federal plan. Those groups lobby on other issues, and lobbying disclosure reports do not specify how much they spent targeting the food marketing proposal. The Reuters analysis was based on records from the Federal Election Commission, the Secretary of the Senate and the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.

In a stark example of lobbying muscle, PepsiCo Inc, Coca-Cola Co, bottlers and the American Beverage Association spent more than $40 million lobbying in 2009 when Congress was considering a soda tax. That was more than eight times the $4.8 million they had spent the previous year, the analysis showed. After the proposal died, the groups cut spending to $24 million in 2010 and $10 million in 2011.

In recent interviews, lobbyists, lawmakers, policy leaders and industry insiders described the power of money in politics and the appeal of self-regulation to explain how they have been so successful countering legislation backed by public health interests that they portrayed as overreaching.

The public health advocates "hit a nerve," said Marshall Matz, a Washington lawyer and industry lobbyist who advised the 2008 Obama campaign on agricultural issues. "There's a bipartisan feeling you can tell someone to eat less fat, consume more fiber, more fruits and vegetables and less sugar. But if you start naming foods, you cross the line."

WHITE HOUSE WITHDRAWAL

The effort to defeat the tougher food standards heated up late last spring and summer, when lobbyists said they went on high alert.

On July 12, White House visitor logs show a who's who of food company chief executives and lobbyists visited the White House. The group met with Valerie Jarrett, Obama's senior adviser, and Melody Barnes, then director of the president's Domestic Policy Council. Among the group at the meeting: CEOs of Nestle USA, Kellogg, General Mills, and top executives at Walt Disney, Time Warner, and Viacom, owner of the Nickelodeon children's channel -- companies with some of the biggest financial stakes in marketing to children. Those companies have a combined market value of more than $350 billion.

Two people who attended -- lobbyist Scott Faber of the Grocery Manufacturers Association and Kolish of the Better Business Bureau -- said the group told the White House that it opposed government action and favored voluntary initiatives. Other participants and the White House have declined to describe the meeting or did not respond to requests for comment.

Advocates for tougher standards tried to counter the lobbying surge, calling, emailing and visiting the White House scores of times last year.

Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, recalled an October 31 White House visit that included 11 other representatives of nonprofit groups who supported the food standards. The group met with Barnes, White House visitor logs show. Among the advocates there that day: the American Heart Association and Children Now.

The effort by the advocacy groups had little effect.

In the weeks after the meetings, proponents of tougher standards said, neither the president nor the First Lady spoke out for the work on healthy food guidelines that had been drafted by the administration's own agencies. And industry representatives said their White House lobbying -- which also included calls, letters and visits to the White House -- proved successful on a hot political issue.

Wootan concedes as much. "There was so much industry pushback that it led to a lot of foot-dragging," she said. "The president and White House were as much to blame as House Republicans."

Meanwhile, Michelle Obama's childhood-obesity campaign pivoted from criticizing foodmakers toward promoting exercise.

"We need you all to step it up," she told the Grocery Manufacturers Association in a March 2010 speech. "We need you not just to tweak around the edges but to entirely rethink the products that you're offering, the information that you provide about these products and how you market those products to our children."

By last November, Mrs. Obama was praising the manufacturers for product improvements -- "a fundamental shift in the Let's Move campaign," according to the widely cited blog Obama Foodorama. Instead, the First Lady (with free advertising from broadcasters) emphasized exercise -- a favored cause of companies that lobbied against stricter food guidelines.

Nicholas W. Papas, a spokesman for the White House, disputed the notion that it had failed to champion the work of its own agencies. "The Obama Administration consistently supported the Interagency Working Group and we were disappointed when Congress granted the food industry's requests and placed new demands on the working group," he said in a statement.

But Papas could not point to any specific example of the president or First Lady voicing support for the working group report. Lobbyists on both sides of the issue and two key members of Congress said the administration stood back at crucial junctures, allowing Congress time to thwart the effort.

Kelly D. Brownell, a Yale professor and director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, said he believes the First Lady has become too friendly with industry even as she has been a passionate, effective advocate for healthier food and exercise. He pointed to the possible influence of a 2010 Supreme Court decision, criticized by the president, that removed limits on corporate and union campaign spending.

"It does seem that there's been a shift in priorities in the Let's Move campaign in an election year," Brownell said. "And with the Citizens United case and the companies being able to lobby almost without limit, it's not surprising that the White House is more friendly toward the industry."

Wootan had a similar view: "I'd focus more on exercise, too, if my husband was up for re-election."

The First Lady's office declined to respond publicly to questions about its support for the agencies' proposed standards for foods marketed to children, or charges that Let's Move had changed focus. Kass, the Let's Move policy adviser, responded to similar criticism last year from New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle by saying the emphasis on exercise added to previous work on nutrition and was not a pullback from topics that the industry opposes.

BIG TOBACCO'S PLAYBOOK

Although food and beverage companies say they are making dramatic strides in self-regulation, their critics say they are moving too slowly and trying to influence public opinion by using some of the same approaches that tobacco companies used to defend their products.

Kraft Foods, the nation's largest food company, was owned by Philip Morris, the nation's largest tobacco company, from 1988-2007. Philip Morris makes Marlboro cigarettes.

Brownell and Kenneth E. Warner, a professor and former dean of the University of Michigan School of Public Health, have written papers comparing Big Food to Big Tobacco.

