Tag Archives: PepsiCo

Smoke and mirrors

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Oatly CEO Toni Petersson sings ‘Wow, wow, no cow’ in the 30-second ad spot during the Super Bowl Sunday evening. It was filmed in 2014 in Sweden where the commercial is legally banned from airing. Screenshot

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, Feb. 12, 2021

EAST EARL, Pa. – Some are calling it the worst commercial of this year’s Super Bowl, others say it was so bad, it could be the most memorable. The 30-second ad aired over most of the nation in the second quarter of the game. It was filmed in Sweden in 2014 and ultimately banned from airing in Sweden, where the Oatly brand of fake-milk beverage originated.

The ad seen by millions during the Super Bowl depicted Oatly CEO Toni Petersson singing in the middle of a field of oats (some believe the crop looked more like soybeans but that is beside the point). 

Donning a T-shirt with the words “No artificial badness,” Petersson played an electric piano with a carton of Oatly and a poured glass of the oat beverage atop, singing: “It’s like milk, but made for humans. Wow, wow, no cow. No, no, no. Wow, wow, no cow.”

At another point in the Super Bowl, TurboTax ran its #taxfacts ad showing a man on a computer screen atop a rolling desk going from one scene and tax-related question to another. As the singing computer face atop the desk rolls through a herd of beef cows, we hear the words: “In some places they tax flatulence, like the kind that comes from cows,” (followed by the sound of a fart). Just a couple seconds of the 30-second spot completely unrelated to cows and reality subtly reinforces and normalizes the myth that cow flatulence is taxable because it’s a climate-thing, when it is actually, factually and mathematically insignificant as a climate thing.

Seriously, stop the madness. And, as always, the lack of a television presence for milk and dairy farmers leaves silence as the answer.

One thing is clear: Dairy farmers once again find themselves on the losing end of a long-term ‘partnership’ with the National Football League.

By his own admission, DMI CEO Tom Gallagher says the checkoff has been working through its partnerships over the past 12 to 13 years on the sustainability plan and Net Zero Initiative. Now the rollout dove tails in content and timing with the malarkey coming out of the World Economic Forum Great Reset and its food transformation stalwart the World Wildlife Fund (also known as Worldwide Fund for Nature, WWF).

DMI integrates the industry through its unified marketing plan and the various nonprofit organizations, alliances, committees and initiatives — beginning with the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, formed in 2008-09, launching the industry’s structural drivers beginning with the globalization initiative (Bain Study 2008), then social responsibility (FARM program 2015) and now ‘sustainability’ (Net Zero Initiative 2020). Graphic by Sherry Bunting, source USdairy.com

Over those past 12 to 13 years, the direction of promotion has moved off-radar through partnerships. This began with DMI’s creation of the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy (known officially to the IRS as the Dairy Center for Strategic Innovation and Collaboration). Within the Innovation Center is the Sustainability Initiative headed by Mike McCloskey over the past 12 to 13 years and known officially as listed on IRS 990 forms as Global Dairy Platform.

Yes, it is all so very confusing. An entire new structure for the dairy industry and its farm-to-table supply chain has been created, along with sustainability parameters and promotion partnerships, within these non-profits under the DMI umbrella.

DMI’s umbrella of tax-exempt organizations where checkoff dollars flow and bring partners into the picture to “work on shared priorities.”

Cutting through to the point here is this: Dairy farmers have continually asked their dairy checkoff leaders over the past 12 to 13 years why television ads are seldom, if ever, seen; why those that are seen air at off hours; why the NFL’s reference to Play 60 never includes the “Fuel up” part. The milk is always absent from the promotion on the NFL side.

Whenever these questions are asked at meetings or on conference calls, dairy checkoff leaders say – in unison – “television ads don’t work” and “the NFL owns Play 60, but we own the Fuel Up and can use the Fuel Up to Play 60. Yes, the flagship program of GENYOUth.

Meanwhile, milk’s competitors are using television ads. All the beverage competition is using television ads. Granted, the checkoff budget is not large enough to put all of its eggs into the television ad basket, but surely a few well-placed prime time ads – like in the Super Bowl – would generate ongoing exposure. Those ads get rated, replayed and talked about for weeks.

Here’s the thing: Each year, DMI lists the NFL among its top five independent contractors on its IRS 990 form showing $4 to $6 million annually in checkoff funds is paid to NFL Properties for “promotion.”

In the recently acquired 2019 IRS 990 form, DMI listed just over $6 million to NFL Properties.

By comparison, the cost of a 30-second television spot during the prime-time Super Bowl for 2021 was $5.5 million. Perhaps the over $6 million handed over to the NFL would have been better spent buying 30 seconds of airtime to promote milk and dairy.

