The New York Times reports that the Chinese government announced an ambitious plan to curb air pollution across the nation, including setting some limits on burning coal and taking high-polluting vehicles off the roads to ensure a drop in the concentration of particulate matter in cities. The government is responding to criticism over the abysmal condition of the country’s air, soil and water.
Trans Pacific Partnership Trade Pact Threatens Public Health
Two recent commentaries summarize the public health objections to the Trans Pacific Partnership, a new global trade pact now in its final stages of negotiation. An editorial in the New York Times argued that “American trade officials need to toughen their stance when Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations resume. They should be siding with the public and those concerned about public health, not the makers of products known to be lethal and highly addictive.” In an earlier Op Ed in the Times, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked “Why is Obama Caving on Tobacco?”. He wrote that “a deal that sells out our national commitment to public health, and forfeits our sovereign authority over our tobacco laws, does not merit the support of Mr. Obama; of the Senate, which would have to ratify it; or of the American people.”
Interview with Janelle Orsi, Executive Director of the Sustainable Economies Law Center
Cross-posted from Eat Drink Politics
This time on Ask a Food Lawyer, instead of answering questions, I’m doing the asking. Numerous food lawyers across the country are working hard to improve the food system. From drafting legislation to challenging corporate misconduct to supporting sustainable alternatives, these smart lawyers are playing a critical role, yet receive little credit for the important work they do.
Janelle Orsi is an attorney in Oakland, California who practices “sharing law.” In addition to her law practice, she is executive director of the Sustainable Economies Law Center, a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide “education, research, advice, and advocacy for just and resilient economies.” She is also author of “Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy,” a guide for lawyers interested in navigating the emerging field of sharing law. I included her on my recent list of the top ten lawyers in the food movement for offering free advice sessions, or “legal cafes,” for small community-based food and other entrepreneurs through SELC. For more information about Janelle and SELC, visit theselc.org and follow them on Twitter @JanelleOrsi and @TheSELC.
What is “sharing law” and how does it intersect with the good food movement?
Sharing law is a term I use to describe legal work related to any community-based project or business formed on the basis of sharing resources, like cohousing, cooperative businesses, urban farms, and even car sharing enterprises. The law practice of sharing law includes services like advising clients and drafting agreements and bylaws to form legal entities and to define how sharing will take place.
If we are going to move from the current centralized food system to a local, diversified new food economy, sharing has to be part of the solution. Corporate control of our food system vests decision-making power with a very small group of people whose profit-maximizing goals often deplete resources from communities rather than strengthen them. I think the cooperative model offers a solution to this problem by distributing power among many small-scale producers, owned by community members or workers whose goals are in closer alignment with those of the community as a whole. I envision a localized, small-scale food supply chain from farm to fork, built on a foundation of sharing and cooperative ownership.
Besides having your own law practice, you co-founded the Sustainable Economies Law Center. You must be busy. What’s a typical day like for you?
I don’t think there is such a thing, that’s what makes it so interesting! When I started my practice, I spent most of my time with individual clients. When I realized I needed to address some of the bigger issues in sharing law, I co-founded SELC and stopped seeing as many clients. Now, I spend most of my time teaching workshops on sharing law to other lawyers, mentoring legal apprentices on their way to becoming lawyers, writing, and doing interviews about a variety of sharing law subjects. I really don’t practice law all that much anymore, except for when I provide legal advice to clients at our Resilient Communities Legal Cafes. I’m on the computer a lot!
SELC recently championed the California Homemade Food Act, which makes it legal in California to sell certain food products made at home. Why did SELC take this on and how does this law benefit the public?
One major strategy for SELC is to whittle away at the legal barriers we think unreasonably prevent people from starting small-scale food businesses. Before the California Homemade Food Act passed, California law prohibited anyone from selling food produced in his or her home kitchen. A couple years ago, we noticed several other states had passed laws allowing people to produce and sell non-potentially hazardous foods out of their home kitchen. On the premise that some foods made at home didn’t pose a health safety risk and that face-to-face interactions between buyer and seller would incorporate higher levels of trust and accountability, we decided to push for a change in the law. It was the first piece of legislation we successfully carried through the state legislature and we’re glad to see so many cottage food operations starting up as a result.
