Obama links health issues to farming, then backs off
By PHILIP BRASHER pbrasher@dmreg.com
Washington, D.C. — Barack Obama appeared to link farming with some of the nation's leading health problems, including obesity and heart disease, in a recent interview.Obama - citing an article by Michael Pollan, an author and outspoken critic of U.S. farm policy - told Time magazine that agriculture is "partly responsible for the explosion in our health care costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in health care costs."
The Obama campaign issued a statement on Thursday saying that Obama "was simply paraphrasing an article he read. He believes there are a lot of factors that contribute to obesity, heart disease and other health problems, but he certainly doesn't blame farmers."
But Ron Litterer, a Greene farmer who is chairman of the National Corn Growers Association, said Obama's comments in the Time interview were "in conflict with what he's been saying about agriculture, no question about it." Read More
It seems hard for me to believe that Sen. Obama is willing to blame family farmers and ranchers for America’s health care costs. The only thing that America’s producers are guilty of is producing the world’s safest, least expensive, most abundant food supply on the planet. Ultimately, every person is responsible for their own health. I think it is important to remember that there are still a lot of lawyers that would love to take a crack at agriculture as a whole, just as they pursued big tobacco. It’s disappointing to hear a presidential candidate throw gas on that fire.
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