After all, DMI can’t even answer the question asked by farmers or media who have inquired about what the money paid to the NFL is actually for. This question was asked face-to-face last March at a Q&A meeting on a farm with DMI chair Marilyn Hershey and UDIA executive vice president Lucas Lentsch. They did not answer it. They scratched their heads and acted as though they didn’t know that kind of money was paid to the NFL. They said they would ask. This reporter has also asked the question. No answers have been forthcoming.

Here’s the other deal. It was 12 to 13 years ago that GENYOUth was created with the official name as it appears on tax forms: Youth Improved Incorporated. That saga began with a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by then USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, the NFL and the National Dairy Council, along with GENYOUth CEO Alexis Glick. She was suggested for the spot by worldwide communications firm Edelman. (Edelman does the PR work for Oatly, is engaged with the NFL and also with PepsiCo. Edelman also received over $16 million for promotion from DMI in 2019 and similar amounts in each of the previous four years as DMI’s all-in-one PR firm, creator of Undeniably Dairy.)

Since that 2009 MOU signing, we have seen fancy New York City Gala events explained as a way for GENYOUth to raise funds for school breakfast carts and to give dairy farm checkoff leaders the chance to rub elbows and talk with ‘thought leaders.’ Meanwhile, GENYOUth is the vehicle to make students ‘agents of change’ for ‘planetary diets’.

We have seen PepsiCo – the NFL’s real long-term beverage partner – come on-board the GENYOUth bus, even receiving a major GENYOUth award in 2018, with just a $1 million one-off investment next to the over $4 million spent every year since inception by DMI to keep the GENYOUth vehicle running — not to mention salaries and other soft costs not parsed-out on tax forms. We have seen a proliferation of PepsiCo branded products on breakfast carts and in school cafeterias next to fat-free and low-fat milk and dairy offerings.

And at this year’s Super Bowl pre-game festivities, DMI excitedly reported that GENYOUth would have the honor of hosting the “Taste of NFL” in the virtual pandemic environment and using the event to “raise money for children to get their school meals.”

Throughout the Taste of NFL pre-game session last week, GENYOUth CEO Alexis Glick was promoting the PepsiCo-product-filled thank you boxes for donators. In one video appearance, she stated, offhand, that she’ll have to go get her milk, but never did. There was no milk in the scene, just a small plate of cheese and fruit off to the side and a large zoom lens focused on the PepsiCo Super Bowl box.

Promotion time – and money — wasted.

But checkoff leaders say it’s okay because all of this is for a good cause! The GENYOUth bus full of boarders focused on one thing, raising money for hungry children.

While it’s true that the NFL ran an ad this football season talking about partnering with America’s dairy farmers to raise money to feed hungry kids. Those commercials were only seen by this reporter during pre-game interviews, not during actual games and nothing of the sort ran on Super Bowl night. The closest thing to it was the NFL’s celebration of essential workers at the start of the game, where glimpses of farmers, truckers, and store staff stocking shelves were included among the photos and videos of medical personel.

As for NFL’s big beverage partner, PepsiCo, the CEO of its North American division, Albert Carey, was presented with the GENYOUth Vanguard award at the 2018 Gala, he stated that the company had long admired the Play 60 program of the NFL and wanted to be part of it. — Now PepsiCo has a new joint venture with Beyond Meat to produce and market ‘alternative protein’ snacks and beverages.

Yes, the cross-purposes and proprietary partnerships make the whole scene confusing.

Dairy farmers are good hearted people. Of course, they want to be part of efforts to feed hungry children and to help America’s youth be well and have access to good nutrition. But even this worthy goal has been wrestled right out of their hands by the other ‘partner’ in the three-way MOU – the USDA and its flawed Dietary Guidelines that inform regulations that smile on Mountain Dew Kickstart offerings in schools and prohibit whole milk.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Dairy transformation has been in the works for 12 to 13 years through the proprietary partnerships working ‘pre-competitively’ within the vehicles constructed with mandatory farmer funds under the DMI umbrella.

It is all smoke and mirrors. So much of what has gone on for these 12 to 13 years is just now becoming evident as the smoke clears, and producers can see they have indeed been funding their own demise.

Time to get back to the drawing board.

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Dairy checkoff GENYOUth ‘hero’ PepsiCo partners with Beyond Meat to market plant-based alternative protein snacks, drinks

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Watch those FUTP60 breakfast carts! Packaged food, beverage giant and faux-meat maker join forces to market plant-based alternative protein snacks, drinks.

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, January 29, 2021

The business news stream was buzzing Tuesday (Jan. 26) as Beyond Meat stock value soared to 18-month highs after PepsiCo announced a joint venture with the fake meat maker to develop and sell plant-based protein snacks and beverages.

