Processors Using a Republican Network To Pit MAGA Against MAHA

U.S. soft drink and snack food makers are engaging a network of Republican pollsters, strategists and political financiers in an effort to pit Donald Trump’s Make American Great Again campaign against Robert Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again effort, according to an investigation by the British newspaper The Guardian and environmental watchdog Fieldnotes.

Their goal is to stymie the MAHA-led effort to curb Americans’ consumption of soda and ultraprocessed foods, the investigators say. And it coincides with two just-this-week public efforts:

• 12 of the biggest food companies and their associations have created Americans for Ingredient Transparency to lobby for national standards that cover ingredient bans – before 50 states impose their own.
• International Dairy Foods Assn. and American Frozen Food Institute in separate letters urged USDA and FDA not to hastily create a definition of ultraprocessed foods.

The two Trump administration campaigns have been strange bedfellows. Trump and MAGA are devoted to deregulation, less oversight and free markets, while Kennedy’s leadership of Health & Human Services and FDA has increased scrutiny of and eventually regulation of food and drug companies.

“The companies have turned to a partially formalized network of for-hire pollsters, strategists and political financiers with deep ties to the national Republican party – several of whom have taken steps that obscure their connection to the effort and to one another,” said the Guardian story. “In the process, the industry has also been aided less directly by a loose coalition of free-market ideologues who have previously worked to advance Trump’s deregulatory agenda.

“The effort features MAGA influencers hired by a firm that promotes ‘anti-woke’ movies; an obscure research group Lee Zeldin was working for when Donald Trump picked him to lead the Environmental Protection Agency; and a media outlet backed by rightwing billionaires Leonard Leo and Charles Koch, among others.”

The Guardian says the influence campaign is being spearheaded by the American Beverage Assn. with help from Consumer Brands Assn. While not directly connecting these processors to the effort, the Guardian notes Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Keurig Dr Pepper, General Mills, Kraft Heinz, Mondelez and Nestlé “are among those that pay dues for the right to have a say in either or both of the trade groups’ strategies.”

All three soda makers identified the MAHA efforts as significant threats to their bottom lines in their most recent annual reports.

The companies’ most pressing political concerns are two related RFK Jr-backed efforts: one to ban schools from serving foods with petroleum-based dyes, and the other to bar people from using Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to purchase soft drinks, the report says.

Their not-so-subtle message to conservative lawmakers, delivered directly by lobbyists and indirectly via both an industry front group and paid social media influencers: oppose the MAHA efforts or face a MAGA backlash.

There’s plenty more. It’s a fascinating and apparently free read right here.