What other legislation is SELC working on?
The Neighborhood Food Act is the next step in our drive to change the law regarding food production. Currently, zoning ordinances in most cities and counties in California restrict or prohibit commercial agriculture in urban areas, making the sale of food produced in one’s backyard, community garden, or on an empty lot illegal. Even if it isn’t illegal, the required permits and soil tests are often cost-prohibitive. Our proposal will make it easier for people living in urban areas, including people in housing governed by homeowners associations and tenants on leased property, to grow and sell food regardless of the zoning classification of the property.
As the sharing economy grows, what will prevent it from cooptation by corporate interests?
That’s a good question. I suppose that risk always exists, but I think that the cooperative model is our best bet against cooptation. There are two distinct features of a cooperative model that make it hard to fake. First, cooperatives are democratically controlled by their members, each having equal decision-making power. This tends to maintain high workplace standards and increase accountability within the cooperative and in relation to the public, features that don’t exist in the corporate model. Second, profits distributed to cooperative members are based on patronage dividends, which reward each member according to their involvement in the coop. So, in a potential sale to a corporation, the incentive to sell to make a big profit doesn’t exist for any single individual.
What role do you think lawyers play in building and supporting the good food movement?
Anybody starting a new food enterprise should talk to a lawyer. It’s not that I want to increase business for lawyers, it’s that many legal issues inevitably arise when starting a new food business, and some can make or break the business. So, it’s important to have a lawyer to spot potential issues at the start, before investing a lot of time, energy, and money.
In addition to representation, I think lawyers can provide valuable insight in forming new policy. Lawyers often come up against legal barriers when representing clients and can anticipate problems in the law’s application or interpretation. I think lawyers should be advising policymakers as well as leading food policy reform.
Lastly, I think lawyers must be promoters of the good food movement as well as participants. It’s necessary for the public to invest in a new food business to make it viable; for that to happen, there must be a relationship of trust between the community and the business. I think lawyers can help foster that relationship.
What, as a lawyer, is most exciting to you about the good food movement?
Well, as a human being, I just really like food! As a lawyer, I think the food movement is, and will continue to be, the testing ground for many of the changes we need across sectors to move towards a new economy. Cooperatives, community supported enterprises, local currencies, and local investment are all already playing out in the food sector, so I think it is very fertile ground for new legal models. Part of the reason I think food is attracting so much attention is because it directly affects everyone. Unlike say, energy or finance, people make choices about food every day, several times a day! The more times people have to think about their choices, the more potential exists for change.
Many thanks to attorney Neil Thapar for assistance with this interview.
Corporations and Health Watch Goes Back to School: 10 Recent Articles for Fall 2013 Courses
As the summer draws to an end and the start of a new semester looms, those of us in the health teaching and learning business consider how best to make sure how our Fall courses prepare students to meet their professional responsibilities. To assist CHW readers who believe that public health professionals ought to understand more about how business practices influence health, I suggest 10 articles that can be added to a variety of Fall courses, including courses on health behavior, epidemiology, global health, health policy, public health history, health ethics, or health equity. To suggest others, send a message to newsletter@corporationsandhealth.org and we’ll post a compilation of your responses. The goals of these readings are to encourage students to analyze corporate practices as a modifiable social determinant of health and consider public health strategies to change harmful corporate practices. They can also help readers to assess the similarities and differences among the strategies these different industries use.