“Plant-based proteins are playing an increasingly vital role in modern diets — they’re nutrient-rich and far more sustainable than meat,” states the PepsiCo press release about the joint venture with Beyond Meat, being launched as “The PLANeT Partnership” and billed as being “better for the planet.”

The announcement was complete with ‘clever’ marketing hashtag — #ThePLANeTPartnership — but not much science, of course, nor substance.

“Climate action is core to our business as a global food and beverage leader,” said Chairman and CEO Ramon Laguarta said just one week earlier announcing Pepsico’s ‘bold’ new climate action plan.

Beyond Meat’s global chief commercial officer Ram Krishnan said the PepsiCo partnership “represents a new frontier in our efforts to build a more sustainable food system.”

During the World Economic Forum Davos Agenda 2021 livestream on Transformation of Food Systems and Land Use on the very next day (Wed., Jan. 27), PepsiCo’s Laguarta joined United Nations FAO director, deputy secretary general, special envoy for the food transition summit later this year, CEO of Rabobank and president of Costa Rica. The relationships between these types of partnerships are becoming clear.

Let’s review:

For 11 years, dairy farmers through the mandatory promotion checkoff founded and have predominantly funded GENYOUth, a ‘youth wellness’ non-profit with the dairy checkoff’s Fuel Up and NFL’s Play 60 combined as Fuel Up to Play 60. For nine of those 11 years, GENYOUth has partnered with PepsiCo, bringing this ‘fox’ into the FUTP60 schoolhouse — even awarding PepsiCo North America CEO Albert Carey the ‘hero’ Vanguard Award at the November 2018 GENYOUth Gala event in New York City. 

This, despite the fact that these two GENYOUth partners — the National Football League and its longtime beverage partner PepsiCo — contribute $1 million (or usually less) annually while dairy farmer-funded checkoff pays $4 million or more annually on the non-profit filing tax forms as Youth Improved Incorporated. DMI tax forms also show dairy checkoff payments to the NFL of $5 to $7 million annually as an independent contractor for ‘promotion services’. Amounts potentially paid in proprietary partnerships with PepsiCo are undisclosed.

GENYOUth was created while Tom Vilsack was Secretary of Agriculture during the Obama administration in 2008, with an MOU signed by USDA, NFL and National Dairy Council in 2009. (Mr. Vilsack is President Biden’s pick for Ag Secretary — again. In between his eight years as Ag Secretary under President Obama and the upcoming round-two as Ag Secretary, Vilsack was the top-paid executive hired by the dairy checkoff to head the U.S. Dairy Export Council and provide leadership for the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy)

When former President Bill Clinton was invited to speak about Vilsack at the 2017 GENYOUth Gala — the year that Vilsack was presented with the Vanguard Award — Clinton, a vegan, talked about every entity in the “diverse partnership” that he was celebrating except for America’s dairy farmers.

In the 2017 Gala speech about award winner Vilsack, Clinton talked about how children receive 40 to 60% of their calories from drinks in school. He talked about turning the obesity epidemic around by everyone taking responsibility in that area of beverages. He talked about how Vilsack’s leadership with Michelle Obama, made beverages and snacks abide by the fat-free rules, including school vending machines. Clinton stated that Vilsack was “instrumental under the radar… working for a ‘healthier’ generation of kids before coming to USDA and before the launch of GENYOUth.”

Former President Clinton thanked former Secretary Vilsack at the 2017 GENYOUth Gala for being “the guy” to tackle the beverage issue in school lunches. The year GENYOUth was formed is the year Vilsack’s USDA outright banned whole milk from school property from midnight before the start of the school day until 30 minutes after the end of the school day. The “Smart Snacks” rules went into effect under Vilsack, requiring a la carte and vending machine beverages to meet the Dietary Guidelines fat criteria and be under 60 calories per serving. (Mr. Vilsack and others in charge are still waiting for that elusive ‘preponderance of evidence’)

What happened next? A proliferation of PepsiCo snack and beverage products made their way into schools through PepsiCo’s own school foodservice company – complete with “USDA-Smart-Snacks-compliant” lists of snacks and drinks, including Mountain Dew Kickstart, Gatorade Zero, a host of snack bars, Doritos, and more.

The very next year at the November 2018 GENYOUth Gala, PepsiCo was the Vanguard Award ‘hero’. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sang PepsiCo’s praises, of course, the NFL and PepsiCo have been partners for decades.

“I say to our farmers: They had a dream, and we have been blessed to be part of that dream. You gave us life. You believed in us. And can you believe we are standing here today on the cusp of the 10-year anniversary of FUTP60?” said GENYOUth CEO Alexis Glick just before extending “an extra special thank you to PepsiCo.”

