(Washington) The administration of Donald Trump unveiled its strategy on Tuesday to fight chronic diseases affecting young Americans, such as obesity and diabetes, offering a plethora of tracks to fight in particular junk food while largely sparing the food industry.
This document, which follows from the commitments of the Republican President and his Health Secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr., was highly awaited by health experts as well as industrialists.
On nearly 20 pages, it offers measures to better regulate pharmaceutical advertising, promote a more balanced diet or even strengthen the supervision of vaccines.
But the vague formulas used as well as the absence of strong measures against pesticides and the food industry were immediately criticized by experts in the sector.
If the document “contains many action ideas”, it “lacks details and is unconvincing in matters of regulatory measures”, underlines for AFP Marion Nestle, professor emeritus in nutrition and public health.
“This is manipulation at an never seen level,” said Scott Faber, an expert in environmental regulations to the American organization EWG, pointing to recommendations against policies so far carried out by the Trump administration, which has notably weakened the regulations of polluting emissions.
Invented studies
This roadmap follows the publication a few months ago from the first part of the report “to give our children their health”, whose conclusions had proven to be partly based on scientific studies created from scratch.
This first document had pointed out the possible responsibility for the ultra -formed food, pesticides or screens in the development of chronic diseases in children, and sowed doubts about vaccines.
The government strategy to shed light on the causes of chronic diseases arouses the concern of many medical experts due to the central role played by the Secretary of Health, Robert Kennedy Jr., strongly disputed for his anti-vaccine positions.
The latter, a former lawyer respected in environmental law, which had pleaded against Monsanto in the Roundup herbicide case, is however appreciated by experts and elected officials, democrats as Republicans, for his fight against junk food and pesticides.
But as during the publication of the first part, the importance given to the fight against pesticides is limited: the roadmap emphasizes more about the use of “precision technologies” to reduce their employment in agriculture than on possible prohibitions of certain chemical compounds.