Both industries dispute links between their products and ill health, Brownell said -- tobacco companies claiming cigarettes don't cause cancer and food companies saying there is no proof that sugar causes obesity. Both have rewritten product labels without making major changes, he said. And both emphasize self-regulation -- to Brownell, an effort to preempt government standards.

"I can't think of a single thing the food industry is doing that the tobacco industry hasn't done," Brownell said.

Both industries also have relied on marketing to kids, he said, and both use what Brownell called "front groups" with consumer-oriented names that would not show their industry connections.

The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit group led by Washington lawyer and public relations executive Rick Berman. Formerly known as Guest Choice Network, it was founded in 1995 with a $600,000 pledge from tobacco giant Philip Morris. Today, the center attacks "food radicals" and runs websites including obesitymyths.com. The group says it is funded by food and restaurant companies but declines to name specific benefactors.

A group called Americans Against Food Taxes, calling itself a "coalition of concerned citizens," was formed in 2007 and has been financed by sugary beverage makers to fight soda taxes. It bought a 30-second ad during the 2011 Super Bowl.

Spokesmen for the food and beverage industries say comparing their tactics to tobacco's is unfair.

"Food processing is not an evil thing," said Derek Yach, PepsiCo's senior vice president of global health and agricultural policy and a former World Health Organization official who was well-known as an adversary of sugar and tobacco interests. He was hired by Pepsi, which also owns snack-food maker Frito-Lay, five years ago.

"I might not agree with a lot of things we do, but are we on a track where we're struggling to get to the right place? Absolutely," Yach said. The industry is well-intentioned, he said, focused on improving products and transparent in its fight against higher taxes and marketing restrictions.

CANNING THE SODA TAX

Beverage companies showed their political clout in 2009 when they faced a proposed penny-an-ounce tax on sugary drinks in a Congress eager to raise money to pay for obesity-related health care costs. The soda tax died in committee.

Other plans to tax soda have fizzled from coast to coast in the past two years. Twenty-four states and five cities considered them, according to the beverage association. None passed except in Washington state, where legislators approved a 2-cent-a-can soda tax on the last day of the 2010 session.

Within a month, a trade group for Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Dr. Pepper Snapple mounted a referendum campaign. It spent $16 million, a state record for an initiative effort, to gather signatures and flood the airwaves. The public voted 60 percent against the tax.

The pro-tax group, outspent $37-to-$1, grumbled that the soda group misled voters with TV ads that the Seattle Times concluded were "mostly false" because they suggested a wide range of grocery items also would be taxed. The beverage industry mounted a similar $3.5 million campaign that knocked out a soda tax in Maine in 2008.

When Governor David A. Paterson of New York proposed an 18 percent tax on sweetened drinks in 2009, he said he wanted to raise money to treat obesity-related disease. Soda makers spent $12.8 million lobbying and advertising against it, and PepsiCo said the tax could affect its decision on whether to move more than 1,000 bottling jobs to Connecticut. The governor withdrew the proposal, and the company decided to keep its headquarters in New York.

"We got smashed," Paterson said in an interview. Labor unions had joined the attack because they worried about losing the Pepsi jobs, he added, comparing the soda lobby to a Mack truck. Paterson also said soda makers "bought off" lawmakers with donations and advertising even in districts where 40 percent of minority children were overweight or obese.

"We ran into the machine the way anti-smoking activists did in the early '60s," he said. "It's not a fight you're going to win right away."

Pepsi spokeswoman Gina Anderson said the proposed soda tax was "a serious concern and consideration" in the company's siting plans before the proposal died. The company decided last year to renew its lease through 2015.

Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, also compared the industry tactics with those of alcohol, tobacco and nuclear power.

"It's all the same playbook, isn't it?" he said. "You lobby. You make campaign contributions. You buy advertising. You threaten to move your plant. You use your workers as lobbyists."

The beverage association rejects the analogy. Its website says, "If anyone is using the ‘tobacco playbook' in their tactics, it is some of these activists." The group pointed to two recent examples, both involving the New York City Department of Health and both first reported by The New York Times.

In one, an email showed a city official asking, "What can we get away with?" in anti-soda advertising. In the other, a photo was altered on a subway poster that warned of the risks of diabetes from sugary soda. It portrayed an overweight man as an amputee. His right leg had been photographically removed. The city health department declined to comment further on these incidents.

Christopher Gindlesperger, a spokesman for the beverage association, explained the group's success in staving off soda taxes this way: "People feel very confident they can decide what to eat or drink without government help."

SEMPER FRIES

Public health officials thought the least nutritional items would drop off the government's $10.5 billion school lunch program last year when they announced the first menu overhaul in 15 years. White bread: gone. Milk: low or no fat only. Fruits and vegetables: doubled. Portions: smaller.

Then Congress got involved -- at the behest of potato and pizza companies -- to preserve French fries as a menu staple and to declare pizza, with its tomato sauce, to be a vegetable.

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) was one champion of the pizza rollback.Minnesota is home to Schwan Food Co, a private company with nearly $3 billion in sales and 70 percent of the school frozen pizza market. Klobuchar, who is running for re-election this year, wrote a letter last June to the Department of Agriculture. One sentence in it was identical to that in a Schwan official's later testimony before a Senate committee. The similarity was first reported by Minnesota Public Radio.

Both documents contained this statement: "By changing the crediting, many tomato-based sauces and salsa-type applications would no longer be factored into the weekly requirements for vegetables."

