Busted: Food Myths Brought to You by Food Industry Front Groups

So I am thrilled that my good friend and col­league, Anna Lappé is launch­ing a new project called Food MythBusters, which takes direct aim at the most dam­ag­ing talk­ing points from Big Food and Big Ag that are designed to dis­tract us from the grim real­i­ties of indus­tri­al­ized agri­cul­ture. The project is an impres­sive col­lab­o­ra­tion of numer­ous tal­ented peo­ple and groups, includ­ing Free Range Studios, and Corporate Accountability International, among others.

The project’s main edu­ca­tional vehi­cle is an enter­tain­ing yet seri­ous video in which Anna describes how American farm­ers get duped into rely­ing on an unsus­tain­able sys­tem of unhealthy inputs such as pes­ti­cides and herbicides.

The mes­sages Food MythBusters aims to cor­rect are brought to us not only by those com­pa­nies with a vested inter­est in pro­mot­ing pes­ti­cides and biotech­nol­ogy, but also by a host of less obvi­ous sources. Front groups are orga­ni­za­tions with inno­cent and often objec­tive sound­ing names but in real­ity are funded by cor­po­rate inter­ests. More front groups are pop­ping up all the time.

For exam­ple, what could be wrong with the U.S. Alliance for Farmers and Ranchers, the Alliance for Food and Farming, or the Alliance to Feed the Future? (Forming an “alliance” is appar­ently a pop­u­lar strat­egy for front groups.) Each of these groups is funded by large and pow­er­ful food and agri­cul­tural interests.

The U.S. Alliance for Farmers and Ranchers is host­ing a series of “Food Dialogues,” which sounds so fair and bal­anced, doesn’t it? Except they get to set the agenda, choose the speak­ers, and con­trol the entire event. The group has even hired the well-heeled pub­lic rela­tions firm Ketchum, which in turn is part­ner­ing with Zócalo Group, “its full ser­vice word of mouth and social media agency,” and maslan­sky luntz + part­ners, “a research-driven com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­egy firm that spe­cial­izes in lan­guage and mes­sage devel­op­ment.” Not exactly the sort of grass­roots approach you would expect from actual farm­ers and ranch­ers. A look at the group’s back­ers explains where the cash to hire such sophis­ti­cated con­sult­ing firms is com­ing from: National Cattleman’s Beef Association, National Pork Board, and National Milk Producers Federation, just to name a few trade groups that lobby on behalf of indus­try interests.

The Alliance to Feed the Future laments on its web­site that:

Unfortunately, there is insuf­fi­cient focus in today’s pub­lic dis­cus­sion regard­ing the ben­e­fits that our mod­ern, effi­cient food sys­tem pro­vides to con­sumers and soci­ety. This unbal­anced pub­lic debate is neg­a­tively influ­enc­ing pub­lic pol­icy and con­sumers’ choices.

You really have to feel sorry for them, don’t you? To bal­ance things out, the alliance is offer­ing free edu­ca­tional cur­ric­ula “to help stu­dents in grades K-8 learn about mod­ern food and agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion and how American farm­ers and pro­duc­ers pro­vide safe, nutri­tious and abun­dant food choices every day.” Do you really want “part­ners” such as the American Meat Institute, the National Cheese Institute (really), the Corn Refiners Association, and the American Frozen Food Institute—which suc­cess­fully lob­bied for pizza sauce to count as a veg­etable in the school meal program—teaching your chil­dren about food choices?

Another front group, sim­ply called “America’s Farmers,” is backed by Monsanto. This seems rather ironic given the biotech giant’s insid­i­ous bul­ly­ing of farm­ers. The U.S. Supreme Court, for instance, recently agreed to hear an appeal by an Indiana farmer who was sued by Monsanto for patent infringement.

Other Big Food and Ag front groups hide behind scientific-sounding names like the International Food Information Council, which is funded by the food and pes­ti­cide indus­tries. (In an exam­ple of lay­ered front groups, one of its “part­ners” is the Alliance to Feed the Future.) As I wrote about last year in an arti­cle called, “Pesticides are Good for You,” IFIC’s mis­sion is to put out biased sci­en­tific infor­ma­tion that looks objec­tive, to quell any con­sumer fears that might hurt their client’s eco­nomic interests.

The form­ing of so many new cor­po­rate front groups to defend indus­tri­al­ized agri­cul­ture is a sure sign we are mak­ing progress. And yet, with so much money and sophis­ti­cated pub­lic rela­tions cam­paigns aimed at dis­tort­ing the truth while hid­ing the neg­a­tive impacts of pes­ti­cides, biotech­nol­ogy, and other harm­ful food pro­duc­tion prac­tices, we need Food MythBusters more than ever.

Be sure to join the Facebook event on Food Day, October 24, at 2:30 ET and help keep spread­ing the word at www.foodmyths.org.

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/