Glick said of PepsiCo’s Carey: “The generosity of your vision, your resources, your team, time and talent have changed our organization.”

That’s a mouthful. 

PepsiCo’s Carey showed his appreciation by plugging the new Quaker “oat milk” they were launching that month. It fell flat in the market, but PepsiCo is at it again with this new joint venture with Beyond Meat to make fake meat snacks and fake milk beverages that are sure to find their way onto the USDA-controlled Smart Snacks menus and FUTP60 breakfast carts in schools — even as the nutritious, delicious whole milk children love is prohibited.

In accepting the GENYOUth Vanguard award in November 2018, PepsiCo’s Carey talked about their “long and wonderful partnership with the NFL” and the way their ads and retail programs boosted both of their brands. He talked about how Play 60 was the NFL program they “most admired and wanted to be part of.” He was careful to leave out the “Fuel Up” part when mentioning the program because that is supposed to belong to the dairy checkoff.

He went on to talk about how PepsiCo “wanted to be part of the Play 60 program because of the importance of kids being active. But we also believe at PepsiCo that we need to provide healthy products for our consumers,” said Carey. “Some of you may be familiar with our mission ‘performance with purpose.’”

He described the mission as “getting great business performance while also serving others… on the part of the environment… or many other ways, but this one particular way is about providing healthier foods for our consumers.”

GENYOUth Gala, New York City, November 27, 2018: Commissioner of the National Football League, Roger Goodell, presents the Vanguard Award to Al Carey, CEO, PepsiCo North America, accepting on behalf of PepsiCo. (GENYOUth Now photo)

Carey took his time at the GENYOUth Gala podium, ‘hero’ Vanguard Award in hand, to tout PepsiCo’s “healthy beverages, including zero sugar soda, Life Water, Bubbly Sparkling Water, Gatorade Zero, Quaker oat milk.” (Yes, the now off-market Quaker oat beverage never put ‘milk’ on the label, but Carey called it ‘oat milk’ in his speech during the GENYOUth Gala as dairy-farmer-checkoff-paid employees of GENYOUth, DMI, NDC, etc. smiled and clapped with partnership euphoria).

Carey went on to tell the November 2018 GENYOUth VIP Gala audience that, “Oat milk, Bare Snacks and probiotic drinks are part of PepsiCo converting its portfolio to healthier foods for the future.”

A December 2018 Farmshine article about the Gala event quoted from the PepsiCo website, where the company touted its purpose-driven mission “to further the World Health Organization goals of alternative products to reduce saturated fat consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, thereby improving global environmental and nutritional sustainability.”

What did PepsiCo do to earn the Vanguard Award from GENYOUth in 2018? PepsiCo committed $1 million that year to fund translation of the Play 60 materials in Spanish and to purchase some additional mobile breakfast carts. While it’s true those school breakfast carts carry fat-free and low-fat 1% milk, non-fat yogurt and non-fat or low-fat cheese, they are also well-stocked with PepsiCo snack bars and beverages.

After this week’s headline-making announcement of the PepsiCo – Beyond Meat joint venture to make alternative plant-based protein snacks and beverages, we see what might be appearing on those breakfast carts and USDA-compliant lunches in the not-so-distant future.

Again, as oft-repeated in this nutrition and promotion saga, the USDA / HHS Dietary Guidelines are the framework that allows less healthful foods to appear more healthful simply because they are devoid of saturated fat and contain artificial sweeteners. 

The government-mandated dairy checkoff deduction from milk checks pays for government speech, which means promoting fat-free and low-fat dairy and funneling ‘change-agent’ ‘sustainability’ curriculum into FUTP60 offerings. The NFL gets logo-emblazoned flag football kits into schools to promote their brand through exercise. Corporate partners like PepsiCo develop entire meal, snack and beverage lists with their products touted as “USDA Smart Snack compliant”.

Meanwhile, dairy farmers foot the main bill for the vehicle and watch as fluid milk consumption declines took a steeper nosedive since 2008, and as a whole generation has been turned away from milk until the recent resurgence of grassroots whole milk promotion. Farmers foot the bill for the vehicle and watch as obesity and diabetes rates rise among children and teens, especially low-income communities most reliant on government feeding programs. They foot the bill and watch as schoolchildren discard large volumes of packaged skim milk only to buy those other beverages, many of them made by PepsiCo.

All because dairy promotion and school offerings are strapped to Dietary Guidelines developed by the federal government that even in this recent 2020-25 round ignore more than a decade of scientific research on dietary fats as well as ignoring the investigative reports that have uncovered the flaws in the original science at the very core of 40-years of failed dietary policy.

You can’t make this stuff up. 

