A conservative Washington think tank that opposed a federal ban of trans fats has also actively campaigned against climate science and environmental regulation, and is funded by secret donors.
The government on Tuesday announced a ban of industrial partially hydrogenated oils, the primary source of artificial trans fats, giving food manufacturers three years to remove them from their products. Food and Drug Administration acting commissioner Stephen Ostroff said the ban “is expected to reduce coronary heart disease and prevent thousands of fatal heart attacks every year.”
Five European countries already ban trans fats. California and several U.S. cities, including New York City, ban them in restaurant food.
But the federal ban had its opponents. The National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), which identifies itself as a “non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative” think tank, campaigned against it, calling it a “horrible idea.”
The NCPPR argued that the solution to minimizing trans fats in foods is to allow the free market to operate.
Senior Fellow Jeff Stier claimed that it was through “markets respond[ing] to consumer demand” that the amount of trans fats in foods has decreased in recent years. But according to a 2011 article in the British Medical Journal, it was the U.S. government’s 2006 mandate that corporations label trans fat content in food that led to the decrease.
Stier and the NCPPR also oppose mandatory food labeling.
Stier referred to organic food as “a detriment to public health” in 2007. And he calls the free market the solution to the obesity crisis.
He is also a climate change denier who warns of a conspiracy he calls “the global warming agenda.”
In its summer 2014 newsletter, the NCPPR harangued Apple for what it described as the company’s “radical environmental policies.”
So who are these people who defend what many would consider indefensible? And who pays for this stuff?
The NCPPR has operated since the beginning of the Reagan era. By its own count, its handful of staff reached the peak of their influence in 2005, with 8,046 media interviews, citations and op-eds. Amy and David Ridenour, its chairman and president, respectively — who together made almost $500,000 in 2013, according to the organization’s 2013 990 tax form — have a history of lobbying on behalf of tobacco corporations and against environmental regulations.
Non-profits that describe themselves as charitable organizations, as NCPPR does, are not required to disclose their donors.
In a late 2009 blog post on the NCPPR website, Ridenour claimed that global warming is the United Nations’ “established religion” and that the international community suffers from “blind adherence to an unproven premise.” Media Matters found tax records of fossil fuel giant ExxonMobil showing that it and its foundation donated as much as $55,000 a year to the NCCPR last decade.
The NCPPR funneled money from former super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials. The Washington Post reported in 2006 that “Abramoff was using Ridenour’s National Center for Public Policy Research to hide the source of funding for trips and other ventures intended to boost the interests of his lobbying clients, e-mails show.”
Watchdog organization CitizenAudit discovered that the NCPPR gets funds for Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, two charities that bankroll right-wing organizations.
Although it has just five employees, Donors Capital Fund has an enormous impact. Mother Jones refers to it as the “dark-money ATM of the conservative movement,” explaining that the group “allows wealthy contributors who want to donate millions to the most important causes on the right to do so anonymously, essentially scrubbing the identity of those underwriting conservative and libertarian organizations.”
Some of NCPPR’s money also comes from aggressive fundraising letters. Critics claim the organization acquires “the names of older people and mail them requests for donations. These requests are sent with letters intended to scare the recipient into donating. The NCPPR’s 2011 independent audit, the most recent available on its website, found that $8.2 million of its $10 million in expenses went to direct mailing fees.
A 1998 investigation by the San Francisco Examiner included NCPPR among what it called “the fear merchants.”
Stier previously worked as the associate director of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), a pro-corporate advocacy group that has received extensive funding from large multinationals, including McDonald’s.
Stier responded to an email inquiry by referring to his written work. Amy Ridenour did not return a request for comment.
(This post is from our blog: Unofficial Sources.)
Ben Norton is a freelance writer.
Photo Illustration by Scott Olson/Getty Images
A handy link for anybody researching the legalities:
http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/trans-fat-and-menu-labeling-legislation.aspx
What Wnt said just below constitutes one of those times I find myself occasionally agreeing with him.
This isn’t some sort of police-state fascist move or ridiculous prejudicial move like limiting the sale of fountain sodas to 12oz or 16oz or whatever (penalising the consumer who might be sharing and saving money (the cup is the real cost to most sellers; anything like that soda law only acts as a profit enhancement) while doing nothing to stop them from going out and buying a 3L bottle for a bit more).
The history of the processed foods industries (and they are industries; there is little natural about them) is absolutely horrifying, and actually surpass, in most cases, the moves that every other corrupt industry participates in. You can be sure that if it turned out melamine would make people plunk out more money on garbage food, they’d find a way to legalise it (while still scorning the Chinese for it constantly getting into their supplies).
