Soft Drink Industry Fights Proposed Food Stamp Ban

 

The mayor wants to reduce obesity and diabetes by banning the use of food stamps to buy “sugar-sweetened beverages” in New York City.

Food and beverage lobbyists see the mayor’s plan as a well-intentioned but misguided and paternalistic effort. They say it would create a logistical bottleneck at checkout counters and stigmatize poor people using food stamps.

They also fear that restrictions on soft drinks would set a precedent for the government to distinguish between good and bad foods and to ban the use of food stamps for other products — an issue sure to come up next year in the Congressional debate on a new farm bill.

“Once you start going into grocery carts, deciding what people can or cannot buy, where do you stop?” asked Kevin W. Keane, senior vice president of the American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.

New York officials estimate that $75 million to $135 million in food stamp benefits are spent on sugar-sweetened beverages in the city each year. Such beverages, they say, are the single largest contributor to the obesity epidemic.

“This initiative will give New York families more money to spend on foods and drinks that provide real nourishment,” Mr. Bloomberg said in seeking federal approval. City officials noted that federal policy already bans the sale of soft drinks in school lunch programs across the country.

The mayor’s proposal would go further by banning the use of food stamps to buy carbonated and noncarbonated beverages that are sweetened with sugar or high-fructose corn syrup and have more than 10 calories per eight-ounce serving.

Food stamp benefits are paid for entirely by the federal government, and the city is seeking permission from the Agriculture Department to test its proposal in a two-year project. Because the proposal would define “food” more narrowly than federal law and regulations, food industry groups have unleashed a barrage against it.

President Obama, whose position on the New York plan is unclear, is in an awkward situation. The Agriculture Department, historically averse to restricting the use of food stamps, has said, “There are no bad foods, only bad diets.” The department rejected a somewhat similar proposal from Minnesota in 2004.

But Mr. Obama has set a goal “to solve the problem of childhood obesity within a generation,” and his wife, Michelle, is waging a high-profile campaign to promote healthy eating. The Web site of Mrs. Obama’s childhood obesity initiative (www.letsmove.gov) even urges Americans to “drink less soda or sugar-sweetened drinks.”

Opponents say that many factors, besides soft drinks, contribute to obesity. Moreover, they say, imposing restrictions on food stamps would require retailers to reprogram computers and embarrass some customers at the checkout counter.

While the American Beverage Association has led the opposition, the fight demonstrates how various parts of the food industry have united to thwart the mayor’s proposal. Beverage industry lobbyists have worked with the Snack Food Association, the National Confectioners Association, which represents candy companies, the Food Marketing Institute, which represents 26,000 retail food stores, as well as antihunger groups like the Food Research and Action Center and Feeding America.

Eighteen members of the Congressional Black Caucus recently urged the Obama administration to reject New York’s proposal. The plan is unfair to food stamp recipients because it treats them differently from other customers, they said in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

While Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are among the largest contributors to the nonpartisan Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, a research and education institute, caucus members say their positions are not influenced by such contributions.

The number of food stamp recipients nationwide soared as the economy slumped. More than 44 million people — one in seven Americans — receive aid through the program, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Some public health groups and academics support the city’s proposal. Prof. Kelly D. Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, said the New York project was “a test worth doing.”

“Through the SNAP program,” Mr. Brownell said, “the government spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year buying beverages that have been linked to risks for obesity and diabetes. These conditions cost the government and taxpayers billions of dollars a year in costs paid by Medicaid and Medicare.”

Some of the big industry groups have signed up lobbying firms. The Duberstein Group, led by Kenneth M. Duberstein, a chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan, reported that it had received $100,000 in the first quarter of this year to lobby for the Grocery Manufacturers Association on various issues, including proposals to restrict the use of food stamps.

Ellen Vollinger, legal director of the Food Research and Action Center, is leading efforts to assemble a loose coalition of food industry lobbyists and antihunger groups opposed to restrictions on the use of food stamps. Participants in the coalition said that another Washington lobbyist, Michael K. Torrey, had helped coordinate their efforts.

Mr. Torrey refused to discuss his role in those efforts. However, James A. McCarthy, president of the Snack Food Association, whose members include Kraft and Frito-Lay, a unit of PepsiCo, confirmed that Mr. Torrey was “under contract with us.”

In his latest lobbying report, for the first quarter of the year, Mr. Torrey said he had received $30,000 from the association to lobby Congress and the administration on issues including “the preservation of choice” in the food stamp program.

Jean Daniel, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department, said the agency was actively reviewing New York’s proposal. “We have a lot of questions,” Ms. Daniel said. “We have been going back and forth with the state on the questions.”

While some food companies openly oppose the New York proposal, others declined to comment and referred questions to antihunger or industry groups.

Susan Davison, director of corporate affairs at Kraft Foods, whose products include Kool-Aid and Oreo cookies, referred questions to the Food Research and Action Center. In an e-mail, Kirstie Foster, director of corporate public relations at General Mills, referred questions about the SNAP program to the Grocery Manufacturers Association.

And Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for the association, referred questions to two other trade groups, the Food Marketing Institute and the National Grocers Association, which oppose New York’s proposal.