However, it’s not all that surprising when we see what is going on in this week’s ‘virtual’ World Economic Forum ‘Great Rest’ Davos Agenda. More than 60 global food, technology, energy, pharmaceutical, and financial companies made headlines also on Tuesday. They signed an agreement to adopt Environmental Social and Corporate Governance (ESGs), including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) centering on Net Zero by 2050, including goals to “reserve” and control 50% of the earth’s land surface by 2050.

It is increasingly obvious that the Dietary Guidelines adopted by the U.S. and other countries around the world have little to do with human health but are a framework for using ‘nutrition’ to implement a ‘sustainability’ agenda seeking to dilute and replace animal agriculture while increasing global corporate control of food, and more. 

There’s a connection to China in these convergences of factors, which is also coming to light. Figuring prominently in the WEF Great Reset Davos Agenda this week is China, as evidenced by Xi Jinping, president of the People’s Republic of China being chosen to give the opening Davos address Monday (see related story).

According to the May 20, 2020 edition of Newsweek, Beyond Meat signed a significant deal with Shuangta Foods in China’s Shandong province to provide 85% of the concentrated pea protein for its fake meat products.

Over the past decade, China has built an empire of soy- and pea- protein manufacturing. According to the Good Food Institute — the trade organization representing plant-based and cell cultured meat and milk replacements — China is a “dominant supplier” of soy and pea protein to the world and keeps expanding pea protein concentrate and isolate processing capacity, having already been at 79% of global soy protein isolate production by 2016.

This is a familiar path in the way China dominated and took over the global apple juice market two decades ago, making apple concentrate powder that is reconstituted here to bottle most commercial brands of apple juice sold in the U.S. (a major shelf-stable beverage option already offered at schools and other foodservice settings).

PepsiCo has a 40-year history of building up its presence in China, spending billions in the past decade to build up its beverage processing infrastructure. In February 2020, PepsiCo purchased Be & Cheery, maker of nut, fruit and meat snacks in China. At the same time, PepsiCo announced plans to grow online snacks sales.

Thinking back to the 2007 melamine catastrophe in China involving the addition of melamine to boost protein levels ‘on paper’ for China-produced milk powder that was destined for infant formula production, as well as the periodic recalls of pet foods for melamine levels as many of the concentrated proteins in pet foods are also made in China… 

One has to wonder about the future of food. 


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With science-fiction, they socially herd us like cattle to ‘alternative’ squeeze chute

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By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, February 22, 2019

All circles lead back to marketing, which is on display right now with the EAT Lancet report in January and the EAT Forums and social marketing that are hitting us in rapid succession, having already filtered into the Green New Deal in Washington and other legislation proposed in California.

Dr. Frank Mitloehner, a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions expert from the University of California, Davis is not the only one questioning the GHG findings in the report.

He offered proof this week that the science director for the EAT Foundation, in an email (below), admitted the report’s dietary recommendations are not based on environmental considerations, they are based on – you guessed it – a hyper-charged version of the flawed dietary guidelines that have been making us, especially our children, fatter and sicker through ever-increasing government control of food choices!

This is a clear admission that the GHG figures being peddled are, as Mitloehner put it in Lancaster recently “without a single leg to stand on.”

This brings everything back to the common denominator in the ongoing social engineering project: USDA Dietary Guidelines.

In the pages of Farmshine for years (through two dietary guideline cycles, 10 years to be exact), we have warned about the Dietary Guidelines.

For months, we’ve sounded alarms about the genetically-altered yeast making ‘dairy without the cow’.

For weeks, we’ve been tracing the alliances of the Edelman company that has done the marketing and PR for DMI for 20 years and is also doing the social marketing and communication strategies for EAT Lancet.

That story was laid out here last week.

This week the EAT Lancet Commission’s desire for drastic reductions in meat and dairy consumption grew major legs as the Edelman social marketing machine — via staff loaned and now working as employees of EAT’s corporate initiative — have been in full artillery mode with our nation’s dairy and beef cattle in the crosshairs.

The right hand has been telling us we have a seat at the table, while the left hand has been working overtime to pull out the rug.

I’ll borrow this term: Resist! The Science Fiction EAT Lancet report is slowly but surely being spoonfed without a transparent airing in the press.

The EAT Lancet Commission had little actual press since 2019 launch, but not to worry! The global food tranformation effort (EAT Lancet, EAT FReSH) is coordinated by the world’s largest marketing and PR firm — spawning the seemingly random and unconnected legislative and marketing campaigns from the Green New Deal and new global diet ‘wisdom’ (flexitarian / reducitarian) to the outright lies about cows in foundation versions of prominent news organizations like Reuters, Bloomberg, The Economist, The Guardian and positioning of the new PepsiCo’s Quaker Oat beverage launch inprime dairy case real estate this week, to the unveiling of Danone’s new non-dairy yogurt plant in Dubois, Pennsylvania geared to “take plant-based products to the max.”