When it comes to *food* we need protections, and in this case a larger government CAN be good. A quick reading of the meat industry, for instance, at the turn of the 20th century, would freak most contemporary people out — at the same time they are chugging liquids with artificial sweeteners that turn into formaldehyde, a chemical used for embalming dead people, eating food which pushes one into precocious puberty at earlier and earlier ages (8, 10 at times), partaking of ‘food’ which is heavily chemically and antibiotically treated, and basically destroying the metabolism while at the same time causing an increase of malnourishment, obesity and a large swath of diseases that derive largely from the Standard American Diet (“the SAD”).
Taste, satiety, and whatnot are all used to pump up what is well-acknowledged in the food sciences as addictive qualities (“bliss points” being one key factor). This is all done knowingly and wittingly, with the goal of increased sales to already product-dependent consumers. One of the larger aspects of both reaching these bliss points (mostly a combination of fat %, sweetness %, mouthfeel/texture) and one of the biggest contributors to shelf-life and such is indeed transfats. They’re not natural fats. And transfats aren’t the same thing as saturated fats.
Of course, knocking this down (if it really happens) won’t do anything about the plethora of other problems inherent in the industrialisation of and manipulation of food supply and the growing already massive reliance on processed foods, especially in food deserts…
Legislation like this is nice, but it’s no substitution for subsidising healthier foods (like some of the farmers markets will do by offering double value on a ‘food stamp’ card for produce) and enabling those who need help to ACCESS healthier foods in food deserts where fresh food is available and affordable to those living at or below the poverty line — instead of subsidising the stuff that goes into garbage instead (HFCS, soy, GMO, unhealthy cooking oils, dwarf wheat, etc). If you’re living on $3-4 a day, there’s no way you can eat a healthy properly varied fresh diet.
What hasn’t been talked about much, of course, is how TPP and its related ilk will be affecting the food supply. And it will.
Frankly the FDA itself isn’t even funded enough to do what it’s supposed to do (if it would). So many things need overhauled, including the queerly changing concept of ‘nutrition’ and what a ‘food’ is that wholesomeness has gone out the window and science hasn’t even been much of a part of the conversation since a politician and a couple bad dieticians decided to change the American diet completely around in the 70s or so — precisely when all of these health problems began to take root, and the 80s/90s, when it exploded (and transfats became de rigeur and “indispensible”).
There are some great books (albeit a bit biased in either direction) on the history of and rise of the processed food industry and the financial, political and psychological aspects of all of this.
Separately from those books (I can list a few but I don’t have my reading list handy atm), both Taubes and Pollan have definitely written books VERY much worth checking out that also touch upon these ideas; Taubes’ youtube videos actually go more into anthropology than his book, but his first, longer book goes into some of the history; Pollan is especially good for a more contemplative study on the changing concepts of what constitutes ‘food’.
Until we come up with a healthier definition of food, and we don’t include artificial chemicals, unpronounceable ingredients, preservatives and colourings which are known to cause health problems, and so forth, dabbling with the transfat issue is really just going to wind up being a drop in a bucket no more likely to make a difference in the long run as provide us with some seeming alternative/”substitute” to try to “do the same thing” that the transfats are doing that, 5-10+ years later, we’ll find out has horrible (and maybe even more horrible) health effects.
Maryanne, you are not the whole free market. There are a lot of people in this country who do no care much for their health. Using the force of government to try to fix their health problems is a waste of time, money, and energy.
The sort of bottle caps you find on two-liter diet cola bottles actually dissolve pretty well in vegetable oil. So if a food company tops out its oil reserves with a few containers of old bottle caps, would you say the resulting health problems you get when you eat unlabelled food containing bottle caps is something for the free market to fix?
Like bottle caps, trans fats are a bulk oily substance that can be mixed into food. But they’re not food! They didn’t grow on a tree, they were made over a platinum catalyst. And over a century they have killed MILLIONS of people. In order to defend that kind of practice as free market capitalism, you practically have to believe that big business owners have an intrinsically holy, magic touch that can convert any action, activity or substance into an unquestionable component of the natural order, as if they were indeed the One God themselves. Alas, that seems to be a very common faith these days.
Julia,
Since left and right are fake sides of every issue used to break everyone into team, I use quotations. Also, nothing I stated makes me sound like an idiot. I pointed out that the author used state-funded left-wing sources to dispute the right-wing sources she wanted to discredit. This article is a waste of time and space, again dividing people into two groups. Making yet another issue black and white. When in reality (as indicated by others who have commented on this article) this a grey area. All questions of state power is a gray area.
