Not for nothing do I have an RSS feed for the blog Obama Foodarama. In addition to telling me about the latest collectible Obama cookies, the sometimes-groan-inducing site (“a daily diary of the Obama foodscape, one byte at a time”) keeps me up-to-date on the O Administration’s food policy choices. Yesterday, they noted that USDA secretary Tom Vilsack—already under suspicion by enviros and sustainability advocates because of his previous support for industrial hog farms, corn-based ethanol, and Monsanto—is considering a lobbyist to head the USDA’s Food and Safety Inspection Service, which oversees national standards and inspections for meat, poultry, and eggs (the folks responsible for meat recalls, among other things.) And not just any lobbyist, but Barbara J. Masters, a senior policy advisor for Olsson Frank Weeda Terman Bode Matz PC, the biggest Big Ag lobbying firm in Washington. According to Olsson Frank’s web site, their aim in working with agricultural producers is to limit “the costs associated with regulatory actions, such as plant closures, and provide the legal expertise to … get plants back up and running as soon as possible.” In other words, they work with companies that commit health and safety violations and lobby against more stringent standards for food safety. As OF notes, “It’s appalling, and reprehensible, that a lobbyist is being considered for a top position in an agency that’s already fraught with accusations of being ‘in the pocket’ of Big Ag.” Why Vilsack would consider Masters at all—when, as OF notes, there are other qualified candidates, like Seattle food-safety crusader Bill Marler, who aren’t similarly compromised—is a troubling msytery.

11 replies on “Big Ag Lobbyist to Oversee Food Safety?”

  2. Obviously, this is yet another master stroke by the God Obama, yet another head fake right, just like loading up the stimulus with huge GOP style tax cuts or cutting the fmaily planning investment, I mean, handout to sex starved immoral people. You see, adopting right wing mores or lobbyist ways is really “change.” The process by which this is change is a mystery; accept it and have Faith.

    It’s NOTHING LIKE THAT TRIANGULATING ASSHOLE Billdawg when he had lobbyists and made compromises, ok?

    Unity,

  3. Vilsack is a pander to Iowa. EVERY pol panders to Iowa, but this is kinda disgusting. Ethanol is a sham, everyone knows it, but Gub-mint subsidies keep the sham rolling. Where’s that budges scalpel when we need it, Obama? He said it himself in the inaugural…. Programs that don’t work need to be cut. That describes ethanol subsidies better than any other government program.

  5. The problem lies with the original legislative mandate of the USDA and the FDA. They are not meant to be consumer organizations. They are by design organizations charged to promote business. Their activity regarding food safety is limited by statute to basically putting out fires that would undermine consumer confidence. Until the fundamental mission of these organization changes you will not be seeing an administration somehow morphing them into consumer advocacy organization.

  6. @4,

    You are correct, sir! WOD sucks like a vacuum in a ton of ways. I also think that legalizing industrial hemp could alleviate a lot of issues from different harvests as well. Paper, clothing, feed, food products.

  7. @3 and @4 are spot on.

    The FDA and USDA are set up to be pushers, when you look at their bureaucratic flowcharts and the accompanying Congressional committees.

  8. Thanks for reporting this; that’s exactly the kind of person we DON’T need in that position. But @5 is right – Big Ag (like Big Pharma) is a huge industry, and reforming it will require immense expenditure of political capital. Not sure it should be at the top of Obama’s priority list, but it’s good to make sure it doesn’t go away. Now’s a good time to use this:

    http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

  9. So now liberals and progressives are only now waking up to the sad reality of the FDA and USDA? Only now? People have been sounding the alarm for years about how much of a joke they are in preventing problems and how they are nothing more than a rest stop for Midwestern state bureaucrats to line the pockets of their constituents. The only reason you didn’t listen was because it was coming from libertarians and you thought the worst outcomes if they had their way. Never mind that simply listening to them would be useful. Nobody said you had to destroy both of them.

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