Ten Recent Articles to Add to Health Courses on the Impact of Corporate Practices on Health
Baum FE, Sanders DM. Ottawa 25 years on: a more radical agenda for health equity is still required. Health Promot Int. 2011 Dec;26 Suppl 2:ii253-7. pdf
Brandt AM. Inventing conflicts of interest: a history of tobacco industry tactics. Am J Public Health. 2012 Jan;102(1):63-71. Abstract
Douglas MJ, Watkins SJ, Gorman DR, Higgins M. Are cars the new tobacco? J Public Health (Oxf). 2011 Jun;33(2):160-9. pdf
Freudenberg N. The manufacture of lifestyle: the role of corporations in unhealthy living. J Public Health Policy. 2012;33(2):244-56. Abstract
Igumbor EU, Sanders D, Puoane TR, Tsolekile L, Schwarz C, Purdy C, Swart R, Durão S, Hawkes C. “Big food,” the consumer food environment, health, and the policy response in South Africa. PLoS Med. 2012;9(7):e1001253. pdf
Labonté R, Mohindra KS, Lencucha R. Framing international trade and chronic disease. Global Health. 2011 Jul 4;7:21. pdf
Monteiro CA, Cannon G. The impact of transnational “big food” companies on the South: a view from Brazil. PLoS Med. 2012;9(7):e1001252. pdf
Moodie R, Stuckler D, Monteiro C, Sheron N, Neal B, Thamarangsi T, Lincoln P, Casswell S; Lancet NCD Action Group. Profits and pandemics: prevention of harmful effects of tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food and drink industries. Lancet. 2013 Feb 23;381(9867):670-9. Abstract
Siegel M, Dejong W, Naimi TS, Fortunato EK, Albers AB, Heeren T, Rosenbloom DL, Ross C, Ostroff J, Rodkin S, King C, Borzekowski DL, Rimal RN, Padon AA, Eck RH, Jernigan DH. Brand-specific consumption of alcohol among underage youth in the United States. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2013;37(7):1195-203. Abstract
Steinman MA, Landefeld CS, Baron RB. Industry support of CME–are we at the tipping point? N Engl J Med. 2012;366(12):1069-71. pdf
And for those of you planning to teach on this topic in the Spring 2014 semester, here’s a shameless self-promotion. My new book Lethal but Legal Corporations, Consumption and Protecting Public Health will be published by Oxford University Press in January 2014. It’s available for pre-order at Oxford and at Amazon. More details in future posts on CHW.
Federal Trade Commission Plans Pay-For-Delay Crackdown in Wake of Supreme Court Ruling
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled on FTC v. Actavis, the Federal Trade Commission is ramping up scrutiny of pay-for-delay deals and will pursue antitrust charges not only for new cases, but also those that “still have delay in effect”. In a hearing at the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition and Consumer Rights, FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez called the pay-for-delay issue “one of the Commission’s top priorities” and said the Commission “remains united today in its determination to end these illegal pay-for-delay agreements.”
A Bagful of Cash: How the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Orchestrated a Corporate Takeover of Government
Cross posted from shutthechamber.org
A new report by Shut the Chamber, a group leading a campaign to educate and organize communities across the country to fight the Chamber of Commerce on a national and state-by-state level describes the history and goals of the Chamber:
The US Chamber of Commerce– a 101 year-old organization formed as corporations’ first union—is the chief agent behind Congress’ kowtowing to corporate interests, the Supreme Court’s favorability to corporations in its rulings, and presidents of both parties’ insistence on accommodating the wishes of multinational corporations at the expense of working-class people all over the world. This report outlines how the Chamber first formed, their blueprint for ultimate success as revealed in the confidential Powell Memo, how that blueprint has been realized in the 40 years since its writing, and the devastating effects of that agenda on small business. Despite the US Chamber purporting to be pro-jobs, pro-small business, and pro-growth, they have consistently lobbied for policies that kill jobs, stall economic growth, and take competitive advantages away from small businesses to enrich their corporate members. The Chamber of Commerce’s unchecked power over government will only continue to worsen unless the American people build a movement to mobilize against them.
Bain Capital Buys British Blood Bank
Bain Capital, the private equity firm branded a “job destroyer” in the US presidential elections, has bought a majority stake in the state-owned blood products firm Plasma Resources UK, reports the Guardian. Lord Owen, a former Labour health minister in the 1970s, who created a service to make the UK self-sufficient in blood supplies, said it was “hard to conceive of a worse outcome” than the £200m sale of an 80% stake in the Hertfordshire-based company to private equity. The Department of Health will retain a 20% share in the business.
