Young said, “There's a lot of misperception in some of the commentary that came out in the MAHA report, we hope to have an opportunity as we go forward to correct some of the things that we think are misperceptions and get some of these narratives going on the right track and have a more productive conversation.”
Adcock asked Tom how can those involved make a difference and influence the conversation with the current administration. Tom said, “For the past 20, 30 years we have just kept moving along — our farms, operations — to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to America's consumers. We kept finding ways to improve and growing our businesses, then and all of a sudden MAHA comes along and we're being questioned. I don't mind being questioned. It's good for us to step back and look at our systems and say, ‘are there ways for improvement?’ To make sure we can help in making consumers healthier are we using the right practices and the right tools to produce our food? My answer to that is, for the most part, we are doing everything we can to do the right to make sure that we're using the right tools.”
Adcock said that it was okay for MAHA to question, but felt that those questions have not all been fair, constructive or based in sound science.
Mogler and Lurie were more direct in their displeasure with the MAHA report. “A couple of years ago people just thought about oil as vegetable oil, but then on social media and some podcasts expressed concerns around seed oils. Now when you hear the word seed oils, you automatically think, oh, that's bad. That’s not necessarily true. That's kind of the problem we have with this whole MAHA report process is that it feels like they kind of shot an arrow and painted a bullseye around it later,” said Mogler.
Lurie said Mogler’s painting of the bullseye comment was “pretty accurate,” adding that “there's no real reason to believe that this report was going to have any real scientific meeting. That was a six-month study by federal employees who took on about 27 different ideas and somehow in 100 days as it turns out, they did not reach a single conclusion inconsistent with the ideas that they had going in, not even one. So, it felt like a fait accompli, quite honestly.”
Top photo: Rebeckah Adcock, Peter Lurie, Devin Mogler, Joby Young and Kip Tom.