Food & Beverage

Cross-posted from Appetite for Profit

 

The food industry really hates it when you compare them to Big Tobacco. They try to deny the negative association by claiming that food is different than tobacco. Of course that’s true, but why are the same consultants that have worked for the tobacco industry now shilling for Big Food, opposing the ballot initiative that would require labeling of all foods containing GMO ingredients?

 

Hiring Secret Consultants for the Dirty Work

 

The latest financial filings in California for the “No on 37: Coalition Against the Deceptive Food Labeling Scheme” – reveal a $7,500 payment to the Sacramento-based political consulting firm, MB Public Affairs. Here is how the Los Angeles Times described the firm last year:

 

MB Public Affairs is headed by Mark Bogetich, a garrulous operative known to his friends as “Bogey,” who has helped a number of Republican candidates neutralize their opponents. In recent years, MB Public Affairs has worked for Altria, once known as the Phillip Morris Cos. …

 

Bogetich has also been called “the go-to guy for [the Republican] party,” and “the only game in town.” The L.A. Times article explains how last year MB Public Affairs filed more than 50 public record act requests to dig up dirt on a small but effective group called the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. No wonder, since the organization has scored such important victories as a living wage for workers, which would threaten plenty of businesses.

 

But which ones? Who knows, because by hiring MB Public Affairs to do its dirty work, industry gets to keep its nose clean – a classic Big Tobacco tactic. Well-known brands such as PepsiCo (which I wrote about last week) and Kraft don’t want to be associated with negative campaigning, so they farm out the job to consulting firms. In this case, they went right to the top, or the bottom. Things are likely to get ugly.

 

Creating Front Groups for the Dirty Work

 

Another tactic honed by Big Tobacco is to form a front group, which appears to be made up of small businesses and others designed to give the impression of a grassroots campaign, but in reality is funded by large corporations. This tactic, known as an Astroturfing, is alive and well with “No on 37,” which describes itself as, “A broad coalition of family farmers, scientists, doctors, taxpayers, small businesses, labor, food companies, biotechnology companies and grocers.

 

Small farmers and small businesses? I don’t see any listed on the “Who We Are” page. I do see many not-so-small trade groups representing numerous not-so-small corporations, some of them from outside California, including CropLife America, which is a trade group for the biotech and pesticide industry.

 

Also, the “No on 37” campaign is represented by the law firm, Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, which has a sordid history of stealth tactics such as Astroturfing. And no wonder, with former Phillip Morris outside council Tom Hiltachk as the campaign’s treasurer. (His firm’s address is listed on the webpage for where to send donations; can’t get much cozier with the No campaign than that.)

 

Hiltachk had this disingenuous quote about the GMO labeling initiative back in February: “Farmers and food producers strongly oppose this costly, ill-conceived labeling proposition.” There are those invisible farmers again.

 

No stranger to California politics, Hiltachk’s firm represents the California Republican Party and helped make Arnold Schwarzenegger governor by orchestrating the statewide recall campaign of former Governor Gray Davis.

 

According to PolluterWatch, Tom Hiltachk and his firm are well known for creating front groups that promote or attack ballot initiatives at the behest of the firm’s wealthy corporate clients: “In the past Hiltachk has attacked anti-smoking initiatives while being paid by major tobacco corporations.”

 

And this scathing article at ThinkProgress from 2010 describes Hiltachk’s attempt to repeal California’s clean energy policy and says his “under-the-radar tactics of shifting money around and using phony groups are nothing new.” Specifically:

 

During the eighties and nineties, Hiltachk and his law partners helped the tobacco industry, with funding from Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds, coordinate a variety of stealth front groups. While his law firm received over a million from tobacco interests, Hiltachk helped organize “Californians for Smokers’ Rights,” a supposedly “grassroots” group that relied on tobacco industry consumer lists to mobilize opposition to anti-smoking initiatives.

 

Another Big Tobacco front group Hiltachk’s firm managed was “Californians for Fair Business Policy,” which fought local efforts to enact smoke-free bans in California in the early 1990s.

 

This is going to be a busy election season for Hiltachk, as he is also the mastermind behind the deceptive union-busting Proposition 32, about which a local California paper writes: “if you liked Citizens United, you will love Prop 32.” As the New Yorker sums it up in an article describing the firm’s shady operations, “They specialize in initiatives that are the opposite of what they sound like.”

