Happy Friday, and welcome to Food Fix. We are 10 days from the election. I’m as surprised as anyone that food policy issues are cropping up in the final stretch of the campaign. Interesting times!
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Alright, let’s get to it –
Helena
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Republicans and Democrats scramble to react to RFK Jr. factor
Food and agriculture leaders in both parties are scrambling behind the scenes to figure out how to respond to the rapid ascension of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. within the Trump campaign.
RFK Jr. — once seen as a fringe, anti-vax candidate who didn’t get much press coverage — all of the sudden appears to be setting the food, health and agriculture agenda for the Trump campaign, a twist that’s caught many in Washington off guard. This new “Make America Healthy Again” (#MAHA, as seen on the socials) message – which former President Donald Trump himself has now adopted – is increasingly hitting the campaign trail, as Republicans try to win over RFK supporters, and particularly, women.
“Under the Trump administration, we will get the toxic chemicals out of our food supply and we will make our children healthy again,” Trump said during a rally in Duluth, Ga., on Wednesday, expanding on comments he’s been making in speeches lately. “We have more chronic health problems than any nation. More childhood diseases than we did just a generation ago. Millions of Americans are realizing that something is wrong.”
The former president then invited RFK Jr. on stage, calling him “the man who’s going to help us get it all straightened out,” an introduction that got a standing ovation as fireworks went off in the foreground. (You can watch this whole exchange here, starting at 4 hours 12 mins.)
When RFK took the stage, he started off by noting that we allow a thousand food chemicals in the U.S. that are not allowed in Europe.
“But the problem is not from those chemicals,” Kennedy said. “The big problem is corruption in our federal agencies. And these agencies are now owned by Big Pharma, by Big Food, and Big Agriculture.”
Context: This all may sound like run-of-the-mill political fodder at first blush, but I can’t remember chronic diseases, nor how we regulate food, ever hitting the mainstage of a presidential candidate for one of the two major parties – and I’ve been covering this beat for 15 years. This is not typical, to say the least.
Track record reality check: Another reason this has caught so many people off guard is that Trump’s track record as president was pretty much the opposite of everything he is now touting with “Make America Healthy Again.” It’s kind of breaking everyone’s brains. It just doesn’t make any sense to the folks who follow these issues closely.
As I noted last month: Under the Trump administration, the USDA relaxed school nutrition standards and the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) reversed a ban on chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that’s been linked to neurological problems in children, and generally took an industry-friendly, de-regulatory approach. I don’t recall any interest in cracking down on food chemicals, PFAS, or other “toxic chemicals” of concern. There were no moves to ban soda or processed foods from SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), nor efforts to change farm subsidies to focus on production of fruits and vegetables — all things that have been floated as part of MAHA.
Electoral calculation: The Trump campaign sees MAHA as a key message to help win over women, a demographic that the Republican candidate is not doing well with. I talked to Jeff Hutt, who formerly led RFK’s national field operation, and has since launched MAHA PAC, a super PAC that’s trying to mobilize RFK supporters to vote for Trump. Hutt estimates that there is about a 6–8 percent voter block of RFK supporters who didn’t vote for Trump in 2020 who are up for grabs — though it’s not easy to convince them to support the former president, he noted.
“If Donald Trump is able to win, I think it is going to be because of the MAHA movement,” Hutt said. There are now at least two MAHA super PACs aimed at this task. A separate MAHA Alliance PAC, also launched by former RFK campaign staff, is more focused on ads, Hutt said.
The MAHA Alliance super PAC was co-founded by Del Bigtree, a prominent anti-vaccine activist who served as communications director of RFK’s campaign for president. One of the largest donors to that super PAC is Patricia Duggan, whose family has reportedly donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Church of Scientology causes. Duggan donated $1 million to MAHA Alliance this month, according to campaign finance records.
As Tal Kopan reported in the Boston Globe this week, there is also now a joint fund-raising committee called MAHA Values, which links MAHA Alliance with American Values 2024, the super PAC that backed Kennedy’s campaign and efforts to get on the ballot.