Klobuchar's spokesman, Linden Zakula, said he could not explain how the same language was used in the senator's letter because the aide who drafted it had left. He said Schwan was among many constituents to contact the office. Schwan declined to comment.

In fighting the menu change, the American Frozen Food Institute spent $543,000 lobbying last year, up from $334,000 in 2010; Schwan spent $50,000, and ConAgra Foods Inc spent $400,000. The companies also financed a group called the Coalition for Sustainable School Meal Programs.

House Republicans, citing "overly burdensome and costly regulations," added language to a budget bill in November to keep French fries and frozen pizza on the school lunch menu. The measure took effect earlier this year.

FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECTION

James H. Davidson believes in the First Amendment. The former college newspaper editor turned lawyer turned Senate aide is now one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington.

For two decades, Davidson has been the point man for the advertising industry in free speech issues. More recently his clients have also included food and beverage companies in alliance with advertisers. They have joined forces to lead the fight against the proposed government guidelines on sugar, salt and fat in food marketed to 2- to 17-year-olds.

Davidson also says there is no proof that food marketing causes obesity, and without it, there is no legal basis for restricting the ads.

"The First Amendment protects this type of speech," he said.

Other lobbyists pointed to the role of potentially unlimited political donations in explaining how industry has been able to so thoroughly defeat the proposed salt, sugar and fat guidelines.

In 2009, Congress passed a measure proposed by Harkin and Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) to ask the FTC and three other agencies -- the CDC, the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration -- to draft voluntary nutrition standards for children's food marketing. The two senators were motivated by studies showing that children develop lifelong preferences from watching ads that target them with saltier, sweeter foods than adults.

"We are calling on the food industry to tackle this threat and boldly reinvent the food marketplace," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said at a hearing in December 2009. As for kids' marketing, he noted, not only Congress but some companies wanted government guidance. "We will have such a uniform framework in place, we expect, by this summer," Leibowitz said.

Summer came and went. Brownback left the Senate at the end of 2010. When the draft guidelines were finally published in April 2011 -- to praise from health groups -- business interests say they were shocked by the low sugar and salt suggestions.

"These are voluntary guidelines," Harkin said. "What's the industry so afraid of?" The companies said the recommendations could become requirements and kill marketing of 88 of the 100 most popular food products, including Cheerios, whole wheat bread and yogurt.

The industry mobilized. Food and media companies hired Anita Dunn, former White House communications chief under Obama, to run media strategy. The industry created a group called the Sensible Food Policy Coalition. And it paid for a report that said the restrictions would result in 75,000 lost jobs and $28.6 billion in lost revenue to companies -- estimates based on the supposition that the guidelines would cut one in five food ads.

Not true, government officials and public health advocates said, arguing that industry had five years to improve the products. A review of the report by three marketing professors for the website politifact.com and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution termed its findings "false."

Nonetheless the report was widely circulated in Washington and repeatedly cited in letters to the administration signed by about 200 members of Congress from both parties. As the effort gained momentum, congressional staff members and lobbyists described calls and visits from chief executive officers of companies.

The industry's campaign, lobbyists say, focused on Representative Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) and Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who chaired the appropriations subcommittee in each chamber that funded the FTC.

Emerson knew Davidson, who had attended college in Missouri and who had worked for Senator Stuart Symington (D-Mo.). In an interview, Emerson said she opposed the food guidelines because they would inevitably become mandatory. She said she learned how that could hurt business while working for the National Restaurant Association in the early 1990s. "I felt very passionately about anything that's voluntary," she said.

Last December, Emerson wrote the budget bill provision that stopped the guidelines, and she insisted on keeping the language as the bill moved through a House-Senate conference committee. It was a 55-word sentence in a 130-page omnibus budget bill, requiring the agencies to do a cost-benefit analysis of their recommendations before finishing the report. The agencies said such a requirement was unprecedented for a voluntary guideline and would prove far too expensive.

In the Senate, a lobbyist involved with the issue told Reuters, Durbin simply needed to stay quiet so as not to make it a partisan issue and eventually nudge Harkin into accepting Emerson's House provision. A Durbin spokesman, Max Gleischman, said the senator agreed to the House language because the industry was moving to regulate itself.

Durbin's home state of Illinois is home to Kraft. Its political action committee has been a regular contributor to his campaign committee, donating $14,000 since 2007.

"There was an outcry across the spectrum of the business community," said Dan Jaffe, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers. The proposal was too extreme, Jaffe said, and in the end, "It fell of its own weight."

Said Jeff McIntyre, policy director for the advocacy group Children Now: "We just got beat. Money wins."

Harkin also pointed to the power of corporate money. "They've scared some Democrats," he said in an interview. "It just shows you how heavy the lobbying is on the part of the industry."

Food and beverage groups targeting the proposed marketing restrictions had given Harkin's campaign more than $75,000 from 2007 through 2009. In 2010, after he helped initiate the push for food marketing restrictions, they contributed nothing. They gave him only $3,000 in 2011.

Comparing the last three years of the Bush administration to the first three years of Obama's, total campaign contributions from the more than 50 food and beverage groups and companies analyzed by Reuters were about the same. But during the Obama administration, the contributions increased substantially to some candidates who played key roles in warding off regulation.

Klobuchar, whose state is home to a number of large food companies, benefitted most. Her campaign received more than $160,000 in donations from 19 food and beverage groups during the last three years, double what they had given her in the three years prior. Her spokesman said there is no link between the donations and policy.

