Inside D.C.

Food nannies rave on

Knowing you’re tired of hearing  post-election this and that, I’ve decided to tell you about one of the most naïve scribblings by a gaggle of foodies-as-nannies I’ve come across in a very long time.  In fact, so urban-wealthy-elitist, wrong-headed and out of touch is this manifesto on the need for a “national food policy” fashioned in their organic/local/veggie image, it almost defies rebuttal.

So bizarre is the food policy manifesto to which I refer it actually leaped to the top of my “you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up” list, replacing the following from the London Daily Mail, November 12:  “Millionaire fashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood has suggested families who can’t afford to buy organic food should simply ‘eat less’.”  She made the pronouncement while delivering an anti-GMO petition to No. 10 Downing Street.  In case you weren’t aware, Wikipedia describes Westwood as “largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream.”

I’m a tad late in reading the jointly penned opinion piece in the Washington Post entitled “How a national food policy could millions of American lives.”   It ran November 7, co-authored by Mark Bittman, a New York Times opinion columnist and cookbook author; Michael Pollan, UC-Berkeley journalism professor and author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma;” Ricardo Salvador, senior scientist and director of the food and environment program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Olivier De Schutter, a professor of international human rights law at the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), who was also a UN special rapporteur on the “right to food.”

I’m going to fast forward past the lack of individual or collective boots-on-the-ground food production experience or understanding of two journalists, an activist scientist and a college professor.  Here’s the bottom line of their piece:  President Obama better step up and create a “national food policy (for) managing American agriculture (and) the food system as a whole” guaranteeing everyone can get “healthful food;” that protects public health and environmental goals; that produces food free of toxic bacteria, chemicals and drugs; that guarantees food production and marketing are “transparent;” that the food industry pays a fair wage; that food marketing “sets up children for healthful lives by instilling in them a habit of eating real food;” that animals are treated with compassion and attention to their well-being; that the food system’s carbon footprint is reduced, while on-farm carbon sequestration is increased, and the food system is “sufficiently resilient to withstand the effects of climate change.”

If the President doesn’t create such a policy, millions will die of type 2 diabetes, our children will live shorter lives because the food industry has “reversed” 100 years of public health improvement; exploited, grossly underpaid workers will die in the fields and our planet will become a cold, barren rock.

All of these dire consequences are laid at the feet of the “food industry” – also described as the “agricultural-industrial complex” – with the authors ricocheting among farmers, input industries, processors, food companies, retailers and previous administrations assigning blame.  First Lady Michelle Obama is a heroine for unmasking high fructose corn syrup for the dietary villain it is – the authors allege the government subsidizes its production – while trying to force on children school lunches many refuse to eat and school systems can’t afford.  Her husband is a goat because he ignores the following:

“The food system and the diet it’s created have caused incalculable damage to the health of our people and our land, water and air.  If a foreign power were do such harm, we’d regard it as a threat to our national security, if not an act of war, and the government would formulate a comprehensive plan and marshal the resources to combat it.”

They call on the President to use his next State of the Union speech to announce by executive order a “national policy for food, health and well-being.”  Without such a policy, we undermine the Affordable Care Act (ACA) because “the government subsidizes soda with one hand, while the other writes checks for insulin pumps.” This new national food policy, created by presidential dictate rather than consensus, would be developed and implemented by a “new White House council” to coordinate HHS and USDA alignment of ag policies with public health objectives, and then USDA and EPA would join hands to “make sure food production doesn’t undermine environmental goals.”  Is this starting to sound familiar?

These four food mavens say it’s up to the “obstructionist” Republican Congress to right these wrongs, but, of course, Congress has for decades been “beholden to agribusiness, one of the most powerful lobbies on Capitol Hill…congressional committees in thrall to special interests will be able to block change.”  We’re also told to look to the success of food programs fashioned by the governments of progressive nations like Brazil and Mexico, held up as all about healthy food access, but built on a good food v. bad food system that includes taxes and more taxes.

The authors say the mantra of a “national food policy” and the goal of the federal government should be as follows:  “We guarantee the right of every American to eat food that is healthy, green, fair and affordable.”  This reads like marketing promotion for the Organic Trade Assn. (OTA), save for that “affordable” part.

You can’t make this stuff up.