MAHA in Washington: Everyone I’ve talked to in RFK world insists that Trump’s commitment to the MAHA agenda is real, even if many others outside of that orbit don’t buy it. But there’s also a practical acknowledgement that RFK supporters actually turning out for Trump in a decisive way would make it more likely that the MAHA agenda could advance — up against all odds and armies of lobbyists — if Trump wins.
“Trump was really good to evangelical Christians when they got him over the hump in 2016,” Hutt noted.
Amaryllis Fox, RFK’s former campaign manager, this week told supporters that turning out for Trump is the way to advance MAHA in a potential Trump administration. She said that her team was already working with the Trump transition team on policy and personnel, as well as executive orders for a potential Trump administration. Fox also said that both J.D. Vance and Donald Trump Jr. are big allies of MAHA.
“This isn’t just window dressing, we want to make sure that Bobby’s picks and his input affect not just those who are going to get the slots on the weekend talk shows, but all the layers beneath them,” Fox said.
“It’s been exhilarating to see the entire MAGA movement rise up to center this topic, if you will,” she added. (The Trump campaign has not returned my requests for comment on all this, for what it’s worth.)
A quiet agriculture freakout: Agriculture industry groups — primarily led by Republicans — have started to really worry about what all of this means for their sector, considering RFK Jr. has essentially advocated ripping up American ag policy and starting over.
“Current ag policy is destroying America’s health on every level,” Kennedy said in a video he recently filmed standing outside of USDA headquarters in Washington. “When Donald Trump gets me inside the building I’m standing outside of right now, it won’t be this way anymore. American agriculture will come roaring back and so will Americans’ health.”
It’s hard to overstate how incredibly awkward all of this is for these industry groups. Many of their members are longtime and stalwart Trump supporters — their boards are filled with Trump donors. The American Farm Bureau Federation has hosted Trump at their convention more than once. Several state farm bureau groups have endorsed Trump this cycle. But just about everything RFK is pushing stands in stark opposition to the status quo and the platforms of these groups, even if they won’t say so to avoid crossing Trump ahead of the election. One big example: RFK wants to take down glyphosate, an herbicide that’s widely used to grow corn and soybeans in the U.S., which every major agriculture group has defended as safe and essential. Agrochemical giant Bayer is currently facing a mountain of lawsuits over cancer risks related to glyphosate.
A group of nearly 300 agriculture groups recently sent a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees that was very clearly a response to RFK and the growing criticisms of food and ag from the right, though it didn’t actually mention Kennedy.
“In recent weeks, we have observed significant misunderstandings regarding tools farmers, ranchers, public health officials, land managers, and others need to produce our nation’s food, fuel, and fiber supplies,” the groups wrote. “We strongly urge Congress and federal regulators to reject any efforts to undermine the existing risk- and science-based regulatory frameworks for these technologies, which would make the U.S. more reliant on foreign competitors for food and agricultural goods.”
I asked several key ag groups if they had a comment on MAHA, but heard mostly crickets. The American Soybean Association did send me a statement:
“The American Soybean Association is unsettled by the recent increase in misinformation pertaining to agricultural issues, especially related to pesticides and genetic tools farmers need to grow productively and sustainably,” the group said in an email. “Policymakers should carefully consider how essential these tools are to U.S. agriculture and that they are already well regulated under a science-based regulatory framework to ensure they are used safely. We would strongly oppose any efforts to undermine access to or impose new regulatory barriers on these vital tools.”
For now, some ag industry leaders are making the bet that this MAHA alliance will be short lived, and they will be able to muscle these folks out if Trump wins. Others aren’t so sure that will work.
“The silence is disappointing,” said Dana O’Brien, president of BioHarbor Strategies and former executive vice president at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, the trade group representing the biotech industry. “If Kamala Harris had elevated Kennedy in a similar way, I am confident that a great many farm groups would be loudly crying foul. Trump has built the pedestal from which Kennedy now belittles American farmers and champions banning their cherished inputs.”