Food companies tripled their contributions to Emerson, who received more than $88,000 from the groups from 2009 through 2011. She received $39,000 in 2010 alone as she was poised to become chair of a key House appropriations subcommittee.

Emerson said most Republicans probably got more contributions when they became the House majority. However, the Reuters analysis shows the food and beverage groups strongly favored Republicans over Democrats, both before and after the 2010 election. On average over the last six years, they gave GOP political committees $2 for every $1 donated to Democrats.

==

However many of these important measures are in trouble in the U.S. California’s landmark legislation is now officially on hold,

gma padilla

http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-california-plastic-bag-ban-20150223-story.html

with a referendum to repeal the ban added to the ballot for November 2016. Florida and Arizona have both already passed bills making the banning ofplastic bags illegal. Powerful and large special interest lobbying groups are behind these “ban bans” as well as litigation aimed at already existing bans. Outside interests are funding these efforts to dissuade and dismantle local level legislation. Primary among them is the ProgressiveBag Affiliates, funded by the largest plastic bag manufacturers in the country and the American Chemistry Council.

--==

Recently introduced legislation (H.R.1599) would prohibit any state efforts to require labeling of genetically engineered foods (GMOs), overruling legislation already passed in Maine, Vermont and Connecticut as well as bills moving in many other states.¹

That's why I started a petition to the U.S. House of Representatives, which says:

I urge you to reject Representative Mike Pompeo's "Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act" (H.R.1599), which would prohibit states from requiring the labeling of genetically engineered foods, or GMOs. 

This bill, which is being promoted by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, would prevent states from requiring GMO labels at any time. In fact, this bill is so anti-consumer it is commonly referred to as the "Deny Americans the Right to Know (or DARK) Act."

-dem cosponsors

--

GOP

---

1st amend:

While dismissing the lawsuit based on timing, Judge Wickam also hit the non-profit with a $10,000 sanction (plus defendant attorney’s fees) under a statute meant, ironically, to protect against frivolous lawsuits brought by large corporations to stop public interest groups from speaking out. Known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, anti-SLAPP laws are designed to protect David from Goliath. But GMA turned the tables, accusing Moms for Labeling of making a “strategic attempt to suppress [its] political speech.” And the judge agreed.

see below

 ===

our national organizations whose members would be affected by Vermont's new labeling law for genetically engineered foods filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal court challenging the measure's constitutionality.

"Vermont's mandatory GMO labeling law — Act 120 — is a costly and misguided measure that will set the nation on a path toward a 50-state patchwork of GMO labeling policies that do nothing to advance the health and safety of consumers," the Grocery Manufacturers Association said in a statement about the lawsuit.

"Act 120 exceeds the state's authority under the United States Constitution and in light of this GMA has filed a complaint in federal district court in Vermont seeking to enjoin this senseless mandate."

The Legislature passed the labeling law in April, and Gov. Peter Shumlin signed the bill in May. The labeling requirements would take effect in two years: July 1, 2016.

Lawmakers, the governor and the attorney general expected the law to be challenged in court. Trade groups had promised to fight the law in court.

READ THE LAWSUIT: PDF: Lawsuit vs. Vermont GMO law

Attorney General William Sorrell noted Thursday he had advised lawmakers as they deliberated that the law would invite a lawsuit from those affected "and it would be a heck of a fight, but we would zealously defend the law."

"We have been gearing up," Sorrell said when reached Thursday afternoon in New York City. His office had yet to be served with the complaint.

"I want to see the nature of the attack on the law," he said, but added, "I don't think there are going to be any surprises."

The statement from the Grocery Manufacturers Association summarizes the grievances of the four plaintiff organizations: GMA, the Snack Food Association, the International Dairy Foods Association and the National Association of Manufacturers.

:{Farmers disagree on impact of GMOs

}:

:{Real progress, big questions after GMO law:(style="font-weight:700"):}:

"Act 120 imposes burdensome new speech requirements — and restrictions — that will affect, by Vermont's count, eight out of every ten foods at the grocery store," the GMA said. "Yet Vermont has effectively conceded this law has no basis in health, safety, or science. That is why a number of product categories, including milk, meat, restaurant items and alcohol, are exempt from the law. This means that many foods containing GMOingredients will not actually disclose that fact.

"The First Amendment dictates that when speech is involved, Vermont policymakers cannot merely act as a pass-through for the fads and controversies of the day," the association continued. "It must point to a truly 'governmental' interest, not just a political one."

The groups added that the federal government has the sole authority over regulating nationwide distribution and labeling practices that facilitate interstate commerce, and the U.S. Constitution prohibits Vermont from doing so.

"The U.S. Food & Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency have both the mandate and expertise to incorporate the views of all the stakeholders at each link in the chain from farm to fork," the association said.

The Vermont Right to Know GMOs Coalition, which lobbied for the law, argued that labeling would bring transparency to the information consumers would have about their food.

"The people of Vermont have said loud and clear they have a right to know what is in their food," said Falko Schilling, consumer protection advocate with the Vermont Public Interest Research Group.

Schilling said lawmakers determined there was a lack of consensus about the safety of genetically engineered foods "so putting labels on is a reasonable and prudent thing so people can decide for themselves."

The lawsuit, filed at U.S. District Court in Burlington, contends the Food and Drug Administration has "confirmed the safety of more than 100 genetically engineered crops for human consumption" since 1994.