 

Another group with Big Tobacco origins now spreading lies about the GMO labeling initiative is the unsubtle front group, “California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse,” whose executive director recently warned us to “beware of trial lawyers lurking in your food.” (It seems lawyers are scarier than altering the genetic code of the food supply.) According to the Center for Media and Democracy’s Sourcewatch, Philip Morris is a primary funder of various “Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse” groups, which under the guise of tort reform aim to make it harder to bring lawsuits for problems caused by hazardous products.

 

Doubt is Their Product

 

In sum, the food industry, to oppose a simple labeling law, is hiring lawyers and consultants with ties to the tobacco industry, to deploy stealth tactics such as creating front groups, digging up dirt on opponents, and spreading outright lies.

 

For decades the tobacco industry and its shills hid the truth by deploying its most effective weapon: manufacturing doubt about the health hazards of smoking. How many millions of Americans died as a result of Big Tobacco’s deceptive and cynical campaign? Why would we trust these same operators now?

 

You can hardly blame industry for calling on such shady characters. Big Food has seen the polling data showing that more than 90 percent of consumers want to see GMO foods labeled. When you don’t have the people or the truth on your side, all you have left is playing dirty.

 

Cross-posted from the Center for Food Safety

 

Last week I had the pleasure of lending my support, on behalf of the Center for Food Safety, to New York City’s proposal to limit the size of sugary beverages sold at food service outlets. (I wrote previously about why this policy makes sense.) The hearing room at New York’s health department was packed with media outlets and hundreds of folks eager to witness the showdown with Big Soda.

 

Interestingly, no one from an actual soda company spoke up. But we did hear from several trade associations, along with members of the city council, several of whom objected to the idea over potential negative impacts on small business. As I explained in my own remarks, this talking point is a classic misdirect put up by major corporations. Here are a few excerpts from my comments:

 

This isn’t about choice or any other distracting rhetoric.

 

The soda industry, because it does not have science (or even common sense) on its side, is resorting to methods of distraction such as claiming that this proposal is an affront to consumer choice. Of course, this proposal doesn’t take anybody’s choice away. New Yorkers who wish to consume more than 16 ounces are free to purchase more.

 

But let’s take a closer look at the concept of choice. It is the soda industry that has taken away the choice of reasonable portion sizes. Nobody demanded larger beverages. Cups got larger and larger over the years because the soda industry (in coordination with food service outlets) realized it has a gold mine on its hand. When the beverage industry and its cohorts use the word “choice,” it’s really code for threatened profit margins — which are estimated to be as high as 90 percent. 90 percent.

 

The soda industry is acting like Big Tobacco.

 

One tried and true tactic of the tobacco industry is inventing “grassroots” smokers’ organizations, a strategy known as Astro-turfing (as in fake grass). It’s a great way for companies that don’t want their fingerprints on a controversial campaign to hide behind a front group. Such groups tend to garner public sympathy and support while attracting media attention.

 

“New Yorkers for Beverage Choices” is a classic Astro-turfing campaign led by the American Beverage Association, the soft drink industry’s lobbying group, which has retained powerful political and PR consultants. Who made this list of alleged New Yorkers so concerned with their choices? For starters, other lobbying groups outside of New York, such as:

 

 

• The Grocery Manufacturers Association
• The International Franchise Association
• The National Association of Concessionaires
• The National Association of Theater Owners
• The National Restaurant Association

 

Also, restaurant chains like Chick-Fil-A, Denny’s, and Darden Restaurants, owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster, among others. Not quite the sort of grassroots activism members you hope for in a campaign about personal choice.

 

Additional Big Tobacco-style tactics from the soda lobby include:

• Shooting the messenger and name-calling, by depicting Mayor Bloomberg as a “nanny” in full-page ads taken out by the industry front group, Center for Consumer Freedom, which not coincidentally, began with funding from Philip Morris and is run by notorious tobacco lobbyist Rick Berman;
• Claiming to take the side of small businesses because they know the public and the press have more sympathy for the little guy than multinational corporations such as Coca-Cola and PepsiCo;
• Claiming to care about the economic plight of poor people, never mind the fact that the soda industry targets these same populations with advertising designed to get them hooked for life on their unhealthy products.

 

Ultimately, the tobacco industry lost all credibility with the American public (along with most policymakers) by engaging in such deceitful tactics.

 

In conclusion, the soda industry is running scared because they know the jig is up; that the public health crisis their products have helped create means that industry cannot keep enjoying the same unfettered regulatory environment. This common sense proposal will catch on as other cities take New York’s lead. This is an idea whose time has come.

 

You can read the submitted comments here.  A decision by New York’s Board of Health is expected in September.