An expected report Thursday from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. assessing the causes of chronic disease in children could test whether Republicans in Congress can get along with a health secretary keen on regulating farm and food companies.
Republican lawmakers representing agriculture and food manufacturing districts have warned Kennedy to lay off, but they and the industries they represent are still fretting the report. They worry it will point to pesticides and food dyes as potential causes for kids’ diseases and propose regulation that could cut profits and cost jobs. Even if Kennedy steers clear of regulatory proposals, they fear his report could dampen demand for the products their constituents make.
“We have 88,000 farms in Missouri, and so my goal is to make sure that we feed Missouri and we feed the world, and we make sure that our producers have the tools they need to have the most effective crops, the healthiest crops,” said GOP Rep. Mark Alford, who represents a broad swath of soybean and corn farms southeast of Kansas City.
President Donald Trump’s embrace of an environmental activist long on the far left of the Democratic Party worked out great in last year’s election and most Republicans in Congress endorsed Trump’s decision to let Kennedy “go wild” on health care.
But lately, they’ve asked him pointed questions about what’s coming in his Make America Healthy Again Commission’s report. Kennedy has said repeatedly he believes food companies make people sick for profit.
At a Senate hearing this week, Kennedy told Mississippi Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith that farmers have nothing to worry about from his report. He offered similar assurances to Republicans at a House hearing last week, including Andy Harris, whose Eastern Shore constituents use pesticides to protect their corn, soybeans, and wheat.
“We cannot make America healthy again without the partnership of the American farmers. We cannot be putting them out of business,” Kennedy told Harris.
Kennedy also sought to assuage Chuck Fleischmann, whose eastern Tennessee district includes a Mars candy plant that uses artificial dyes Kennedy believes are harming kids’ brains. The plant produces the country’s colorful peanut M&M supply.
“We can all have some M&Ms and little Debbies together,” Fleischmann told Kennedy, adding: “I think these dyes are safe.”
Fleischmann got Kennedy’s pledge to work with him and, so far, the GOP is holding its fire. When a POLITICO reporter asked Fleischmann about his concerns this week, he demurred, saying candy makers are more worried about cocoa tariffs than a crackdown on food manufacturing.
Other Republicans are all-in on Kennedy’s plans. During a confirmation hearing earlier this year, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville told Kennedy he thought one common dye, Red No. 3, which is used in candy, drinks and chips, causes cancer. “What in the heck’s going on?” Tuberville asked.
Whether Kennedy is successful in pursuing his goal of rooting out chemicals in our food will depend on whether he’s able to win more such allies.
‘Hijacked by radical groups’
Kennedy’s ideas about how to make Americans healthy — by restricting certain food ingredients and pesticides, removing fluoride from drinking water and discouraging Americans from eating ultraprocessed foods, among other things — are reminiscent of European-style rules many GOP members despise.
“We don’t need to be over-regulated, and the regulations that we do have need to be based on science,” said Alford.
The brother-in-law of a farmer, he co-led a letter in April signed by 78 other Republicans in the House and Senate urging Kennedy’s MAHA Commission “to use sound science and risk-based analysis in its policy decisions, particularly on crop protection tools and food-grade ingredients.”
“We’ve got to make sure that our policy from the EPA and others who are trying to regulate farming in America are not hijacked by radical groups, environmental groups, that really want to see us go back 100 years in our farming practices,” Alford told POLITICO.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, whose home state of Iowa keeps the world fed on corn, soybeans, and pork, also fears longtime GOP nemeses in the environmental movement are trying to infiltrate Trump’s government.
He said stakeholders are telling him “that the creation of this MAHA report has lacked transparency,” in a statement to POLITICO.
Grassley said he wanted to know whether Kennedy and the staff working on the report met with food and agriculture executives or only with environmental groups. He also questioned whether Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and other members of the MAHA Commission that Trump created in February were consulted in developing the report.
“We want to make sure sound science is the basis of these conclusions,” Grassley said.
MAHA’s influence
Kennedy’s report is expected to target pesticides as one of the many reasons for Americans’ soaring rates of chronic disease, said one person familiar with the matter granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Kennedy’s opposition to pesticides is well-known.
As a lawyer, he helped win a landmark lawsuit in which the plaintiff alleged that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weedkiller Roundup, caused his cancer. The German conglomerate Bayer, which makes Roundup, is facing billions in legal liability from thousands of lawsuits alleging similar harm.
