WASHINGTON, D.C. — The nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has vowed to “weaponize” regulatory agencies against modern agriculture and undo decades of farm policy.
President-elect Donald Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as secretary of the HHS, making the announcement on social media saying, in part: “HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country.”
Leading the HHS will give the prominent vaccine skeptic oversight over U.S. food and healthcare organizations. He would oversee the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has played a prominent role responding to food safety lapses — including an E. coli outbreak tied to McDonald’s Quarter Pounders — and the ongoing spread of H5N1 bird flu virus, which made the jump from dairy cows to humans earlier this year.
The concern for American agriculture producers?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is housed within HHS. The FDA is charged with ensuring a safe food supply by regulating all foods that aren’t meat, poultry, or processed egg products. It has a hand in deciding whether new biotechnology is approved for commercial use. And it oversees food labeling requirements.
Kennedy has previously promised to overhaul the federal public health industry, and singled out the food sector for the “mass poisoning of American children” through food ingredients and additives. The former presidential candidate has also pushed to restrict the use of pesticides and eliminate “seed oils” in food, saying he’s prepared to reverse 80 years of farm policy that has promoted industrial agriculture and “factory farming.”
Pesticides are a focal point of Kennedy’s agricultural reformation. He has gone as far as saying he would “weaponize” regulatory agencies to eliminate the use of pesticides and has frequently used animal-activist terminology like “factory farming.”
RFK Jr. also wants to ditch farm commodities and has accused the U.S. food industry of engaging in the “massive poisoning” of Americans.
Most recently, Kennedy stated he wanted to replace seed oils with tallow oil and eliminate fluoride in the country’s water supply, a decision that would upend one of the nation’s largest public health initiatives. Over social media, Kennedy has also criticized what he calls an epidemic of “chronic disease,” including autism, obesity and diabetes, brought on by foodstuffs produced (and in some cases, processed) by American farmers and the ag industry.
Trump didn’t offer many specifics about his agriculture policies during the campaign, other than expressing a desire to “let Kennedy go wild” on health and food policies after becoming president-elect and raising tariffs on other countries importing to the U.S.
Production agriculture producers will be affected if he carries out his pledge to impose widespread tariffs. During the first Trump administration, countries like China responded to Trump’s tariffs by imposing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports like the corn and soybeans routinely sold overseas. Trump countered by offering massive multibillion-dollar, taxpayer-funded aid, to farmers to help them financially weather the trade war.