The court complaint suggests the motivation for the new mandate is to respond to public-opinion polling "showing a consumer desire for labeling," but notes the law exempts dairy and restaurants, creating big gaps on the information consumers will have if they are concerned about genetically modified foods.

The lawsuit argues the state needs a compelling interest to restrict information that food manufacturers provide about their products. But at the same time, the complaint states that the law indicates private dollars should be tapped first for any legal battles. The measure caps state funding at $1.5 million.

"The state's unwillingness to use its own funds to administer and defend Act 120 is express confirmation that Vermont does not have a 'state' interest in the survival of the law," the lawsuit reads.

Schilling at VPIRG countered that Vermonters wanted the law so badly they were willing to share in the cost of defending the measure, and lawmakers decided to give them the opportunity to help. "But the state does fully support this law."

The lawsuit has drawn attention from national organization on the other side of the issue from the four plaintiffs.

Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association, defended the Vermont law, saying 60 other countries either have banned GMOs or require mandatory labeling of foods that contain them.

Cummins added, "Every U.S. citizen should be concerned when a multi-billion dollar corporate lobbying group sues in federal court to overturn a state's right to govern for the health and safety of its citizens." He called the lawsuit was a way to intimidate other states considering labeling laws.

Contact Nancy Remsen at 578-5685 or nremsen@freepressmedia.com. Follow Nancy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/nancybfp.

==

Center for Food Safety[1] / By Michele Simon [2]

Junk Food Lobby Forced to Disclose Secret Donors in Campaign to Stop GMO Labeling

October 23, 2013 |

Just a few weeks ago, attorneys for the No on 522 campaign were feeling rather smug when a lawsuit filed against them by a group called “Moms for Labeling” was dismissed. As I wrote last week [3], consumer class action attorney Knoll Lowney sued the No on 522 and the Washington DC-based Grocery Manufactures Association (lobbyists for major food corporations) for not disclosing the donors behind GMA’s $7 million-plus donation to stop I-522, which would require genetically-engineered foods to be labeled. The judge threw out that case on a technicality.

But then, Big Food’s arrogance got the best of them.

Last Wednesday, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson picked up where the Moms for Labeling lawyer left off by filing his own complaint [4], which adds stunning detail to the allegations in the original suit. In case you’re not familiar with what the attorney general does, he or she is the state’s top law enforcer, but often has limited resources to act. So when the AG’s office decides to come after you, it’s a very big deal, far bigger than a private attorney doing so.

The new lawsuit also accuses GMA of violating the state’s campaign disclosure laws, and alleges that the trade group secretly gathered more than $7 million from its members. Not content to just collect food industry money illegally, or even discreetly, GMA had the chutzpah to a designate a special account dubbed the “Defense of Brand Strategic Account,” for a strategic, “multi-pronged approach” to fight labeling laws, including Washington’s I-522.

And this scheme didn’t just pop up recently either; rather the shady deal-making was in the works for months, soon after the narrow loss of Proposition 37 in California. The plan was hatched at a GMA board meeting this past January to fund future anti-labeling efforts with “a preference for GMA to be the funder of such efforts, rather than individual companies.” That’s because brand names like PepsiCo and General Mills took a lot of heat from upset consumers. So, as GMA CEO Pamela G. Bailey explained in a February memorandum, a plan to “better shield individual companies from attack” was quickly approved; GMA sent its first round of invoices to members by March and the second round went out in August.

The dollar figures are staggering: GMA earmarked ten million dollars to oppose I-522, meaning that when the trade group made its first contribution to No on 522 in May—a paltry $472,500—it knew it was only getting started, something the public would learn by August when it donated another $1,750,000. In September, GMA dropped $5 million in one load, which now makes sense considering how long they had been taking collections. But if the two lawsuits hadn’t stopped GMA, chances are it would have spent even more. As of October 7, GMA collected almost $13.5 milliondollars but had only spent $7.2 million, meaning it still has more than $6 million left in its arsenal. That can buy a lot of TV ads.

In fact, Attorney General Ferguson said [5] this case represents “the largest amount of money ever concealed in an election.” Way to go team.

Barely 48 hours after the attorney general filed suit, GMA waved a white flag [6], disclosing the list of donors [7] it had so adamantly refused to give Moms for Labeling. Topping the list were old favorites like PepsiCo ($1.6+ million), Nestlé ($1+ million), Coca-Cola ($1+ million), and General Mills (almost $600K). But all the major food groups are also represented. Not only soda companies, but also Sunny Delight and the juice bottler Clement Pappas & Company are named. For canned foods, GMA hit up Del Monte and Hormel Foods, maker of Spam. And who knew that the Clorox Company owns Soy Vay marinades [8], which explains its $12K donation to the Defense of Brand Strategic Account.

Before releasing its list of donors, though, GMA put out a statement [9] saying it was “surprised to learn that the Washington State authorities viewed the association’s actions as improper.” Maybe GMA’s lawyers (aren’t they all lawyers?) were too busy making a paper trail of its wrongdoing to read up on the state campaign finance laws they were so sloppily trying to circumvent.

Then, when GMA released the donor data (on Friday at 3pm, wonder why?), the lobbyists had the nerve to claim [10] to be doing so “in the spirit of continuing cooperation and in an effort to provide Washington voters with full transparency.” That’s the spirit. But even more impressive was GMA’s decision to “voluntarily establish a Washington State political committee and to file reports disclosing the source of all funds used in connection with Washington State elections.” Let’s unpack that: GMA is volunteering to follow the law after the state’s top law enforcer sued them to stop violating it.

