2012: The Year to Stop Playing Nice

And it’s not just because cor­po­ra­tions have more money to lobby, of course they do. It’s that too often, we’re not even in the game. Or, we tend to give up too eas­ily. While I know many food jus­tice advo­cates who under­stand this is a polit­i­cal fight over con­trol of the food sys­tem, sadly I can­not say the same thing about some of my pub­lic health col­leagues. Too many non­prof­its, foun­da­tions, and pro­fes­sion­als are play­ing it safe, afraid to take on the harder fights.

A politi­cian from Maine I inter­viewed for my book was com­plain­ing to me about how food indus­try lob­by­ists were in his state cap­i­tal every sin­gle day, while pub­lic health sent the occa­sional vol­un­teer. His sage advice to us advo­cates: “You may be out-gunned, but you have a bring a gun.”

Moreover, many groups have shown that you don’t always even need a big­ger gun. The small but impres­sive orga­ni­za­tion, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood proved that this sum­mer when it won an impor­tant vic­tory against Scholastic regard­ing its corporate-sponsored mate­ri­als. How did they do it? A com­bi­na­tion of smart cam­paign­ing and effec­tive media. Not by play­ing nice.

Many pub­lic health folks I know are more com­fort­able with research and data than pol­i­tics and lob­by­ing. But if we are to make real progress, that has to change. Back in May, after a series of defeats, my col­league Nancy Huehnergarth wrote a great call-to-action. She noted how pub­lic health advo­cates and its fun­ders are “very gen­teel” and that when indus­try lob­by­ing beats us back, advo­cates just want more sci­ence, believ­ing that the new data “will finally con­vince pol­i­cy­mak­ers and the pub­lic to take action.” But it doesn’t work that way, as she explains:

The real­ity is that when going up against deep-pocketed, no-holds barred oppo­nents like Big Food, Big Beverage and Big Agriculture, pub­lic health’s focus on sci­ence and evi­dence is eas­ily trumped by money and mes­sag­ing. If pub­lic health advo­cates don’t start rolling up their sleeves and using some of the same tac­tics used by indus­try, progress in this fight to cre­ate a safe, healthy, sus­tain­able food sys­tem is going to move very slowly.

OK, now for some good news. We are already see­ing pos­i­tive signs that indeed, the food move­ment is get­ting more polit­i­cal. Recent defeats are help­ing to mobi­lize peo­ple even more, as folks real­ize the food indus­try is not play­ing nice, so we can’t either. Here then, are just a few signs of hope for 2012:

1) The grow­ing polit­i­cal move­ment oppos­ing genetically-engineered foods, which includes a huge Just Label It cam­paign with an impres­sive list of sup­port­ers. Stay tuned also for the 2012 bal­lot ini­tia­tive in California to label GMOs.

2) Powerful non­profit orga­ni­za­tions (who don’t shy away from pol­i­tics) get­ting involved for the first time in nutri­tion pol­icy. For exam­ple, the Environmental Working Group’s recent report on sug­ary cere­als called out the utter fail­ure of Big Food’s vol­un­tary nutri­tion guide­lines on mar­ket­ing to chil­dren. Given EWG’s one million-plus sup­port­ers, I can’t wait to see where they go with this issue in 2012.

3) Increasing cov­er­age in main­stream media that food indus­try mar­ket­ing (and not just per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity) bears much of the blame for the nation’s pub­lic health cri­sis. Examples include a front page story in a recent Sunday edi­tion of the San Francisco Chronicle and Mark Bittman’s weekly Opinionator col­umn in the New York Times, which is con­sis­tently smart and hard-hitting.

4) Speaking of media, as tra­di­tional inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism out­lets have become more scarce, a new breed of reporters may be born from an inno­v­a­tive project just launched in November: Food and Environmental Reporting Network. Its mis­sion is to “pro­duce inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism on the sub­jects of food, agri­cul­ture, and envi­ron­men­tal health in part­ner­ship with local and national media out­lets.” Judging from its first in-depth report on dairy CAFOs in New Mexico, I am look­ing for­ward to more in 2012.

5) Finally, the Occupy move­ment, while still very young, has already inspired a num­ber of food pol­i­tics off­shoots. As I wrote after Food Day, sev­eral oth­ers have penned calls to action show­ing the deep con­nec­tions between cor­po­rate con­trol of the food sup­ply and eco­nomic injus­tice. (If you read just one, Tom Philpott’s Foodies, Get Thee to Occupy Wall Street should con­vince you.) Also, the amaz­ing grass­roots orga­ni­za­tion Food Democracy Now (based in Iowa) recently orga­nized an “Occupy Wall Street Farmers’ March” to bring the mes­sage that fam­ily farm­ers are also the 99%. (Read orga­nizer Dave Murphy’s mov­ing account of the suc­cess­ful event and watch the videos of the pas­sion­ate speak­ers – I promise you will be inspired.)

There are many other amaz­ing groups, farm­ers, and eaters orga­niz­ing all over the coun­try (and the world) to take back our food sup­ply from cor­po­rate prof­i­teers. We’ve got plenty of chal­lenges ahead, with the farm bill up for renewal and more school food nutri­tion stan­dards to fight for, just for starters. I am hope­ful that next year we will see the food move­ment get even more polit­i­cal. I just hope I can also say, by the end of 2012, that it was the year more of my pub­lic health col­leagues
joined in.

Michele Simon

Michele is a pub­lic health lawyer who has been research­ing and writ­ing about the food indus­try and food pol­i­tics since 1996. Visit her site at www.EatDrinkPolitics.com/