And yes I’m sure I’d be labeled a libertarian. I don’t believe my opinions and feelings should govern the lives of others.
Regardless of NCCPR’s funding and motivation, I oppose a ban on trans fats (while also supporting mandatory food labels). People have a right to know what they’re ingesting. But they also have a right to decide what they ingest. Sure, trans fats are horribly unhealthy. But why stop there? Sugar is horribly unhealthy, HFCS (the production of which is *subsidized*) is even worse. So are alcohol and cigarettes. If we ban trans fats, why not ban all those other things? You cannot legislate people back to health. It has never worked and never will. In a free country, people should be free (and accept the responsibility) to make their own choices.
The most effective policy is one of education and information (hence my support of food labels). An astounding number of people still smoke, despite the near-universal awareness that smoking is deadly. But perhaps more astounding is how many *fewer* smokers there are than there used to be. None of my friends ever smoked, even before it was banned in all the bars and restaurants. But almost everyone in my parents’ generation smoked when they were my age. Sometimes it takes a generational shift in attitudes.
It is true that killing your customers with heart attacks is a poor business model. The Trans Fat industry should be allowed to at least propose a solution.
Luckily, I have a think tank which has been working on this very problem. Customers could be offered a rebate for signing long term deals to buy trans fats. For example, the customer would contract to buy two pounds of trans fat every month, for a period of 10 years. Even if they died of a heart attack, the contract would remain valid, and their estate would be obligated to fulfil the commitment. This is a win-win scenario. The consumer gets a long term price discount and peace of mind from knowing they will never run short of trans fat. The company gets a guaranteed revenue stream and is no longer held hostage to the health of their customers.
But as usual, the government will wade into the fray and start mandating things. The only guarantee is that everyone will be left dissatisfied and unhappy.
Would you call this arrangement “fat and trade”, Duce?
hey, look: NCPPR are the talking point people for Monsanto’s campaign against “junk science” questioning their products http://www.nationalcenter.org/PR-Monsanto_GMOs_Results_012814.html
funny how the “free market” always does what “Big Money” wants. a fair market would not allow such underhanded “lying”. lol Neoliiberalism has won the battle over the right of citizens to have healthy and safe lives and environment. Cause “markets.”
“markets respond[ing] to consumer demand” Wut the wut???? I never demanded trans fats in my food. And I’m pretty sure no one else did either.
You might not have known trans fats were in your food. “Free markets” don’t like labeling food either, it seems.
I was remiss in not linking to this classic discussion of food labeling and government regulation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy6uLfermPU
Calling the free market the solution to the obesity crisis… while opposing mandatory food labeling. That’s a pretty good juxtaposition you found there.
When “capitalism” involves markets where you don’t have the information you need to make a choice, that’s pretty useless. When you don’t have a choice at all (try buying pistachio nuts, or eyeglasses), it’s worse. Our country is full of capitalist idealists who would like nothing better than one company in charge of everything, managing what the people buy and sell and how much they work for it all without accountability in secret. Such a thing is like Soviet Communism, but without the aspiration to principle.
To be clear: the ‘trans fats’ in food are the result of a chemical synthetic process, partial hydrogenation, done over a platinum catalyst at high temperatures in a chemical vat. They are unnatural and have killed people in numbers to rival the Holocaust. They are not “safe” because they are not food, but a chemistry experiment gone badly awry. The only real advantage they have is in being slightly cheaper than the lard/tallow they are meant to mimic.
These guys seem to just disagree with government “banning” and “mandating” things. Also, don’t source Media Matters and Mother Jones if you don’t want the article seem like just a “left” response to the “right”.
Do you reckon you’re a ‘libertarian?’
Marc: Don’t excessively misuse quotation marks if you don’t want to sound like an “idiot.”
Generally I’ve seen a lot of “idiots” go around “misusing quotation marks” to be snide and use linguistic methods to assert that they disagree with the “character” or the “views” of “journalists” and other “people” they don’t agree with in order to subtly (or not so subtly) have the reader insert prejudgments and prejudices about the person or subject they’re writing it about, and question their self- (or other-party-) reporting — all while pretending to maintain a veneer of “objectivity”.
I generally call them “assholes” not “idiots”. Unless I agree with them. In this case, (arguably) “left” and “right” in context was used correctly, more or less (fuzzy concepts with generally preconceived ideas (which often don’t reflect reality but people seem to think they do).
The whole “banning” and “mandating” thing, though, speaks to the other explanation.