Manufacturers maintain that these chemicals, used as directed by the EPA, are safe to use at very low levels — and Bayer denies glyphosate causes cancer.
A decade ago, the International Agency for Research on Cancer declared glyphosate “probably carcinogenic to humans” but the EPA, two years later, said it was “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” Still, various studies have found links between glyphosate and some cancers and that the herbicide can have other adverse health impacts.
That has leaders of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement pushing back against congressional Republicans’ concerns and accusing federal regulatory agencies of capture by the industries they’re meant to regulate.
In a letter to Kennedy Wednesday, movement leaders urged Kennedy to “stand firm.”
Farm interests and their allies in Congress “seek to protect corporations at the expense of the American families,” wrote the more than 300 signatories, including Dave Murphy, Kennedy’s former campaign finance director; Zen Honeycutt, Moms Across America’s executive director, and Marla Maples, the co-founder of the Global Wellness Forum and Trump’s ex-wife.
Lobbying ramps up
Farm and food lobbyists are blowing up lawmakers’ phones and ratcheting up spending as they seek to counter accusations from Kennedy and push back on the charges they fear his report will level.
Farm groups are especially peeved the administration has essentially brushed off their concerns about how the report will treat pesticides.
“Should the MAHA Commission report baselessly attack and, worse yet, make claims that are simply untrue against the hardworking men and women who feed our nation, it will make further cooperation on this initiative very difficult and potentially put American food production at risk,” groups like the National Corn Growers Association and the International Fresh Produce Association wrote in a recent statement.
“Grower groups are becoming furious that we’ve asked for meetings and have heard nothing,” said one person close to the pressure campaign.
Bayer, the maker of Roundup, earlier this month stood up an interactive exhibit in Washington’s Union Station, a short walk from the Capitol, about the importance of pesticides for keeping food prices low. In an interview last week, Bayer CEO Bill Anderson said that Kennedy has still not responded to his request for a meeting.
While Trump largely favored traditional GOP farm interests in his first term, he’s embraced Kennedy’s agenda in his second. Trump believes Kennedy’s endorsement last August helped him beat Kamala Harris and will also help Republicans in Congress keep their majorities in next year’s election.
Big food companies are finding that even their friends on Capitol Hill are less inclined to take their calls.
It’s “sort of get on board and get out of the way,” described one food industry lobbyist granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Grassley said in floor remarks Wednesday that he had concerns that key farm groups have struggled to get meetings with the administration about the report.
“I want everybody to know that I’m watching this report closely that’s coming out tomorrow, and I hope it reflects what [Secretary] Kennedy told me when I met with him in my office,” said Grassley, referencing Kennedy’s pre-confirmation promises to support the use of pesticides.
Major conglomerates and trade associations whose products the MAHA movement have targeted have brought on new lobbying help or ramped up their spending since Kennedy was tapped to lead HHS.
PIM Brands, the parent company of Welch’s Fruit Snacks, retained top K Street firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck in April to work on “health care-related matters affecting the food industry.”
Nestle, one of the country’s most prominent sweets manufacturers, boosted spending by almost 40 percent to more than $377,000 in the first quarter of the year compared to the same time in 2024.
And lobbying spend for Mars, the M&Ms producer, increased by over 57 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with the first quarter of 2024.
Meanwhile, the National Oilseed Processors Association — Kennedy believes seed oils are unhealthy — hired the all-GOP firm CGCN Group to tout the “importance of the domestic oilseed processing industry to the U.S. economy and American agriculture,” according to disclosures.
Also in April, soft drink giant Coca-Cola enlisted the help of another firm, Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid, to work on a range of issues related to the beverage industry, including trade and tax policy and food issues. Industry rival PepsiCo — whose non-soda brands include Lay’s chips, Doritos and Cheetos — retained BGR Group to lobby Congress on issues related to the food and beverage industry, disclosures show. The firm is known for its strong ties to GOP lawmakers.
Following Trump’s election last year, the American Beverage Association, which counts Coca-Cola and Pepsi as members, hired Trump-tied firm Continental Strategy. The trade group reported dropping $790,000 on lobbying last quarter — the most it’s spent in a single quarter since 2010.
