\n<\/p>\n
O<\/span>n 25 February, in her opening remarks at her Senate confirmation hearing, Casey Means, Donald Trump\u2019s nominee for surgeon general, called on the US government to address key drivers of chronic disease, including \u201cultraprocessed foods, industrial chemical exposure\u201d and other factors. The same month, in a provocative Super Bowl ad for the federal government\u2019s RealFood.gov site, Mike Tyson warned of the dangers of processed food. The recent developments confirm what\u2019s becoming conventional wisdom: the GOP is now the party of healthy food.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just Robert F Kennedy Jr\u2019s high-profile moves on red food dyes or the USDA food pyramid. Conservative politicians and influencers are now attacking chemical additives, plastics, and ultra-processed ingredients as drivers of chronic disease. Republicans see Maha, the \u201cmake America healthy again\u201d movement, as a rare cultural wedge that resonates outside the party\u2019s Maga base. The GOP\u2019s own polling memos show that Kennedy\u2019s movement could be their single most promising midterm strategy.<\/p>\n But behind the headlines, Republicans are trying to have it both ways. They\u2019re seeking to be known as the party of healthy food while continuing to do the bidding of lobbyists from big agribusinesses, ultra-processed foodmakers, and the chemical industry.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Trump administration lawyers told supreme court justices that they should rule in favor of the chemicalmaker Bayer in a case that could prevent American farmers from suing the pesticide industry over claims that products cause cancer and other illnesses. On 18 February, Trump issued an executive order to boost domestic production of glyphosate, a widely used weedkiller that has been linked to non-Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma and scores of other serious health conditions. And, on 6 February, in a Friday evening press release designed to avoid attention, Trump\u2019s EPA reapproved dicamba \u2013 one of the most contentious weedkillers in American agriculture. Dicamba is used primarily on genetically engineered soybeans and cotton, and it\u2019s notorious for drifting off target and damaging neighboring crops, gardens, orchards, and wild plants. Courts have twice thrown out dicamba approvals because of these risks.<\/p>\n These aren\u2019t isolated examples. Republicans on the House agriculture committee have chosen to include legal immunity for makers of agrochemicals \u2013 among other industry giveaways \u2013 in the next farm bill. Every Republican on the House appropriations committee voted to advance a bill that would shield pesticide companies from lawsuits and block EPA from regulating PFAS \u201cforever chemicals\u201d in sewage sludge. Republican-led states are advancing liability shields for toxic agrochemical makers. Trump appointees from big ag and the chemical industry \u2013 including Nancy Beck, Lynn Dekleva and Kyle Kunkler \u2013 now hold key EPA roles . Meanwhile Doge cuts decimated the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the technical assistance program farmers rely on to transition away from costly chemical inputs.<\/p>\n double quotation markDemocrats have \u2013 to date \u2013 been hesitant to speak directly to Trump-leaning voters who are focused on health and food issues. That needs to change<\/p>\n Democrats have \u2013 to date \u2013 been hesitant to speak directly to Trump-leaning voters who are focused on health and food issues. That needs to change. It\u2019s important to set the record straight on the ways the Trump administration is underlining healthy food in America.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also important to recognize a substantial policy opportunity. In polling we recently commissioned with YouGov, 89% of voters \u2013 including 87% of Republicans \u2013 said they favor banning pesticides already prohibited in Europe when those chemicals present health risks. Perhaps most striking, 57% of Republican respondents told us they would consider supporting a candidate from the other party if that candidate made healthy food and toxic-chemical reduction a top priority.<\/p>\n Leaders of the Maha movement are visibly breaking with the Trump administration \u2013 and now planning a major rally in Washington on the date of the supreme court\u2019s Bayer hearing in April to protest pesticide immunity shields, the glyphosate Executive Order, and the Trump EPA\u2019s pro-polluter deregulations. On 3 March, a group of Maha leaders launched a campaign in favor of the War Powers Resolution to ensure Congressional accountability in the Iran conflict, citing Kennedy\u2019s vocal commitment to ending \u201cforever wars\u201d in the 2024 race.<\/p>\n Democrats need to seize the opportunity. The party should champion a coherent, practical agenda that makes healthy food and lower-toxin farming more affordable \u2013 by changing what government subsidizes, buys and enforces, not by lecturing families to \u201cshop organic\u201d. Think of the agenda in simple terms: make healthy food affordable.<\/p>\n The first step is accountability. Healthy food will never be affordable if chemical companies profit from risky products while pushing the costs onto farmers, families and the healthcare system. Senator Cory Booker\u2019s legislation, the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act, shows an important way forward, creating a legal right for Americans to sue for harms caused by toxic pesticides. The New Jersey Democrat\u2019s bill has won support from nearly every Maha grassroots group in addition to progressive and environmental experts. This kind of accountability can push industry toward safer products and practices \u2013 so healthier options can become the default.<\/p>\n Second, we need to make healthy practices benefit farmers financially. Healthy food gets cheaper when farmers aren\u2019t trapped in rising costs for seeds, chemicals and fertilizer controlled by a handful of suppliers. Chemical dependence is often a financial trap. The most direct way to lower farm costs is to help farmers cut inputs without taking the hit first. That means addressing extreme corporate concentration and rebuilding USDA technical assistance so farmers can adopt proven cost-cutting practices \u2013 cover crops, diversified rotations, nutrient management, buffers, and managed grazing where relevant. This is an off-ramp from the chemical treadmill that\u2019s making farmers poorer and the food system more toxic.<\/p>\n Third, we need to use public dollars to make healthier food the default \u2013 starting with kids. Telling families to \u201ceat healthy\u201d fails if healthy food is priced out of reach. Policy has to move markets. That means we should align procurement and subsidies with health: strengthen school-meal standards, fund scratch-cooking kitchens in schools, and use purchasing rules to favor minimally processed foods and higher standards \u2013 organic and regenerative where feasible, broader regenerative practices where not \u2013 so demand and scale drive prices down. We should shift subsidies away from chemical-intensive commodity pipelines that feed ultra-processed food and toward soil-health outcomes and diversified production that lowers input costs. We should also invest in regional processing and local supply chains so farmers keep more of the food dollar and communities get fresher food at lower prices.<\/p>\n The common assumption is that healthy food and affordability are contradictory goals. In a year when both priorities will be top of mind for Americans, Democrats should show that the two can go hand in hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On 25 February, in her opening remarks at her Senate confirmation hearing, Casey Means, Donald Trump\u2019s nominee for surgeon general, called on the US government to address key drivers of chronic disease, including \u201cultraprocessed foods, industrial chemical exposure\u201d and other factors. The same month, in a provocative Super Bowl ad for the federal government\u2019s RealFood.gov<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[581,1725,2021,580,3442,3225,23564,23565,6263,23566],"class_list":{"0":"post-45939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-democrats","9":"tag-food","10":"tag-healthy","11":"tag-issue","12":"tag-justin","13":"tag-ryan","14":"tag-surrendering","15":"tag-talbot","16":"tag-tim","17":"tag-zorn"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}