Promoting Health for All and Social Justice in the Era of Global Capitalism: A call to action by the People’s Health Movement
Last month, activists from the People’s Health Movement met during the WHO 8th Global Conference on Health Promotion in Helsinki, Finland to critique the official Conference Statement and develop a progressive call for action based on strong social justice principles. The draft below reflects their deliberation and is being circulated for further comment and debate. Below is that statement, with sections that pertain to the impact of corporate practices on health marked in bold. Please send comments to globalsecretariat@phmovement.org.
We wish to support the progress on Health Promotion and Health in All Policies and call for actions toward health for all. We note the nature of the contemporary economic and social order as follows:
- sustainable development is in crisis, with neoliberalism, consumerism and individualism over‐riding the values of community and international solidarity;
- the crises of finance, food and climate change deny hundreds of millions of people the right to decent employment, social protection, food security, livable communities, housing, water, sanitation and all the social determinants of health;
- conflict and violence, rooted in gross inequalities and corporate greed, plague households, communities, cities and regions and blight millions of lives;
- together with entrenched poverty, these factors contribute to large‐scale migration to cities and across national borders; in many cases migrants and refugees are discriminated against and denied their human rights; and
- inequalities in income and wealth within and between countries, and resultant health inequity, are growing rapidly, with complex roots in the dominant global capitalist regime that functions via unbridled competition, obscene greed and undemocratic governance at national and international levels.
As a consequence there is rising popular demand for governments to fulfill their obligations to guarantee social protections and to commit to a sustainable model of societal well‐being that is based on equity, human rights and social justice and that emphasises “good living” (buen vivir) as opposed to unquestioned economic growth.
We underline the urgency of required actions by WHO and its member States on key areas identified in the Declaration by Public Interest Civil Society Organisations and Social Movements at the World Conference on the Social Determinants of Health, held in Rio de Janeiro in October 2011; and we urge participants to refer to that document.
We applaud the leadership of WHO Director General Dr. Margaret Chan in condemning the economic power of large industries, including food, tobacco, soda and alcohol, and their destructive impact on the health of people around the globe: “In the view of WHO, the formulation of health policies must be protected from distortion by commercial or vested interests,” whose tactics “include front groups, lobbies, promises of self‐regulation, lawsuits, and industry‐funded research that confuses the evidence and keeps the public in doubt.”
Building on Dr. Chan’s position, we hold that the translation of capitalist values into political power is overwhelmingly responsible for the inequalities in health faced by poor and marginalized peoples. We note further that speakers and discussants in this Conference have highlighted the link between the “Health for All” Declaration of Alma Ata in 1978 and the unfinished agenda of health promotion, stemming from the Ottawa Declaration of 1986. We support the calls in this conference for a ‘whole‐of‐government’ approach that includes Health in All Policies, a social justice framework in monitoring and evaluation of health policies, and the health‐related human rights that promote health for all.
We believe, however, that the Helsinki Statement does not sufficiently translate the analysis of the determinants of health inequities and poor health into specific actions which address the unfair economic system which underpins health inequities. We issue the following call to action, recognising that this entails both short and long term political struggle for social justice:
1. That Health in All Policies be established as a high priority within the WHO so as to enable it to work across sectors and in particular where there are conflicting interests and priorities, such as trade and investment policies.
2. That member states strengthen WHO’s leadership role in health to enable it to legitimately guide the work by all international and multilateral institutions, particularly in the UN system and in the World Bank, World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund.
3. That WHO resolve conflicts of interest arising from voluntary budgetary contributions that bias its own work toward transnational corporate (especially pharmaceutical, agriculture, chemical, food, alcohol, soda, military and extractive industries) positions and perspectives, over public health by instituting a rigorous regime of binding regulations; this must involve scaling up assessed contributions so that WHO’s governing bodies are in charge of their own budget.
4. That member States that govern global bodies, including the UN, World Bank, World Trade
Organization, International Monetary Fund and similar institutions, democratize governance of
those bodies, in order to rebalance social considerations alongside the economic and political
conditions that shape population health.