PepsiCo and Danone are two of the 41 corporate sponsors of the EAT Lancet global food transformation propaganda, and they are launching their ‘solutions’ right now. PepsiCo launched it’s Quaker Oat beverage this week, and it’s showing up prominently in dairy cases like this one. Danone unveiled the largest ‘dairy free’ yogurt plant in the world in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago, with its new ‘sustainable’ yogurt products reaching store shelves also in time to capitalize on the EAT FReSH social marketing campaign. Photo submitted by a Farmshine reader in northwest Indiana 

A convergence of the elite. It’s really one big thing, connected. The funding corporations are rolling out their food ‘solutions’ as we speak, hoping unwitting consumers will jump on the food-transformation-train.

I am resisting any brand that participates in this tomfoolery. 

EAT FReSH corporate sponsor Danone launched their marketing campaign for the new “dairy free” yogurt now made in Pennsylvania, and it has EAT Lancet taglines written all over it.

Of course, Danone is also a client of Edelman. So is PepsiCo.

Follow the money, folks.

Inside this high-stakes game is the world’s largest marketing and PR firm coining elite catch phrases about “eating within planetary boundaries” — you know — to save the planet, and other such “purpose-driven marketing” they are known for.

(Technically, the account director of Edelman Amsterdam planned and organized for two years as employee on assignment with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), which is the organization launching the EAT FReSH initiative with the 41 corporate sponsors, including Edelman. When the EAT Lancet Report and EAT Forums did launch in mid-January 2019, Lara Luten left Edelman’s employ at that point to become the full time director of the communications and social marketing plans that have been laid).

Boil it down. The nobles are telling the serfs: Forget animal protein, ‘Eat cake!’

I’m not against dairy alternatives, they should be available. We are omnivores. Plants need animals and animals need plants and we need them both.

What I am against is global propaganda that positions itself as science and is being used to socially herd us like cattle to the plant-based chute without the integrity to tell us it’s a bridge to genetically-altered-laboratory-designer-proteins (aka fake-meat and fake-dairy) grown in vats and bioreactors. 

Roughly 70% of the available land for food production is grasslands and marginal lands. It is these lands that cattle can graze or where forages for cattle are harvested in systems much different from row crops and vegetable plots. 

Cows upcycle low quality feedstuffs and plant byproducts that we can’t use, and they turn it into nutrient dense, delicious milk and beef. (Those grasslands and forages sequester carbon too!!)

Animal Ag emits less than half of the total greenhouse gas emissions for all of agriculture, and if we look at this per unit of nutrition, it’s amazing.

Animal Ag (dairy, beef, pork, poultry all combined) are responsible for just 3.9% of the U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory, but EAT Lancet tells a different story, and the lies are being exposed.

Just imagine how much stress will be on our so-called “planetary boundaries” if science fiction and social purpose-driven marketing prevails and more of us are “herded” or fooled into replacing more of our animal-based dietary nutrients with plant-based sources. It can’t be done. 

This is a Silicon Valley bridge to the billionaire-funded bioreactor factories to grow (3-D print) replacement protein from gene-altered yeast or gene-edited cell blobs. In fact, Microsoft founder Bill Gates was on CNN with Fareed Zakaaria Sunday talking about “cow farts being one of the world’s biggest problems” and the need for lab-cultured animal protein … to save the world. (Let’s be all the dumber for watching that interview clip here)

What Mr. Gates forgot to mention is his considerable investment in this disrupter technology of fake-meat, and that Microsoft is a corporate sponsor of EAT FReSH / EAT Foundation.

Yes, more science-fiction propaganda in the form of so-called purpose-driven marketing is coming from all sides and hyping up fast because the billionaire investors and food supply chain corporations need this social herding process to launch their new products. It’s not about people and it’s not about the planet, it’s about profit — at our expense!

No thanks here. I’m jumping the gate. The social-herders have gone too far.

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Top photo credit Michele Kunjappu

Who is empowering whom? PART ONE: Dairy check-off’s GENYOUth thin on milk.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: They call it “the dairy farmers’ youth wellness program” because it has been depicted as the brainchild of the National Dairy Council… But GENYOUth — including its flagship Fuel Up to Play 60 (FUTP60) — is thin on milk and threatens to steal even more demand as future milk drinkers are steered away from nutritious whole milk products. Meanwhile, the anti-animal and environmental NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) have been infiltrating new billionaire “sustainability” alliances poised to profit on the main course, while dairy farmers bow-down in hopes of crumbs. This is Part One of an investigative multi-part series.