Meanwhile, Lowney and Moms for Labeling aren’t done yet. Yesterday, Lowney filed another suit [11], incorporating the attorney general’s allegations, and asking the judge to “sequester” the same amount No on 522 illegally concealed – more than $7 million – to pay future penalties.

In the new complaint [12], No on 522 is not only accused of concealing the source of its donations, but also intentionally misleading Washington voters by falsely reporting the source of the $7.2 million. Not satisfied with the disclosures made last week, this suit wants the court to order No on 522 to: 1) stop running advertisements that don’t reflect the accurate top five contributors; 2) admit that earlier disclosures were false and disseminate corrected information; 3) file corrected campaign finance reports; 4) discontinue receipt of contributions from GMA; and (my personal favorite) 5) pay a penalty in the amount of the contributions it concealed – more than $7.2 million.

GMA hasn’t responded to that suit yet, but in the meantime, Ferguson’s office isn’t backing down [13] after the initial disclosures either. Janelle Guthrie, communications director for the Washington State attorney general’s office told me that the state’s “lawsuit continues with regard to setting penalties.”

The Moms for Labeling lawsuit highlights the important role that private litigation has in getting state officials to force Big Food’s compliance with the law and big kudos to the attorney general for doing so. Let’s hope we see more of it.

And if you’re keeping score, that makes three lawsuits filed so far against an industry that will stop at nothing to keep consumers in the dark. Washington State voters should really be asking, when they see the next ad opposing 522: if this campaign is willing to break the law, how can we trust anything they say?

Meanwhile, it’s not too late to help the Yes on 522 campaign [14].

See more stories tagged with:

gmo [15],

labeling [16],

food [17],

right to know [18]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/food/junk-food-lobby-forced-disclose-secret-donors-campaign-stop-gmo-labeling

===

Junk Food Lobbyists Sued for Money Laundering in Washington State

October 16, 2013 |

In the final weeks leading up to Election Day, the debate over measure I-522 in Washington State is getting even uglier. As I recently explained [3], the Grocery Manufacturer Association, the nation’s largest trade group for the processed food industry, has been flexing its muscle to oppose the labeling of genetically-engineered food, both at the federal and state levels. Now, a lawsuit [4] brought by a non-profit called “Moms for Labeling” alleges that GMA crossed the line by not properly disclosing who is behind the whopping $7 million-plus the trade group has donated [5] to the No on 522 campaign so far.

The main goal of a lobbying organization like GMA is to pool the massive resources of its members, which include heavy-hitters such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and General Mills; each has a huge stake in this fight. While last year in California, these companies donated millions to stop Proposition 37, this year, the game plan has changed. GMA is now doing industry’s dirty work by donating on behalf of its members and possibly violating Washington State’s lobbying rules in the process. Here is how the Seattle Post-Intelligencerexplains [6] the case:

Under Washington’s public disclosure law, any organization that “bundles” contributions must declare itself as a political action committee. Moms for Labeling is citing underground industry sources to support its claim that the Grocery Manufacturers Association is fronting for the companies that gave heavily in California last year.

While Superior Court judge Chris Wickham recently**dismissed** [7]the lawsuit, the attorney for the No on 522 campaign may have overstated the decision when she called it a “**complete victory** [8].” The judge did not actually rule on the merits of the case, so the allegations that GMA is fighting with junk food companies’ money still stands. Instead,**the judge said** [7]that the timing of the case wasn’t right, “not that there isn’t merit in the underlying claim.” In other words, as the***Post-Intelligencer*****put it** [7]: “The basic issue of the suit — the public’s right to know where money spent in the I-522 campaign comes from — remains unresolved.”

While dismissing the lawsuit based on timing, Judge Wickam also hit the non-profit with a $10,000 sanction (plus defendant attorney’s fees) under a statute meant, ironically, to protect against frivolous lawsuits brought by large corporations to stop public interest groups from speaking out. Known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, anti-SLAPP laws are designed to protect David from Goliath. But GMA turned the tables, accusing Moms for Labeling of making a “strategic attempt to suppress [its] political speech.” And the judge agreed.

Still, the attorney who filed the suit on behalf of Moms for Labeling, Knoll Lowney, says he’s not backing down. Last week, he filed [9]a legal notice to give the state attorney general’s office ten days to file its own case, after which Lowney says Moms for Labeling will have met the requirements to bring the lawsuit again themselves. According to the letter, newly released 2012 tax filings show that GMA received contributions from member companies that it funneled to the No on Prop 37 campaign in California last year. “The new evidence we delivered to the attorney general makes it even more clear that No on 522 is illegally concealing its donors,” says [9]Pam Johnson, co-chair of Moms for Labeling.

In addition, Lowney says sources within these companies told him the $7 million is the result of GMA’s soliciting “voluntary special assessments” (donations on top of usual dues) from its members. While his whistleblowers can’t say with certainty that the special assessments are for I-522, “everyone knows where the money is going.” That GMA has yet to issue a flat out denial is also suspect, Lowney says.

