He has accepted Big Pharma with his anti-vax attitude and outré views on conventional medicine. Now Robert F Kennedy JR has set his sights on great agriculture.
With his Maha hat firmly in place, he shoots to high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).
The health secretary of Donald Trump has made it clear that he is planning to 'immediately' “immediately” produce the producers of the material he once described as “a formula to make your obese and diabetes.”
He wants to get rid of processed food from the school lunch program and forbid food vouchers to be used for soft drinks.
Kennedy, 71, spoke with Fox News last year, could not have been clearer: “We create a diabetes problem in our children by giving them food that is poison and I will stop.”
He's going to argue.
Because the promise of Kennedy is one who will place him against the richest and most powerful people in the country – and they are used to getting their way. They pay millions every year to guarantee it.
The production of HFCs in the US is dominated by five gigantic companies: Cargill, Ingredion Incorporated, Tate & Lyle, Global Sweetens Holdings Limited and Archer Daniels Midland Company.
He has accepted Big Pharma with his anti-vax attitude and outré views on conventional medicine. Now Robert F Kennedy JR (photo) has set his sights on great agriculture.
Production of high fructose corn syrup in the US is dominated by five gigantic companies: Cargill, Ingredion Incorpored, Tate & Lyle, Global Sweeters Holdings Limited and Archer Daniels Midland Company.
Cargill spent $ 1.4 million in lobbying in 2024. Ingredion spent $ 200,000 and Archer Daniels spent $ 3.6 million, according to lobby -oppakings assessed by the Daily Mail.
Coca-Cola, Pepsico and Neat Dr. Pepper are already mobilizing to stop it.
And it is no wonder that they are willing to press back and stumble significant amounts in the process when you are considering the bottom line.
HFCS producers rake $ 9.5 million from the sweetener that comes from corn starch, from which it is separated to become pure glucose and mixed with fructose, another simple sugar.
The sticky end result is used in thousands of products, including fried products and grains.
Certainly, life is kind to the Cargill-Macmillan family who has estimated a combined fortune at $ 60.5 billion, count no fewer than 21 billionaires among their ranks and are the fourth richest family in the nation.
The last family member to become CEO of the company was Whitney Macmillan who died in 2020, but as a family the surviving members still owns 88 percent of what is now the largest private company in the US, with Forbes set his income to $ 177 billion .
Rising food prices Since the COVID Pandemie have only served to stimulate the Family Fund and Sisters James, Austen and Marianne – grandchildren of William Wallace Cargill who founded the company in 1865 – each estimates to be in the region of $ 5 billion.
According to Bruce Babcock, a professor in public policy at the University of California, Riverside, it is precisely this type of fire force, which means that Kennedy has a 'zero from the 10' chance to make a change when it comes to when it comes to HFCs.
Professor Babcock said he would give Kennedy, 10 of the 10 because he was performance, but pointed out that the power of the food and agricultural industry would be too much for him.
He said: 'Kennedy is against the entire food industry that hides for us farmers and so an attack on HFCS will be characterized as an attack on American agriculture.
'Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill will put forward their PR campaign and say that the demand for corn will fall, we are going to put Famers bankrupt.
'It is a playbook that has been used forever. Big AG, Big Food has never failed. They get what they want. '
Kennedy's plans could indeed increase agriculture in this country according to various with whom the Daily Mail spoke. The American corn -producing industry is the largest in the world with nearly 90 million hectares of crop.
Together, all five HFCS producers employ tens of thousands of people, part of the 386,000 employees who work in the maize agricultural industry.
Amanda Zaluckyi, a lawyer from a family of grain and soybean farmers in Michigan proponents of the agricultural industry.
She said, “If Kennedy gets his way, we will see a number of family farms go bankrupt.”
She told the Daily Mail that she regards Kennedy as 'an absolute danger' for farmers who add 'in many farms in rural communities' are really an important pillar of those communities and you will see dismissed, less a need for work. That will have a wrinkle effect. '
His plans would also disproportionately influence a large number of loyal Trump supporters. The largest grain factories are voters who voted for 59 percent on Trump in Decatur County, Illinois – who voted 59 percent last November.
Life is kind to the Cargill-Macmillan family (factory depicted) who have estimated a combined fortune at $ 60.5 billion, no fewer than 21 billionaires count among their ranks and are the fourth richest family in the nation.
RFK JR has made it clear that he is planning to immediately target HFCs producers, which he once described as 'a formula to make your obese and diabetes'. Coca-Cola, Pepsico and Neat Dr. Pepper are already mobilizing to stop it.
To make matters worse, for Kennedy, at least science is not entirely on its side and there is no clear, unjustified evidence that HFCS is worse for your health than sugar.
His Maha movement will also become the agricultural community at a time when it still recovers from the supply chain problems that accompanied the global pandemic.
Zaluckyi said: 'The farm economy has not been good for a while. We have had the Covid Pandemic Supply Chain problems; Many of our expenses have risen, but the amount we can sell for those raw materials does not have. The margins are quite thin.
'There are a number that hard Maga fans who want to give Kennedy a chance, but most people have a number of pretty legitimate concerns. People are worried if we can continue to farm like we are at the moment.
“America has a legacy of multi-generational family businesses. I would not like to see that disappear because the policy of Kennedy forces many of them to go bankrupt. '
Her worries are reflected by Blake Hurst, a farmer and former head of Missouri's Farm Bureau. He warned that an attack on HFCs in the heart of the agricultural industry would hit as a whole and that prices would rise as a result.
He said: 'We don't use HFCs because it's better than sugar. We use it because it is cheaper.
'It will take a while, but [if Kennedy has his way] We will have to grow more sugar, you will see a reaction in the price of sugar – everything will cost more. '
Bot, he said to the Daily Mail: 'You will eventually drive farmers bankrupt.
“Think of the egg situation in every food you buy.”
None of the five large HFCS producers commented when contact was contacted by the Daily Mail. The Ministry of Health and Human Services did not respond on request for comments.
The US Corn Refiners Association, which represents HFCS producers, focused on a part of its website that acknowledges that “at current physical activity levels most Americans must reduce their total intake of calories, including calories of sugars and sweeteners.”
