President-elect Donald Trump's choice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services has some in the food, nutrition and agriculture industry concerned about his potential to affect the forthcoming Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the FDA's "healthy" foods definition.
Trump has said he would allow the leader of the Make America Healthy Again movement, which has targeted ultraprocessed foods, food additives, pesticides and even seed oils, to "go wild" on food issues, but it's as yet unclear how much influence Kennedy will have. As many Democrats point out, Kennedy’s positions on food and agriculture are often at odds with Trump’s actions during his first administration.
As HHS secretary, Kennedy would oversee the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health, among other agencies. FDA regulates about 80% of the U.S. food supply; USDA oversees the safety of meat and poultry. FDA also regulates animal feed, animal drugs, and animal biotechnology.
CDC and FDA are also responsible for investigating most food safety issues, like the recent E. coli outbreak linked to some McDonald’s Quarter Pounders.
“There are very few Americans, if any, who are not subject to the authority of HHS,” said Peter Lurie, president and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “He has the potential to wreak havoc on almost everybody in this country, directly or otherwise.”
The support Trump received from rural America and the agriculture industry during the election creates an expectation for the incoming administration in regards to the food system and agricultural economy, said Kristi Boswell, an agriculture policy lawyer and former adviser to Trump-era Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.
“There’s a lot of … admittedly nerves,” Boswell said. “Also I think there’ll be some opportunities to engage there as well.”
Kristi Boswell, former USDA adviserSome of this engagement may focus on education and advocacy by the incoming USDA leadership and agriculture industry on “traditional agriculture” and the science-based research that supports use of pesticides and herbicides, Boswell said.
One of the key ways Kennedy has pledged to reform agencies is by firing nutrition scientists.
“We’re going to change the personnel at the agencies,” Kennedy said at an October MAHA event. “We’re going to fire on Day One, or if we can’t fire them, we’re going to ship them to a new HHS headquarters in Guam — every nutritional scientist at FDA because all of them are corrupt and all of them are complicit in the poisoning of our children.”
Jerold Mande, CEO of Nourish Science and former USDA official during the Obama administration, said any new leader needs to understand the staff are there to help them.
“Your ability to get things done depends on the staff that's there," he said. "The notion that you could somehow come in, fire those people, bring in new people, and expect to get anything done in the next five years -- you've erased any chance you have to get anything done if you fire those people, right? Because you're going to bring in new people who have no idea how to get anything done in government.”
Jerold MandeBoswell said it’s clear the incoming Trump administration is focusing on government efficiency, so she anticipates a thorough review of positions and staffing within agencies.
Particularly with FDA, she suggested there will be a learning curve for Kennedy on exactly what these agencies do and how much overlap there is in the nutrition space.
“I hope that the first step is really identifying where those authorities lie, reviewing the efficiency within those missions and not just taking a broad paint brush, to 'nutrition agencies,'” Boswell said.
Megan Lott, deputy director of Healthy Eating Research at Duke University’s Global Health Institute, said there’s been a lot of positive change at FDA under Commissioner Robert Califf and that Kennedy's comments about staffing at FDA are concerning, particularly given the recently renewed focus on food and nutrition.
She said the nutrition and public health community generally support some of the broad ideas Kennedy has proposed, such as removing ultraprocessed foods from school meals or addressing additives. However, she emphasized that these changes need to be driven by science.
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“Given some of the other comments that have been made, it’s less clear how much science, how much of a role science, would play in the decision makings,” Lott said. “And that’s a little scary because then we just don’t know what is the why behind the recommendation.”
FDA’s Human Foods Program recently put out a series of priority deliverables for its first full year after reorganization. These included advancing several key regulations on food and nutrition like the "healthy" definition and front-of-pack labeling.
Based on his previous statements, Lurie said it would appear that Kennedy would support regulations on front-of-pack labeling and the "healthy" definition. However, he said it’s likely that food industries affected by and opposed to these rules will have a significant role in a Trump administration.
“How that internal contradiction is worked out will be one of the great dramas of the Trump administration,” Lurie said.
As with any administration change, Trump’s team will review regulations now in the rulemaking process. With the rules coming from FDA in particular, Boswell said to expect tweaks rather than massive reforms.
Future of the Dietary Guidelines
Perhaps the biggest question mark hovers over the fate of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Last month, the DGA Advisory Committee held its final meeting to discuss the scientific evidence that will likely shape its recommendations.
The DGAC is expected to put out its report with those recommendation by the end of the year. At that point, USDA and HHS are responsible for crafting the final guidelines. Each cycle, the two agencies trade off who will lead this final process.
This year, HHS holds that responsibility, said Lott.
Kennedy and other MAHA influencers have been particularly critical of the DGA process -- specifically, conflicts of interest among the panel of experts.
Lurie said the DGAC process is fairly open and transparent with regular meetings and opportunities for public comments. However, the process becomes a “black box” after the committee puts out its recommendations and USDA and HHS work on crafting the final guidelines, he said.
“The opportunities for mischief at that point are significant. And I absolutely do worry about what they will do,” Lurie said. “I worry that various industries, dairy and meat in particular, will have significant sway once things go behind closed doors.”
Typically, an administration's final guidelines vary only slightly from the DGAC recommendations.
“They have been constrained, and they ought to be constrained because, after all, these are the scientists whose expert advice they sought,” Lurie said. “One would hope they wouldn’t stray far. But with this crowd, all bets are off.”
The DGAs are important in shaping federal nutrition programs like school meals, WIC and SNAP. The Biden administration put out updated rules for these programs and what foods should be included based on the 2015-2020 guidelines, but the implementation date for some rules extends into the next administration.
A Trump administration could scrap these rules and put out its own version. This happened with school meal regulations during the first administration, and Lurie said he could anticipate changes to sodium and added sugar provisions that industry groups have opposed.
Similar to rules on a healthy definition and labeling, Lurie said the DGAs could be a place for Kennedy to follow through with his promises to stand up to the industry and resist changes.
“I'm optimistic on UPF because … it's set up to do the dietary guidelines next year. And that's a really impactful policy lever” because of how it guides federal purchases of food and school meals, said Mande, a critic of ultraprocessed foods.
Lott emphasized that the DGAC has a very scientific and evidence-based process. Sometimes, however, an administration can deviate from the recommendations in the final guidelines due to industry input. For example, in the 2015 guidelines, the DGAC included a section on sustainability and environmental impact with recommendations to reduce meat consumption. This was ultimately removed from the final guidelines.
Boswell said she believes that Kennedy and the incoming agriculture secretary would want to ensure public trust in the DGAs by keeping the guidelines backed by sound science. However, she acknowledged that this is an opportunity where MAHA principles could have an influence.
“There certainly would be significant impacts of whatever the dietary guidelines come out as that influence various child nutrition programs, WIC, school meals,” Boswell said. “We want to make sure that those are science-based and supported.”
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