It’s really not hard to figure out. Just take a look at the executives running the show at GMA. The Board of Directors is a veritable who’s who of Big Food. For starters, Ken Powell [10], Chairman and CEO of cereal giant General Mills is board chair. Other notable GMA board members include:

• John Bryant [11], President and CEO of Kellogg
• Brian C. Cornell [12], Chief Executive Officer, PepsiCo Americas Foods
• W. Anthony Vernon [13], Chief Executive Officer, Kraft Foods
• J. Alexander M. Douglas Jr. [14], Senior Vice President and Global Chief Customer Officer, Coca-Cola

Each of these companies relies heavily upon on genetically-engineered ingredients to make its products, so it’s really no mystery what’s going on. During the California fight, food companies suffered significant backlash for opposing Prop 37. No wonder these corporations want to let GMA be the public face of their opposition this time around. But doing so just may be a violation of law. The question is: will they get away with it?

Meanwhile, overall the opposition has donated $17 million to keep Washington State consumers in the dark. You can help support the Yes on 522 campaign by donating here [15

===

The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), previously the Grocery Manufacturers of America, based in Washington, D.C., is the world's largest trade association for corporations making food, beverage, and consumer products. Representing such companies as Campbell Soup Company, Kraft Foods, and Pepsi, it channels political contributions, lobbies and engages in public relations on behalf of its member corporations.^[1][2] In 2007, the Food Products Association (FPA), which focuses on science, nutrition labeling, and food safety, merged with GMA.^[3]

Food Guide Pyramid

The federal government introduced its revision of the food pyramid, the pictorial representation of its dietary guidelines reportedly recognized by 80% of the population,^[4] in April 2005. Called "MyPyramid," it features triangular colored segments alongside a stick figure climbing stairs.^[5]

Two days after its release, the Grocery Manufacturers Association announced plans to promote the new pyramid to students, teachers and families. The group also took credit for the pyramid's high recognition rate, saying it was "due, in part, to the efforts of the food and beverage industry."^[6]

In September 2005, on the same day that the the USDA unveiled the game-filled "MyPyramid for Kids," GMA introduced a new curriculum designed to teach children about the special version of MyPyramid designed just for them in a partnership with Weekly Reader. According to GMA, "The new educational materials will be used by approximately 58,000 educators who reach more than four million students in grades 4-6." They also pledged to translate materials into Spanish and distribute materials for free to schools with high-Hispanic populations.^[7]

School Nutrition Policy

The Grocery Manufacturers Association has opposed virtually every state bill across the nation that would restrict the sale of junk food or soda in schools. Michele Simon, in her book Appetite for Profit, found in a search of the GMA website more than 126 hits relating to schools, most of which are either submitted testimony or a letter filed in opposition to a school-related nutrition policy. Document titles include: GMA Letter in Opposition of Texas Food and Beverage Restrictions, GMA Letter in Opposition to Oregon School Restrictions Bills, GMA Requests Veto of Kentucky School Restrictions Bill, and GMA Letter in Opposition to California School Nutrition Bill.^[8] They have also opposed efforts to limit the sale of soda in schools.

GMA also has lobbyists in every state capital working to weaken or defeat legislation. In 2004, GMA helped defeat a California bill that would have set nutrition standards for school food. With more lobbying resources and money to contribute to political campaigns, the GMA is able to beat back nutrition advocates.^[9] GMA lobbyists have also banded together with soda lobbyists to oppose efforts to limit the sale of soda in schools and with restaurant associations to oppose the posting of calories on menu boards.^[10]

Labor in the Chocolate Industry

In 2001, GMA and the chocolate industry lobbied against legislation in the U.S. Congress that would put "slave free" labels on chocolate. In the West African country of Ivory Coast, children as young as 11 are sold into slavery to harvest cocoa beans. The country supplies almost half of U.S. cocoa. According to a U.S. State Department estimate, up to 15,000 children in the Ivory Coast work as slaves in cocoa, cotton, and coffee production.

Two former U.S. Senators who were Senate majority leaders, Bob Dole (Republican from Kansas) and George J. Mitchell (Democrat from Maine), were hired to lobby lawmakers against legislation requiring these "slave free" labels.^[11][12]

Fueling opposition to ethanol

In early 2008, after realizing that "rising food prices ... create a window to change perceptions about the benefits of bio-fuels," GMA decided to launch "an 'aggressive' public relations campaign ... in an effort to roll back ethanol mandates that passed in last year's energy bill," reported Roll Call. In March, GMA began searching for a PR firm to help it build "a global center-left coalition" against ethanol and hire "trusted third-party experts" who would link ethanol to global hunger and poverty.^[13]

The Glover Park Group submitted a six-month, $50,000 proposal to GMA and won the account. As part of the campaign, Glover Park suggested attacking "whatever intellectual justification might still exist for corn-based ethanol among policy elites," launching a website and possibly creating a "costumed 'mascot' ... to drawn attention and distribute advocacy materials at local supermarkets." U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who strongly criticized the anti-ethanol PR campaign, posted GMA's "request for proposal" (PDF) and Glover Park's response (PDF) on his website. ^[13]

Bush addresses GMA conference

As an example of a GMA conference, on October 30, 2007, President George Bush addressed the group in Washington, DC. Bush shook hands with and was introduced by Sunny Delight Beverages CEO William B. Cyr. Bush then went on to talk about his opposition to the Democrats' position on health care.^[14][15]

Political contributions

The Grocery Manufacturers Association gave $110,884 to federal candidates in the 2006 election through its political action committee - 20% to Democrats and 80% to Republicans.^[16]

