A group of prominent foodie intellectuals are
calling for President Obama to cement “his legacy” by implementing
a national food policy. In a recent
Washington Post op-ed, author and Berkeley professor
Michael Pollan, New York Times food columnist Mark
Bittman, Union of Concerned Scientists researcher Ricardo Salvador,
and Catholic University human rights professor Olivier De Schutter
laid out their plan for driving American agriculture, food
production, and eating habits in the right direction via increased
federal micromanagement of the food economy.
The national food policy Pollan et al. dream of wouldn’t simply
guide federal nutrition recommendations, public health campaigns,
or farm subsidies. It would include everything from environmental
policy to rules on food marketing to raising fast-food workers’
wages.
“When hundreds of thousands of annual deaths are preventable—as
the deaths from the chronic diseases linked to the modern American
way of eating surely are—preventing those needless deaths is a
national priority,” they write.
A national food policy would do that, by investing resources to
guarantee that: All Americans have access to healthful food; Farm
policies are designed to support our public health and
environmental objectives; Our food supply is free of toxic
bacteria, chemicals and drugs; Production and marketing of our food
are done transparently; The food industry pays a fair wage to those
it employs; Food marketing sets children up for healthful lives by
instilling in them a habit of eating real food; Animals are treated
with compassion and attention to their well-being; The food
system’s carbon footprint is reduced, and the amount of carbon
sequestered on farmland is increased; The food system is
sufficiently resilient to withstand the effects of climate
change.
Only those with a vested interest in the status quo would argue
against creating public policies with these goals.
That last little flourish is fun, because it positions anyone
opposed to massive federal intervention in the “food system as a
whole” as at worst cartoonishly evil—you’re either with us or
you want Americans to live on Cheetos and three-eyed fish!—and
at best suspiciously interested in perpetuating the status quo.
There is no rhetorical room here to care about advancing nutrition
science, fixing federal farm policy, expanding access to healthy
foods, promoting humane treatment of livestock, or anything related
to agriculture and eating without endorsing intense government
action as the best way to accomplish these goals.
The good news, they tell us, is that “solutions are within
reach”—and it’s here that this piece really start to get amazing.
The authors acknowledge that many of the problems with America’s
food economy are not market failures at all but “largely a result
of government policies.” So the solution surely must be to get
goverment meddling out of food and farm policy as much as possible,
no?
Ha!
“We know that the government has the power to reshape the food
system because it has already done so at least once—when President
Richard Nixon rejiggered farm policy to boost production of corn
and soy to drive down food prices,” they write. And because
government can, it should, apparently. The authors are somehow able
to see the corrosive effect of previous government overreach on our
food system, but they feel confident that this
time! they’ll get it right. “As Obama begins the last two
years of his administration facing an
obstructionist Republican Congress, this is an area where he
can act on his own—and his legacy may depend on him doing so,” they
suggest, urging Obama to “announce an executive order establishing
a national policy for food, health and well-being.”
The idea that cooking, eating, and enjoying nutritious foods is
elitist is a silly and destructive one, and I’ve never been one to
mock folks like Bittman and Pollan for their kale chips or food
philosophies. But it doesn’t get much more elitist than thinking
the U.S. food system as a whole would be better off by
circumventing not just markets but also any Congressional debate.
Just relax and let the top men take care of it…
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