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The One Thing Obama Could Have Done to Fix Food—But Didn’t

Mother Jones

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Like a huge plow roaring through a prairie, the 2016 presidential election has broken plenty of new ground. We’ve had a national conversation about a nonexistent sex tape involving a former Miss Universe; we’ve debated whether boasting of groping women’s genitals amounts to “locker room talk” or the admission of a crime; and we’ve entertained the idea that one of the major candidates might, if his campaign is successful, have the other one tossed in jail.

Mark Bittman David Cooper/Zuma

But like nearly every election before it, the current one has been nearly 100 percent free of any debate around the federal government’s massive role in shaping and regulating the food system. To get a grip on the vital food and farm issues we’re not hearing about, I interviewed Mark Bittman, the legendary home-cooking master and pundit. Back in 2015, Bittman stepped away from a four-year stint as an editorial columnist for the New York Times—a forum he used almost exclusively to weigh in on food and farm policy. He remains deeply involved with the topic, though, serving as a fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists Food & Environment Program.

Bittman’s political analysis is as direct and pungent as that classic “Minimalist” dish of his, fried chickpeas with chorizo and spinach. He offered a harsh analysis of how President Barack Obama dealt with food and farm issues, echoing a recent New York Times Magazine piece by Michael Pollan. The current president once “talked a fairly decent game on changing the food system,” Bittman said, “but did virtually nothing in eight years.”

Not everyone agrees, of course. Sam Kass, former White House chef and food policy adviser to the Obamas, had a spicy reaction to Pollan’s story:

Bittman defends Pollan’s criticism of Obama, revealing that there was one “way, way easy” thing the president could have done without congressional interference, but didn’t, to take on the meat industry and protect public health:

Removing antibiotics from the routine use and production of animals is something that there’s precedent for. It’s happened in other countries. It’s something the FDA could have done by mandate; it didn’t need to go through Congress. And it wasn’t done. And I think that was the lowest-hanging fruit imaginable.

Yet Bittman pushed back against Pollan’s notion that Obama didn’t do more to challenge Big Food partially because the “food movement” isn’t powerful or cohesive enough. “Do you want to do the right thing, or do you not want to do the right thing? That’s the question,” he said, adding that Obama shouldn’t have needed a push from anyone to make certain overhauls.

The recipe czar also delivered blunt takes on the possibilities and perils of a Trump or Clinton administration—always with a dash of classic Bittman real-talk. He said he never expected Clinton or Trump to use their candidacies to shine a light on the food system. If Clinton wins, will she take on things like GMO labeling and antibiotics as president? “It sort of depends where her soul is at,” he said.

As for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who mounted a surprisingly strong challenge to Clinton in the Democratic primary, Bittman said, “I love Bernie, but what he knows about food comes from the perspective of a Vermont dairy farmer—not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s not big picture, exactly.”

Bite is Mother Jones‘ new food politics podcast. Listen to all our episodes here, or by subscribing in iTunes or Stitcher or via RSS.

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The One Thing Obama Could Have Done to Fix Food—But Didn’t

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Router Failure Grounds Entire United Fleet

Mother Jones

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Greece is in trouble. China is in trouble. Puerto Rico is in trouble. The New York Stock Exchange has been shut down over a “technical issue.” And United Airlines has halted all its flights:

United midday on Wednesday said that the grounding had been caused by a computer-network router that malfunctioned, which disrupted its passenger reservations system. That meant that many passengers couldn’t check in for their flights. The disruption affected some places more than others, but it covered the entire network, which was why United decided to ground its entire mainline and United Express fleet worldwide.

Yikes! The malfunction of a single router torpedoed United’s reservation system for an entire day? That must be a pretty delicate network they’re running there.

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Router Failure Grounds Entire United Fleet

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The Iranian Nuclear Deal: What the Experts Are Saying

Mother Jones

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Shortly after the participants in the Iranian nuclear talks announced that a double-overtime framework had been crafted, I was on television with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who is something of a celebrity rabbi, a failed congressional candidate, and an arch-neoconservative hawk who has been howling about a potential deal with Iran for months. Not surprisingly, he was not pleased by the news of the day. He declared that under these parameters, Iran would give up nothing and would “maintain their entire nuclear apparatus.” Elsewhere, a more serious critic, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who last month had organized the letter to Iran’s leaders signed by 47 GOP senators opposed to a deal, groused that the framework was “only a list of dangerous US concessions that will put Iran on the path to nuclear weapons.”

These criticisms were rhetorical bombs, not statements of fact. Under the framework, Iran would give up two-thirds of its centrifuges used to enrich uranium and would reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium (which is the raw material used to develop bomb-quality highly-enriched uranium) from 10,000 kilograms to 300 kilograms. These two developments alone—and the framework has many other provisions—would diminish Tehran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon. Its nuclear apparatus would be smaller, and under these guidelines, Iran’s pathway to nuclear weapons, while certainly not impossible, would be much more difficult. Yet because politics dominates the debate over this deal—as it does so often with important policy matters—foes of the framework could hurl fact-free charges with impunity.

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The Iranian Nuclear Deal: What the Experts Are Saying

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