Not for You 47 Percent?
Mitt Romney hasn't divulged
many details about what kind of agriculture policy he'd pursue as
president. (Sound familiar?)
But all signs suggest that he'd follow the agribiz party line. As Wayne Barrett
showed in a recent Nation piece (my comment here), Romney has ties to agribusiness giant Monsanto that
date to the '70s, when GMO seeds were an R&D project, not a business model.
According to Barrett, Romney, then a young Bain
consultant, helped nudge Monsanto on its path away from disgraced industrial
chemical concern toward its current status as world-beating agribiz player.
Then there's the agribiz execs and
shills the GOP nominee tapped for his campaign's Agriculture
Advisory Committee.
But guess what? In the privacy of his campaign
jet, the beleaguered presidential contender apparently eats organic, reports the Today show's
Peter Alexander: And, while I've never been invited up front, sources close to
the campaign tell me the shelves are stocked with a wide variety of healthy
fare. Kashi cereals, hummus, pita as well as organic applesauce are well
stocked. Everything's organic, I'm told, including the ingredients to Romney's
favorite, peanut butter and honey sandwiches.
Nor is this the first time the Romney family has
been linked to organic food. Get a load of this2002 profile of
Ann Romney from the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram & Gazette: Mrs.
Romney was introduced to several practitioners of holistic medicine, who
persuaded her to adopt alternative therapies. She now eats organic foods and
very little meat. She practices reflexology and undergoes acupuncture
treatments. She credits the lifestyle with turning her health around.
I have calls and emails into the Romney campaign
to confirm these reports. I have yet to hear back. But if they're true—and it's
hard to imagine either the Romney’s or the journalists would make them
up—Romney would hardly be the only prominent politician to publicly promote
genetically modified foods while privately avoiding them by sticking to
organics. (USDA organic code forbids GMOs from any food labeled organic, along with
the application of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides).
Indeed, he's following a tradition that dates to
Bill Clinton, includes George W. Bush and his family, and is alive and well in
the White House of Romney's opponent, Barack Obama. What's my evidence that the
Clintons and Bushes ate organic? Get this, from someone who knows—Walter Scheib,
who served as White House executive chef during the Clinton and Bush years:
From 1994 to 2005 I was the executive chef at
the White House. This offered me not only the personal honor of serving two
unique and interesting first families, but the professional challenge of
fulfilling Hillary Clinton's mandate of bringing contemporary American cuisine
and nutritionally responsible food to the White House.
This meant that nearly all the product used was
obtained from local growers and suppliers. There was a small garden on the roof
of the White House where produce was grown.The ethic of the purchasing and the
cooking at the White House under my direction and under the continuing
direction of [current Obama White House executive chef] Cris Comerford is one
of respect for the pedigree of the product and manner it is grown, gathered,
raised or caught.
The Clinton and Bush families dined regularly on
organic foods. Both wagyu and grass-fed beef were frequently used.And here's
Scheib again, in an interview with
the blog Obama Foodorama, on Hillary Clinton's unheralded rooftop
veggie garden: "Not certified organic," Mr. Scheib
said. "But everything was absolutely grown without pesticides and
fertilizers. I guess it's what these days we call 'natural.'"
And "the emphasis on organics became even
more important when the Bushes arrived in the White House," Obama
Foodorama reported. "Laura Bush was 'adamant' about organics,
according to Mr. Scheib." Scheib also told the New York Times that Laura Bush
"insisted that fresh, organic foods be served in the White House,"
but she just didn't talk "much about it outside the house."
While the Clintons and Bushes quietly dined on
organic and grass-fed, their administrations pushed policies that propped up
industrial agriculture and the companies that dominate it. Clinton promoted GMOs to
the very end of his term—a cause his wife
Hillary has kept up as secretary of state. At least Clinton was
fairly progressive on maintaining strict USDA standards for organic farming;
Bush matched Clinton's
zeal for propping up industrial farming but also tried to
weaken organic standards.
As for the Obamas, Michelle Obama, unlike her
predecessors, was pretty open about her preference for organics—at least at
first. For a pre-election 2008 profile, Ms. Obama told theThe New Yorker that
"in my household, over the last year we have just shifted to
organic." She added a little critique of a famous industrial-food
sweetener:
And the fruit-juice-box thing, and we think—we think—that's
juice. And you start reading the labels and you realize there's high-fructose
corn syrup in everything we're eating. Every jelly, every juice. Everything
that's in a bottle or a package is like poison in a way that most people don't
even know…
And, of course, soon after she moved into the
White House, Ms. Obama famously broke ground on an organic garden on the
lawn—and launched a
campaign to inspire children to make healthier food choices.
But the agrichemical industry quickly chided the Obamas for not using "crop protection
products" (i.e., pesticides) in their garden; the administration began making
pro-agribiz appointments and policy moves (a trend that continues to this
day); and Michelle Obama shifted her
kids' health campaign to emphasize exercise over diet change.
Now the Obamas appear to have settled into the
pattern established by their predecessors: privately eat organic while publicly
maintaining the food system status quo—a pattern that Romney, if he wins, seems
ready to maintain. So, organic for the elite, GMOs for everyone else? That's
precisely the kind of exclusive mindset that gives organic food a bad name.
—By Tom Philpott
Just thought you may want to know that the folks who run the world do not eat what they sell and promote. Think About It and remember,
CHIT CHAT WON'T BURN FAT
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