The Hightower Report

THE ALL-NATURAL FLIMFLAM

Is it true that all the CEOs and lawyers at big food corporations get their job training from flimflam artists at carnival sideshows?

These executives are always trying to twist language, pervert meaning, and distort laws in various crass, commercial efforts to flimflam us consumers. The latest example is a push by food giants to mess with something as basic as "natural" chicken. Most of us would think any bird with that label has been raised in – well, a natural environment on a diet of such natural feedstuffs as grain, meal, and bugs. We would also assume the bird has not been doused, injected, or otherwise juiced up with chemical additives or other ingredients.

We would be wrong. For example, Tyson Foods Inc., the biggest chicken wrangler in the land, pumps up its "all-natural" birds with water, salt, preservatives, and other ingredients. Indeed, up to 15% of the retail weight of Tyson's all-natural cluckers is said to be derived from such additives – yet its corporate honchos are telling food regulators in Washington that Tyson's product is still pure enough to be labeled "all-natural."

Tyson is not the only trickster. Lawyers from Sara Lee Corp. have recently petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to let it use the "natural" label on its Hillshire Farm brand of meats, even though the meats have had a chemical preservative called sodium lactate added to them. Yes, this chemical is derived from a plant, but its appearance in the meat is not exactly a natural occurrence – it's an industrial process.

Shouldn't the term "natural" be applied only to food products that are, you know – natural? To stay informed about the flimflammers, connect with the consumer watchdog group, Center for Science in the Public Interest: 202/332-9110.

BUSH'S DEEPEST HEALTH-CARE SHAME

It's well known that the Bushites don't much care that the number of Americans without health coverage has zoomed upward by 7 million since they've been in charge, including an increase of 600,000 children last year alone. After all, says George W., all Americans have access to health care, since "you just go to an emergency room."

But here's a bit of Bushite health-care callousness that is not generally known, and it might both surprise and appall you: The number of uninsured veterans has jumped dramatically on the Bush watch, with nearly 2 million vets now without health coverage. Indeed, the number of uncovered veterans has risen twice as fast as the number of uninsured in the general population, according to a report in the American Journal of Public Health.

But wait, you say – isn't Bush the guy who's always saying, "Support the troops, support the troops?" Surely there must be some mistake. He wouldn't turn his back on the troops once they come home, especially not sick and wounded vets – would he?

Sadly, appallingly – yes, he would. And this is not an oversight on his part, either, for his administration has actively pushed policies to limit the number of vets eligible for coverage. In 2002, even as he was revving up the war machine to send our troops into Iraq, Bush administrators at the Department of Veterans Affairs quietly stopped marketing health coverage to veterans, citing the need to constrain spending. A year later, they went further, actually cutting off access to future vets who earn more than about $30,000 a year. The result is that most of today's uninsured veterans are lower-middle-income workers who are too poor to afford private policies but not poor enough to qualify for free health care.

This is beyond shameful. No Bushite should be allowed ever again to mouth the words, "Support our troops."