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Depicted above is the illustration used to promote and glorify the 2018 GENYOUth Gala that was held at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City on Nov. 27. The “superheroes” sponsors are listed further down on the 2018 GENYOUth Gala website. PepsiCo was the “hero” sponsor at $150,000. Champion sponsors of $100,000 each were UnitedHealthcare, Corteva Agriscience, Inmar and fairlife. So-called “defender” sponsors included Domino’s, Ecolab, Jamba Juice, Land O’Lakes, NFLPA, SAP, Leprino Foods, Schreiber, Ameritrade, RBC Capital Markets and Omnicom Group, each of which gave $50,000.

By Sherry Bunting, from Farmshine, Friday, January 11, 2019

BROWNSTOWN, Pa. — How serious is the National Dairy Board about improving fluid milk sales? We see some renewed emphasis on this lately, but our most important sales — those to children in school — threaten to steal even more demand from the future as we lose future milk drinkers with the forced service of only fat-free and 1% low-fat milk in the school lunch and breakfast programs.

Recent studies show that children and teenagers in the poorest demographic of the U.S. population are leading the epidemic of obesity and diabetes. One study by University of Michigan Health System, for example, revealed that for every 1% increase in low-income status among school districts, there as a 1.17% increase in rates of overweight/obese students. Researchers used data collected from mandated screenings that began in Massachusetts schools in 2011, and the percentage of overweight/obese students was compared with the percentage of students in each district eligible for free and reduced school lunch, transitional aid or food stamps (SNAP).

The meals these students receive at school are their best two options for nutrition and satiety all day. There are few restrictions for cheap, high-carb, high-fructose-corn-syrup foods and beverages that can be purchased with SNAP cards, so what will they find at the end of the day for their hunger at home? Soda pop and Dollar Store snacks.

What role is the National Dairy Council and its GENYOUth program playing?

The GENYOUth collaboration is aimed at making “a lasting difference in the lives of children.” That sounds great, but what have been both the intended and unintended lasting consequences?

Certainly, there is a long list of dairy research projects funded by the NDC. That’s a good thing.

But where the rubber meets the road, GENYOUth and its flagship program Fuel Up to Play 60 (FUTP60) are aimed at promoting a “healthy lifestyle” that focuses on 60 minutes of physical activity daily and consumption of fruits and vegetables, whole grains and lean protein “including low-fat and fat-free dairy.”

For nearly 10 years, the dairy checkoff has parroted the Dietary Guidelines on dairy service to children (and adults) when it comes to institutional feeding — the largest category of the food economy and the place where seeds are planted for lifelong choices based on nutrition education and flavor.

Let’s look at how GENYOUth was launched in 2010.

At the Nov. 27, 2018 gala in New York City, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stated that GENYOUth was the concept of Dairy Management Inc (DMI) CEO Tom Gallagher. Gallagher today serves as chairman of the GENYOUth board.

In a YouTube video of Goodell’s remarks — before handing the coveted 2018 Vanguard Award to PepsiCo CEO Albert Carey — Goodell stated that Gallagher came to him with the idea for GENYOUth 10 years ago, which was then “founded” in 2010 as a partnership between the National Dairy Council (NDC) and the National Football League (NFL).

In fact, in its 2014 Progress Report, GENYOUth’s beginning is described as making “cultural shifts” in school nutrition and exercise, stating further that, “Through signing a six-way Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the National Dairy Council, the National Football League, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Education, and Health and Human Services, we have created a productive synergy that has made the sky the limit for GENYOUth.”

According to a report at its website, genyouthnow.org, the foundation seeks to “convene leaders in a movement to empower America’s youth to create a healthier future.”

The 2018 GENYOUth Gala in New York City was billed as “honoring America’s everyday superheroes” and the Vanguard Award, as mentioned, went to PepsiCo.

But let’s go back to the second gala on Dec. 7, 2017 aboard the Intrepid in New York City. Former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack — who now serves as CEO of dairy checkoff-funded U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) — was presented with the Vanguard Award that year.

The GENYOUth website cited “Vilsack’s accomplishments for dairy farmers” under President Obama — for having “legislated to improve the health of America’s kids.”

More specifically, the Vilsack accolades stated that he partnered with First Lady Michelle Obama on her “Let’s Move!” initiative — “alongside GENYOUth to improve the health of America’s children.”

These words show the partnership the NDC / DMI has had with the Obama / Vilsack administration on shared goals of promoting exercise and low-fat / high carb diets for children and youth.

According to the former GENYOUth foundation website before it was revamped to genyouthnow.org, the Vanguard Award presentation to Vilsack was described in January 2018 as follows:

“Sec. Vilsack helped pass and implement the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act to help combat child hunger and obesity by making the most significant improvements to U.S. school meals in 30 years.”

What was included in these “significant improvements” in 2010?

