Dairy industry entangled with bribery, corruption and politics -- interview with Robert Cohen

Sunday, December 05, 2004 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: Robert Cohen, cow's milk, dairy products

https://www.naturalnews.com/002689.html

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Mike Adams: Given all of this, though, isn't it astounding what kind of marketing and propaganda job the dairy industry has accomplished? Most people aren't aware of this information, and they drink milk at every meal.

Robert Cohen: The most brilliant marketing campaign in the history of humankind -- you gotta give these guys credit. They do their job well, and they spread the money well, in the right magazines. They've targeted women from women's magazines and they've also gotten to Congress. They've donated money -- lots of it -- so that chief, key people who make these laws regarding milk consumption in schools on the USDA, the food pyramid -- it's loaded, it's so supersaturated with people who have worked for or continue to work for the dairy industry.

And when I use the word "bribes," I'm saying they bribed people in government. I actually filed a Freedom of Information Act Request and got a Watergate tape -- March 23, 1971, we find Richard Nixon taking $3 million dollars cash in the White House. John Connelly walks in there afterwards and is recorded saying, "These men are militants, they're adamant, they're going to place a lot of money into political activities," and they had $3 million cash! You know what Nixon did the next day? The next day in a cabinet session, despite the fact that a week earlier the Secretary of Agriculture, Clifford Horton, said there'd be no increase in the price of milk that year because there was a surplus, the next day Nixon surprised everybody by raising the price of milk across the board, translated to a $300 million increase that Americans had to pay.

A year later, before the Watergate tapes were even known, Nixon was now being interviewed on television by 100 reporters, and one of the reporters at the end said, "Uh, Mr. President, how about rumors of the milk fund?" -- that $3 million bribe was paid, we now know. Nixon responded: "Milk fund? The Democrats are raising the price of milk, not the Republicans!" And he said, "I want the American people to know that their president is not a crook -- I am not a crook." That's what he said in response to a question about the milk bribe he took. The guy was a crook, and that's the way Congress works.

Mike Adams: Well, food politics as usual, I say, and I think that kind of influence and corruption seems par for the course today.

Robert Cohen: Well, it is par for the course. I testified before the USDA Food Pyramid Committee a few years ago, when the undersecretary, Eileen Kennedy, running it, asked all of the people, 27 of us, our names and our organizations, and who finances us. When it got my turn to testify in front of a few hundred reporters, I pointed my finger at her and said, "The American people want to know who finances you!" Everybody said, "Gasp! What did he say?" I said, "Because I've researched you, Dr. Kennedy. You're on the Board of Directors of the Dannon Yogurt Research Foundation. Isn't that a conflict of interest?" Promoting milk for our kids on that food pyramid...

Mike Adams: Obviously, you have a great deal of information and passion about this subject. What is the FDA's role in all of this, both historically and today?

Robert Cohen: The FDA does not have the manpower and womanpower to test these things. They have a strict budget, and having met with them on many occasions and knowing people from top to bottom at the FDA, I will say that I wish they were an investigative agency. They're not -- they're an agency that is only able to review the research submitted to them by pharmaceutical companies. Their role is not to test milk, and not to question whether milk is good. They kind of grandfather something in, and if it's been used, it's generally regarded as safe, and they give it a status called GRAS, Generally Regarded As Safe, because it's been used for eons. They don't test milk, and if they did, there are things like aspirin that would never have made it to the market. And unfortunately, the FDA relies upon animal testing and animals react differently than humans do to everything.

Mike Adams: Isn't there any investigative body that can take a closer look at this without the influence of the dairy industry?

Robert Cohen: Not really -- that's not their role. Again, the United States Department of Agriculture, the USDA's role, is to protect those people manufacturing these products and to look after their best interests. So any state agency, any State Department of Agriculture is there to help the people producing the food. Which is important -- farmers all throughout America are hurting, even dairy farmers, even corn farmers. It costs $3 to grow a bushel of corn, and they're getting $1.80 for a bushel, so we've turned into a different country. The country that was going to bury the Soviet Union has become a communist country, where farmers can't exist without subsidies. It's a shame.

Continue with part three.