5. That governments and international institutions regulate financial, commercial, labour, and resource depletion and contamination practices, including elimination of tax evasion, to ensure sustainable health, environmental and social well‐being, including worker protection; and to respect, protect and fulfill health equity and health‐related human rights.
6. That all governments– regional, national and sub‐national – adopt and evaluate the Health in All Policies approach, led by the head of government and supported by the health and other ministries, in order to eliminate the policy incoherence that undermines population health and exacerbates health inequities and be accountable for doing this.
7. That governments, with the support of public interest civil society, ensure participation in policymaking and processes related to Health in All Policies, through community‐led, democratic processes based on equitable gender, racial, and religious/cultural, and social class representation that shape priorities, policies and decisions to ensure accountability in all levels of governance.
8. That WHO and governments respond to the watching, monitoring and evaluation by public interest civil society with actions directed at reducing health inequities and achieving health for all.
9. That WHO implement and be accountable for equity‐based, publicly provided and publicly financed systems for social protection and health that address the social, political, economic, environmental and behavioural determinants of health with a particular focus on reducing health inequities.
10. That governments implement and enforce progressive income taxes, fair corporate taxes, wealth, taxes and the elimination of tax evasion including appropriate international tax mechanisms to control global speculation, to finance action on the social determinants of health, and further explore and utilise innovative financing, such as financial transaction taxes, so as to finance health in all policies and social determinants of health initiatives.
11. That governments and international bodies regulate finance capital, reduce its dominance of the global economy and protect health and social well‐being from financial crises.
12. That governments, WHO, and other UN organisations utilise impact assessments on health, wellbeing and environment to document the ways in which unregulated and unaccountable transnational corporations and financial institutions constitute barriers to Health for All.
13. That governments and the WTO ensure that health considerations are a top priority in the negotiation of international trade and investment agreements.
14. That donors remove conditionalities for development assistance for health, and thereby recognize aid as part of an equal partnership among countries of varied income levels under human rights principles.
15. That all Health in All Policies efforts work to mitigate climate change, resource depletion and contamination, and other environment health concerns that are crucial to human health.
16. That governments and the World Trade Organization change the mechanisms through which the present intellectual property regime promotes the interests and profits of TNCs and the countries which benefit from their exports; and facilitate the worldwide development and equitable sharing of expertise, technologies and scientific data as global public goods.
17. Implement fully the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and develop other international treaties that promote good health and address the social determinants of health, such as access to essential medicines and regulation of the baby food, alcohol and food industry, as well as work with the ILO to ensure decent working conditions and standards across the world.
Investigative Reporting as a Public Health Research Method
Last week, the Center for Public Integrity, the nonprofit investigative news organization, reported that in 2012 the tobacco company Reynolds American Inc. helped fund several of the nation’s most politically active — and secretive — nonprofit organizations. Based on its review of company documents, Center for Public Integrity reported that Reynolds American’s contributions include $175,000 to Americans for Tax Reform, a nonprofit led by anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, and $50,000 to Americans for Prosperity, a free-market advocacy outfit heavily backed by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. The story provided a rare insight into how some of the most powerful politically active 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofits are bankrolled.
This and similar stories by a handful of other investigative journalism outfits provide hope that despite the gloomy state of the mainstream media, dozens of reporters around the country continue to investigate corporate wrong doing . For public health researchers and activists, investigative journalists can help to fill in the gaps about our understanding of how corporations’ business and political practices can undermine health, the environment and democracy. For that reason, these investigative media outlets have become as important a source of information on corporations and health as the scientific journals that publish reports on the impact of a specific practice or exposure on a specific health outcome. This post provides an overview of several investigative journalism sites and lists some links to add to your Bookmarks.
The Center for Public Integrity proclaims that is mission is “to enhance democracy by revealing abuses of power, corruption and betrayal of trust by powerful public and private institutions, using the tools of investigative journalism.” As one of the country’s oldest and largest nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organizations, the Washington-based Center has produced series on the global tobacco industry, the high costs of corporate dentistry, toxic chemical pollution, and the occupational health of agricultural workers . Unlike daily mainstream media, CPI often sticks with a story for months or years. In partnership with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, for example, the Center produced a multi-year investigation of the tobacco industry, in which country-based reporters worked with an international team of editors to uncover how companies like Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco distorted science and subverted democratic processes in Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Uruguay.