For starters, America’s schools were forced to offer only fat-free flavored milk and only 1% or fat-free white milk, while the screws were tightened on the requirement that less than 10% of a school meal’s calories could come from saturated fat and by reducing the total number of calories in a meal served to children at school, while at the same time putting both program and promotion emphasis on plant-based meals containing scant lean protein.

This means that not only are dairy producers prohibited from putting their best and most nutritious foot forward with future milk drinkers at school, the schools are forced to serve butter substitutes and imitation cheese or cheeses that are diluted with starch to decrease the amount of calories the students receive from fat).

During the Pennsylvania Dairy Summit in February 2018, keynote speaker Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise — without realizing the significance of her statement — put these USDA / GENYOUth ideas to shame. She stated:

“The fat we eat is not the fat we get. The idea that 60 minutes of exercise can make up for a bad diet is disingenuous. You can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet.”

And Teicholz backed up her statement with facts, studies and charts.

Her 2014 book details her 10-years investigation, revealing the lack of sound science to support low-fat diets. Not only are new studies bearing this out, old studies were found to have been “buried” by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and American Heart Association, because they did not support the fat-heart hypothesis of Ancel Keys.

GENYOUth and FUTP60 not only dutifully “followed” these government guidelines but in reality worked alongside the Obama administration to develop them and further the reach of this low-fat dogma.

The implementation of those school milk rules have cost dairy farmers plenty in lost milk sales. Losses so steep that they drove the gradual declines in fluid milk consumption (see Fluid Milk Timeline chart below) plunging downward like a rock from 2010 through 2017 (most recent full-year figures)

FluidMilkTimeline-bunting.jpg

Timelines don’t lie. As we look at this fluid milk timeline, we can see the layered effects of government dietary policy, USDA requirements for fat-free milk (2010), that move occurring alongside the creation of GENYOUth (2010) and some reversal in whole milk trends moving higher after Nina Teicholz’s book Big Fat Surprise made the cover of Time magazine. Meanwhile, the past decade has also been one of FDA non-enforcement of milk’s standard of identity, allowing plant-based alternatives to take hold and proliferate. 

Bob Gray for the Northeast Association of Farm Cooperatives addressed these losses on a dairy policy forum panel in Washington exactly one year ago on January 8, 2018. Gray said: “For the last six years (2010 through 2016 data), we have not been able to sell 1% milk in the schools.”

He noted that in just the four years from 2012 to 2015, dairy producers had “lost 288 million half pints of sales to schoolchildren because of this move, alone.” And those losses continued through 2016 and 2017 and into 2018, despite the small move by the Trump administration to allow 1% flavored milk back into schools.

This is an uphill battle to turn around — what with all the fat-free and low-fat promotion and the fact that schools are already aligned with processors that prefer to keep the fat-free pipeline going.

In addition to GENYOUth honoring Secretary Vilsack with the 2017 Vanguard Award, the National Dairy Board provided him a checkoff-funded salaried position as CEO of USDEC, where his rallying cry has been to get export sales to 20% of expanding total milk production while Class I sales as a percentage of total milk production declined to below 20% by the end of 2017.

Remember, experts at various dairy market forums throughout 2018 have made the point that exports do not raise farm-level milk prices because they are “commodity clearing markets.”

But maybe that is the point.

If fluid milk consumption erodes as a percentage of milk production, the cost of milk to processors is reduced for the many other products competing globally for export sales to increase. Meanwhile, a pipeline for fat-free milk sales keeps the cost of milkfat for other products from accelerating in the farm milk check.

The highest-value class under the Federal Order pricing scheme is the shrinking piece of an expanding commodity-dairy-production-for-export pie.

Meanwhile, the past decade has been one of FDA non-enforcement of milk’s standard of identity, allowing plant-based alternatives to take hold and proliferate.

One can argue that the National Dairy Council — whether simply following USDA’s lead or by working alongside USDA to lead — has played right into the hands of GENYOUth ‘friend’ PepsiCo / Quaker.

Remember, Quaker was a company that DMI specifically partnered with a few years back, but the milk part of the Quaker Oatmeal promotion never really materialized, just like we don’t see the milk part promoted in any of the NFL’s Fuel Up to Play 60 spots. But the NFL is joined at the hip to PepsiCo with side-by-side logos during televised games.

Now, just six weeks after receiving the 2018 Vanguard award from GENYOUth, PepsiCo is launching its own Quaker Oat beverage.

In fact, PepsiCo CEO Albert Carey had the audacity to do a brief sales-pitch for what he called “our new oat milk” in his remarks after NFL commissioner Goodell handed him the highest GENYOUth award on behalf of the NFL and the National Dairy Council.

We’ll dig into that in future parts of this investigative series.

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