Children's Rights and the Politics of Food: Big Food Versus Little People
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12348 |
| Published date | 01 April 2018 |
| Date | 01 April 2018 |
| Author | Barbara Bennett Woodhouse,Charles F. Woodhouse |
ARTICLES
CHILDREN’S RIGHTS AND THE POLITICS OF FOOD:
BIG FOOD VERSUS LITTLE PEOPLE
Barbara Bennett Woodhouse
1
and Charles F. Woodhouse
1
This article traces the battle in the United States during the Obama administration, continuing into the Trump administration,
to protect children’s rights to food. It explores barriers to development of sound, science-based food policies, including the
refusal to recognize food as a human right, anti-science denialism, hostility toward government regulation, and relative power-
lessness of children. It points to the role of a “Big Food Pyramid” composed of powerful food industry and large scale distribu-
tion and marketing interests in blocking sound policies in prenatal and infant nutrition, school lunches, SNAP and WIC, the
marketing to children of high fat and fructose-laden products, and campaigns to increase youth fitness. While predicting a con-
tinuing assault at the federal level on children’s rights to safe and healthy foods, the article highlights the positive role of con-
sumer demand in shaping marketing, labeling and production of food and opportunities for leaders in the food industry and in
government at local, municipal and state levels to continue the battle for soundfood policies.
Key Points for the Family Court Community:
To learn about international law on children’s right to food
To understand how politics affects regulation of food at the federal level
To understand the actions—that can be both beneficial and harmful to America’s children—of the food industry’s
production, processing, and marketing of food
To understand early actions of the Trump administration that are harmful to the health and development of America’s
children
To learn and appreciate what food science can teach public policy makers about food safety and children’s nutrition
To build modest optimism that consumer expectations and the Clean Label Movement can counter retrogressive
government food policies
Keywords: Agribusiness; Anti-Science Denialism; Childhood Nutrition; Children’s Rights; Clean Label Movement;
Federal Regulation of Food; Food and Agricultural Policy; and School Lunches.
I. INTRODUCTION
This article traces the uphill battle for children’s rights to healthy food and the stunning setbacks
delivered by Trump-era policies. As the 2016 election approached, food policy expert and author
Michael Pollan, in a lengthy New York Times article, summarized the rocky progress of the Obama
administration and highlighted the challenges facing any incoming administration.
2
Pollan’s
comments on food policy, which had been highly influential, bookended the Obama administration.
Eight years before, Pollan had published an open letter to the newly elected President Obama in the
New York Times, titled “Farmer in Chief,” calling on him to reform the nation’s unsustainable agri-
culture policies and to make the campaign for healthful sustainable food a top priority. In his 2016
article, Pollan noted that his letter had found its mark and Obama responded positively to the call.
The eight years that followed saw many promising initiatives but also exposed the enormous power
of Big Food to block any changes they opposed. Many of these changes affected children’s right to
safe and healthy food.
Corresponding: barbara.woodhouse@emory.edu; cfw@regulatory-food-science.com
FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 56 No. 2, April 2018 287–307
V
C2018 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts
How could the interests of children in a land of plenty, like the United States, become marginal-
ized in shaping food policy? Many observers blame what Pollan has identified as “the Big Food
pyramid.” As Pollan explained:
Simply put, [Big Food] is the $1.5 trillion industry that grows, rears, slaughters, processes, imports, pack-
ages and retails most of the food Americans eat. Actually, there are at least four distinct levels to this
towering food pyramid. At its base stands Big Ag, which consists primarily of the corn-and-soybean-
industrial complex in the Farm Belt, as well as the growers of other so-called commodity crops and the
small handful of companies that supply these farmers with seeds and chemicals. Big Ag in turn supplies
the feed grain for Big Meat—all the animals funneled into the tiny number of companies that process and
most of the meat we eat—and the raw ingredients for the packaged-food sector, which transforms those
commodity crops into the building blocks of processed foods: the corn into high fructose corn syrup and
all the other chemical novelties on the processed food label, and the soy into the oil in which much of fast
food is fried. At the top of the Big Food pyramid sit the supermarket retailers and fast-food franchises.
3
Looking at the past eight years, Pollan summarized the situation as of October 2016. His article
appeared at a time when it looked as if Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton might be the next
president. Even prior to the Trump victory, Pollan pointed out that the Obama administration reforms
had repeatedly been defeated or derailed by opposition from the Big Food pyramid. “As the Obamas
prepare to leave the White House,” he opined, “Big Food can congratulate itself on retaining its
political grip on Washington. It seems very unlikely that the next occupant of the White House is
going to pose as stiff a challenge.”
4
In this article we review the recent politics of U.S. food policy. We argue that the Trump admin-
istration, far from consolidating gains achieved during the Obama administration, has systemati-
cally placed the demands of huge corporations that profit from agribusiness above the welfare of
children and their families. As in other areas, such as climate change and healthcare, the Trump
administration has ignored or denied the weight of scientific evidence regarding the impact on chil-
dren of its anti-regulatory policies. It has also ignored the human rights of the child, recognized
around the globe, to government policies that treat children’s access to healthy, nutritious food as a
paramount value. In Part I, we introduce the policy issues in the contemporary context. In Part II,
we explore the concept of food as a human right. In Part III, we examine the roles of anti-science
denialism, powerful lobbying interests, and anti-regulatory ideology in limiting progress toward a
safer, more sustainable food policy. Part IV reviews the battle for children’s nutrition as it had
been waged along different fronts during the Obama years. These fronts included lactation policy;
federal food programs such as school lunches, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP), and the Women Infants and Children program (WIC); and marketing of high-fat and
fructose-laden products. Despite notable successes and support from scientists, consumers, and the
military, the battle for healthy food was far from over as the new administration took over in
Washington, D.C. in January 2017. In Part V, we discuss the Trump administration’s rollback of
policies protecting children’s access to safe and healthy food and the likely trajectory of future
policy under Trump’s leadership. We conclude, in Part VI, with some optimistic remarks about the
power of state and local governments, of progressive food industry leaders, and of consumers
themselves to hold the line and even move forward in the campaign for children’s rights to safe
and sustainable food policies.
II. FOOD AS A HUMAN RIGHT
Americans have been slow to embrace the notion of food as a human right.
5
In contrast to political
rights, economic and social rights are often stigmatized as anti-American and accused of encouraging
freeloading and sapping individual initiative. Take, for example, public reaction to the speech to
wealthy donors in May 2012 in which the then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney
288 FAMILY COURT REVIEW
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