November 9, 2010

USDA Gave Dough to Domino’s, Too

Flickr/<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thepizzareview/3572925000/sizes/z/in/photostream/" target="_blank">The Pizza Review</a>

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Yesterday I blogged about a USDA-funded Big Ag lobby group‘s efforts to discredit the EWG’s list of most-pesticide-laden produce. Turns out the Ag lobbyists aren’t the only industry group getting some love from the USDA: Via Civil Eats, I learned that Domino’s new cheese-a-rific pizza (40 percent more artery-clogging goodness!) and attendant marketing blitz is the result of a $12 million campaign by a USDA-backed group called Dairy Management Inc.

Really, I must say, the Dairy Management Inc. site is worth a visit—it’s a real window into the mammoth PR arm of the US dairy industry. Across the bottom of the homepage is a row of 14 buttons, which take you to dairy-cheerleading sites such as Fuel Up to Play 60 (about how you should eat more dairy so that you have the energy to exercise for an hour), ilovecheese.com (“the ultimate site for cheese lovers everywhere!”), and Innovate With Dairy (where the food and beverage producers can learn “new ways to use dairy ingredients in a wide range of on-trend product applications,” from a scientists in lab coats, no less!).

But my very favorite little nugget of all is a site called Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk!, which tells parents about the nefarious nutritionists who are trying to take away children’s chocolate milk:

Concerned about the added sugars in flavored milk, some schools and activists are working to ban it from school menus, despite scientific evidence supporting its nutrient contributions to children’s diets and recommendations from leading health professional organizations.

A cup of chocolate 1 percent milk has about 170 calories, compared to 120 in the unflavored version. Just saying. As Civil Eats points, out, the USDA is supposed to be curbing childhood obesity. And yet it’s also funding a group that wants to cram more calories into milk, in order to make it more appetizing to kids. Hmm.

Read nutrition journalist Marion Nestle’s take on the Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk campaign here.

 

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This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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