Former Kraft Exec: Government Must Reform Food Industry

In a New York Times (3/16, Mudd, Subscription Publication, 1.68M) op-ed, Michael Mudd, former executive vice president of global corporate affairs for Kraft Foods, wrote that the food industry has “strayed from the honorable business of feeding people appropriately to the deplorable mission of ‘increasing shareholder value’ by enticing people to consume more and more high-margin, low-nutrition branded products.” 

Mudd believes that “food companies must be made to change their worst practices” as “it’s obvious the industry won’t change on its own. Quite simply, change will have to be forced — by public pressure, media attention, regulation and litigation.” 

Mudd proposed levying “federal and state excise taxes on sugared beverages and a few categories — snack foods, candy, sweet baked goods — that most undermine health mandatory” and making mandatory “federal guidelines for marketing food to children that were proposed in 2011” and “written jointly by the Federal Trade Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Agriculture.”