Democratic scramble: Some Democrats are also scrambling to figure out how to confront MAHA messaging, even as the Harris campaign largely avoids engaging on these issues. Last weekend, Friends of the Earth Action, Nurses for America, Food Revolution Network and the Harris campaign held a national call for “voters concerned about their food and health,” an online event that was organized in short order, as I reported earlier this week. Speakers included celebrities Rosario Dawson and Mark Ruffalo, along with longtime food and health advocates Robyn O’Brien, Ocean Robbins and Shanna Swan.
“Americans face a constant flood of chemicals and additives in our food and environment, often resulting in devastating health impacts. In this election we face an important question: who will better protect our food, health, and kids?” the invite read. “On one side is Vice President Harris — a proven champion for clean air and water, safer food and homes and a healthy society. On the other, Trump, with his toxic track record and his dangerous deregulatory proposals.”
“There is a real movement out here and real concern about these issues that has been under appreciated by both parties,” said Kari Hamerschlag, deputy director of the food and agriculture program at Friends of the Earth, but the idea that Trump would actually deliver on the MAHA agenda is “magical thinking,” she said.
New landscape: Whether MAHA ends up making a difference in this election or not, we’re seeing issues like banning food additives and pesticides and criticizing ultra-processed foods, fire people up on the left and the right on a scale we haven’t seen before. The politics on all of these issues have been scrambled.
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What I’m reading
Onion recall linked to E. coli and McDonald’s spreads to other fast food chains (The New York Times). “A sweeping onion recall linked to an E. coli outbreak involving McDonald’s Quarter Pounders has prompted several other major fast-food chains to remove raw onions from their menu offerings,” report Teddy Rosenbluth and Christina Jewett. “A spokeswoman for Yum Brands, which owns several fast-food chains, said that its restaurants were yanking onions from their menus “out of an abundance of caution.” Yum Brands would not elaborate or say how many sites in how many states would not offer onions. Federal regulators have not confirmed the source of the outbreak, which has so far killed one person and sickened 49.”
A wave of major listeria recalls shows food safety will ‘never be perfect’ (Los Angeles Times). “Listeria contamination at a BrucePac processing plant this month and a deadly multistate outbreak linked to Boar’s Head liverwurst over the summer led to the sweeping recalls,” reports Andrea Chang. “All told, about 20 million pounds of meat and poultry products sold nationwide at Trader Joe’s, Walmart, Target, Ralphs and other businesses were affected, highlighting the public health challenges that come with producing food for the mass market despite significant advancements in sanitizing and testing. Listeria, a common and stubbornly persistent type of bacterium, presents unique hurdles. Unlike many other foodborne pathogens, it thrives in the cool, damp conditions found in processing plants.”
Novo asks FDA to bar compounders from making Ozempic copies (STAT). “Novo Nordisk has asked the Food and Drug Administration to bar compounding pharmacies from making copies of its blockbuster weight loss drug semaglutide, arguing that the medication is too complex for the pharmacies to safely make,” reports Elaine Chen. “Novo argued that semaglutide, marketed as Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for obesity, should be on the FDA’s “Demonstrable Difficulties for Compounding Lists,” which are lists of complex medications that compounders are not allowed to make regardless of shortages. In a statement, a spokesperson said the agency is reviewing Novo’s petition and will respond directly to the company.”
Ozempic linked to lower Alzheimer’s risk in people with Type 2 diabetes (NBC News). “Semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, appeared to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in people with Type 2 diabetes, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia,” reports Berkeley Lovelace Jr. “Novo Nordisk, which makes Ozempic and Wegovy, is running two phase 3 clinical trials comparing semaglutide to a placebo in more than 3,000 patients with mild cognitive impairment or early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. The trial results are expected to be released sometime next year.”
Inside the rush as Minnesota schools serve millions more free breakfasts (The Minnesota Star Tribune). “Minnesota’s free school meals program took effect before the 2023-24 school year, and schools served 13.8 million more breakfasts that year than the year before — a 40% increase,” writes Mara Klecker. “The state program was projected to cost about $400 million over two years, but because of rising food costs and lower-than-expected federal reimbursement, it’s projected to cost Minnesota another $81 million in the next two years. Serving hundreds more meals each day brings other logistical challenges, too.”
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