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By Ahmed Aboulenein, Renee Hickman and Leah Douglas
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government will address what it sees as an epidemic of chronic illness among American children, calling for changes such as offering full-fat milk in cafeterias and limiting marketing of food and drugs, the "Make America Healthy Again" Commission said in its second report on Tuesday.
The commission, established by President Donald Trump through an executive order and led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time anti-vaccine crusader, builds on a May commission assessment.
That report linked processed foods and over-prescription of medications and vaccines to rising rates of childhood obesity, diabetes, autism, and ADHD. It also alarmed food industry groups for pointing to pesticides like glyphosate, a key weedkiller ingredient that is the subject of thousands of lawsuits, as a potential health risk factor.
The latest strategy document calls for changes to school diets, such as offering full-fat milk, and proposes investigating vaccine and prescription drug safety.
It notably stops short of recommending changes to U.S. agrochemical approval or regulatory processes, a key demand of some MAHA activists.
Rather, the report says the Environmental Protection Agency will work to build public confidence in its pesticide review process and reform its agrochemical approval process to ensure their "timely availability" to farmers.
Health advocates and other experts said last month that the recommendations in a draft of the report lack scientific grounding and do little to address the real causes of poor health among children.
The report calls for increased federal oversight and enforcement of direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising, with a special focus on violations involving children, social media, and telehealth.
Pharmaceutical industry group PhRMA pointed to the report's description of the "overmedicalization" of children as misleading.
"For those who need them, medicines have changed the course of mental illnesses like major depressive disorder, anxiety and ADHD to name a few," PhRMA wrote. "Medications can help improve a child’s ability to function at school, maintain relationships and enjoy daily life."
The report also proposes exploring new guidelines to limit direct advertising of unhealthy foods to children, aiming to address misleading marketing practices.
It recommends that the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Agriculture work with restaurants to increase education and awareness of age-appropriate healthy food options for children.
Groups representing corn, dairy and produce farmers and the pesticide industry were supportive of the report, according to statements.
More than 250 groups representing farmers, ranchers, and agrochemical companies called for greater input into MAHA Commission activities following the release of the first report. The White House responded by holding meetings with food and farm groups over the summer.
Kennedy said during a Senate hearing last week that HHS had met with 140 farm interests in the past three months.
"We're consulting every stakeholder in the farm community in everything that we do," he said.
Some environmental groups criticized the report for not taking a harsher stance on pesticides.
“It’s a shocking reversal,” said Scott Faber, senior vice president of governmental affairs for the Environmental Working Group, an environmental advocacy organization that has long been critical of pesticide use.
FOCUS ON NUTRITION NOT REGULATION
The report focuses more on nutrition and lifestyle adjustments rather than tightening regulations, and suggests loosening water discharge and other pollution standards for some meat processing plants and farms.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said at a Tuesday event announcing the report that the USDA and HHS were continuing work on updated dietary guidelines and that they would be released soon.
"We will be completely resetting and reworking what we suggest to Americans," Rollins said, adding that the guidelines will prioritize foods like whole-fat dairy, vegetables and meat and recommend limiting foods high in sugar.
Rollins also said the agency issued an application notice for a program to promote healthy food in schools.
Among the policy proposals in the report are the establishment of a National Institutes of Health Chronic Disease Task Force, a government definition for "ultra-processed food," and restrictions on synthetic food dyes, which the May report said were potentially linked to autism, without evidence.
It also calls for additional research into vaccine safety, a contentious area given Kennedy's past promotion of debunked claims linking vaccines to autism.
The EPA should work with the USDA to promote precision pesticide application, the report said, with the aim of reducing overall use, but stopped short of recommending regulatory action.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said at Tuesday's event that the agency is adding scientists to its chemicals office to increase its capacity to review pesticide applications.
The EPA, USDA, and NIH should collaborate on a framework to study cumulative chemical exposures, the report said, including pesticides. It recommends that research use advanced methodologies that employ human-relevant models.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein, Leah Douglas and Katherine Jackson in Washington, Renee Hickman in Chicago and Waylon Cunningham in New York; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)
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