Lobbying

2012 Lobbying Data:

The Grocery Manufacturers Association spent $1,420,000 for lobbying in 2006. $780,000 went to eight lobbying firms with the remainder being spent using in-house lobbyists. They spent $1,560,000 lobbying in 2007, ^[17] In 2008, they expanded their lobbying operations, spending $4.5 million ^[18] They spent $3.2 million in 2009, ^[19] 3.9 million in 2010 ^[20] and another 3.9 million in 2011 ^[21]

Some of the lobbying firms used were Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, Patton Boggs, Covington & Burling, and the lobby group Alliance for American Advertising.^[22]

Member companies

A few of the hundreds of member companies: ^[2]

• Archer Daniels Midland Company
• Campbell Soup Company
• Coca-Cola Company
• Dole Packaged Foods Company
• General Mills, Inc.
• Kellogg Company
• Mars, Incorporated
• Monsanto
• BASF
• Bayer
• Dow
• Syngenta

Personnel

As of January 2009, Pamela Bailey will be GMA's President and CEO. She previously served as President and CEO of the Personal Care Products Council, a cosmetics industry group. ^[23]

Leadership: ^[24]

• Cal Dooley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Former Democratic Congressman from California, 1991-2004^[25]
• James Skiles, Vice President and General Counsel
• Sean McBride, Vice President, Communications
• Mary Sophos, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs

Board of Directors: ^[26]

• Chairman Douglas R. Conant, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Campbell Soup Company
• Vice Chairman Richard G.Wolford, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Del Monte Foods Company

Contact details

1350 I (Eye) Street, NW

Suite 300

Washington, DC 20005

Phone: (202) 639-5900

Fax: (202) 639-5932

Email: info AT gmaonline.org

Web: http://www.gmabrands.com

SourceWatch resources

• Glover Park Group
• Bob Gamgort

External links

References

1. ↑ About GMA (news release). Grocery Manufacturers Association. Retrieved on February 2008.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} Membership, GMA, Accessed July 19, 2012.
3. ↑ About page, Grocery Manufacturers Association/Food Products Association, March 12, 2007.
4. ↑ Michele Simon, "Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Underminds our Health and How to Fight Back (paperback) (Nation Books, 2006), 146.
5. ↑ United States Department of Agriculture, "MyPyramid.gov", accessed October 2008.
6. ↑ Food, beverage companies will use new food guide to promote healthy lifestyles (news release). Grocery Manufacturers Association (April 19, 2005).
7. ↑ GMA and Weekly Reader will reach 4 million students with nutrition education program (news release). Grocery Manufacturers Association (September 28, 2005).
8. ↑ Michele Simon, "Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back." (paperback) (Nation Books, 2006), 223.
9. ↑ Michele Simon, "Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back." (paperback) (Nation Books, 2006), 223-224.
10. ↑ Michele Simon, "Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back." (paperback) (Nation Books, 2006), 230, 210.
11. ↑ Sumana Chatterjee, "Chocolate Firms Fight 'Slave Free' Labels", Philadelphia Inquirer/CorpWatch, August 1, 2001.
12. ↑ George J. Mitchell, NNDB, accessed December 2007.
13. ↑ ^{13.0 13.1} Anna Palmer, "Beating Up on Ethanol: Glover Park Helps Frame the Debate," Roll Call, May 14, 2008.
14. ↑ "President Bush Addresses Fall Conference", GMA, accessed February 2008.
15. ↑ Jennifer Loven, "Bush goes after Democrats on health care", USA Today, October 30, 2007.
16. ↑ 2006 PAC Summary Data, Open Secrets, accessed February 2008.
17. ↑ Grocery Manufacturers Association lobbying expenses, Open Secrets, accessed July 27th, 2012.
18. ↑ Grocery Manufacturers Association lobbying expenses, Open Secrets, accessed July 27th, 2012.
19. ↑ Grocery Manufacturers Association lobbying expenses, Open Secrets, accessed July 27th, 2012.
20. ↑ Grocery Manufacturers Association lobbying expenses, Open Secrets, accessed July 27th, 2012.
21. ↑ Grocery Manufacturers Association lobbying expenses, Open Secrets, accessed July 27th, 2012.
22. ↑ Grocery Manufacturers Association lobbying expenses, Open Secrets, accessed February 2008.
23. ↑ "US: GMA Appoints New President & CEO," Namnews, December 11, 2008.
24. ↑ Staff List, GMA, accessed February 2008.
25. ↑ Cal Dooley, NNDB, accessed February 2008.
26. ↑ Board of Directors, GMA, accessed February 2008.

Articles

Categories: Food industry | Trade associations | United States | ALEC Trade Groups | ALEC Exposed

Mr. C. Larry Pope has been the President of Smithfield Foods, Inc. since October 29, 2001 and its Chief Executive Officer since September 1, 2006. Mr. Pope served as the Chief Operating Officer of Smithfield Foods, Inc. from October 29, 2001 to September 01, 2006, its Vice President and Chief Financial Officer from September 1999 to October 2001. He served as Vice President, Finance of Smithfield Foods Inc. from July 1998 to September 1999 and as Vice President and Controller from August 1995 to July 1998. He joined Smithfield Foods as Controller since 1980. He has been an Executive Director of Smithfield Foods, Inc. since August 30, 2006. He serves as a Director of Schneider Corp. and The Grocery Manufacturers Association.