ProPublica is another independent, non-profit newsroom. Based in New York City, its mission is to shine “a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them”. In the last few years, it has run investigations on guns, gun policy and the gun industry and on pharmaceutical company payments to doctors who prescribe their products. Like the Center for Public Integrity, ProPublica often partners with other media including Frontline, the New York Times and National Public Radio to produce reports that run simultaneously in several media. ProPublica’s MuckReads provides readers with ongoing updates on investigative stories in other media, offering an efficient way to scan the investigative landscape.
The Center for Media and Democracy, another non-profit investigative reporting group, published news stories and analysis that exposes corporate spin and government propaganda. The Center publishes PRWatch, SourceWatch, FoodRightsNetwork and BanksterUSA. PR Watch “exposes the hidden activities of secretive, little-known mega-firms such as Hill & Knowlton, Burson-Marsteller and Ketchum PR — the ‘invisible men’ who control our political debates and public opinion, twisting reality and protecting the powerful from scrutiny.”
Investigative Journalism and Public Health
For public health faculty, students and researchers, investigative journalism provides another window on the world. Its practitioners use a variety of methods— analyzing public data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act; “crowd-sourcing” to enlist a broad section of people who have experienced a problem to help understand its causes and consequences; and old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting. For public health students, these methods could significantly expand their research repertoires. New partnerships between schools of public health and schools of journalism could help to produce a new generation of public health journalists, investigators who can combine methods from both disciplines to expose wrong doing that harms the well-being of populations.
By teaching these research approaches, assigning public health students to read investigative journalistic accounts of public health problems, and asking them to compare the frames and methods used in, for example, an epidemiological, sociologic and investigative journalistic account of the same public health issue, faculty can help students understand the value and limits of each approach.
More resources describing investigative journalism and its methods can be found here.
Corporate Research for Public Health
In a recent article in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, Corporations and Health Watch contributing writer Lainie Rutkow and her colleagues at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health conclude that schools of public health face a curricular gap, with relatively few offerings courses that teach students about the relationship between the private sector and the public’s health. While 75% of the 46 accredited programs they surveyed offered at least one course on the private sector and public health, more than 40% of the courses reported focused on a single industry such as health insurance or pharmaceuticals. Few focused on business and corporations as a social determinant of health and it did not appear that any emphasized teaching students how to investigate the health impact of corporation’s business and political practices.
A new resource that can help public health researchers and students to fill this gap is Strategic Corporate Research, a new website developed by Tom Juravich, Professor of Labor Studies and Sociology at the University of Massachusetts and graduate students in the UMass Labor Center. Although the resource is based largely on union corporate campaigns, its method for researching corporate structures and practices will be of value to planners of public health campaigns to modify health damaging corporate practices. The site includes information sources on US and Canadian publicly traded corporations, privately held firms and nonprofits and charities. It also offers a practical tutorial for aspiring corporate researchers.
More than 50 years ago – way before the internet was invented, notes Juravich, sociologist C. Wright Mills argued that we were being overwhelmed by information and that what we needed is not more information but a framework to make sense of that information. The website introduces a framework and a visual representation of the 24 areas (see below) where corporate researchers can focus their effort. Juravich explains this framework in Beating Global Capital: a Framework and Method for Union Strategic Corporate Research and Campaigns and on the website.
Previous CHW posts that described additional resources for public health researchers on studying corporations include:
Bringing Corporations and Health into the Public Health Curriculum September 12 , 2012
New Resource: Beating Goliath Examines Successful Campaigns Against Corporations March 14, 2012
LittleSis: A Tool for Activists and Researchers November 9, 2011
Corporations and Health Watch Goes Back to School: 10 Ways to Bring the Health Impact of Business Practices into the Classroom September 7, 2011
Corporations and Health Watch 