Canned Spaghetti and Food Policy

In this episode, Diana and Michael are joined by Baylen Linnekin, the Deputy Director of the Food Integrity Campaign at the Government Accountability Project. Here, Baylen discusses his background in food policy, the history and work of the Government Accountability Project, and the role of strategic litigation in our food system.

You can find Baylen’s biography here.

Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. 

Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. 

You can find a link to Baylen’s book, Biting the Hand that Feeds Us, here. 

Transcript

Michael Roberts 0:01

Hello. Welcome to Repast, a Food Law and Policy podcast from the Resident Center for Food Law and Policy at UCLA Law. I'm Michael Roberts, the Executive Director of the Resident Center.

Diana Winters 0:14

And I'm Diana Winters, the Assistant Director of the Center. The Resident Center performs cutting-edge legal research and scholarship in food law and policy to improve health and quality of life for humans and the planet.

Michael Roberts 0:27

Each month we'll bring you an interview with thought leaders transforming food law and policy.

Diana Winters 0:37

Hello and welcome to Repast. We're happy to be here today with me, Diana Winters, Michael Roberts, the Executive Director of the Center, and our guest, Baylen Linnekin, the Deputy Director of the Food Integrity Campaign at the Government Accountability Project. Hello to both of you.

Michael Roberts 0:59

Hi, Diana. Hi, Diana. Good to see you again.

Diana Winters 1:03

Good to see you too. Take it away, Michael.

Michael Roberts 1:06

Thank you. And we're just thrilled to have uh Baylen join us today. Uh he's been a friend of longstanding and involved in the development of food law uh for a long time. So, Baylen, it says great to have you here. I I just wanted to mention a couple of interesting things about you. This is a new position for you. And I know that you've been an opponent of state ag ag laws for some time now. And you're the author of a lot of different publications. Uh the author of Biting the Hands That Feed Us, How Fewer, Smarter Laws That Make Our Food System More Sustainable, published in 2016 that revealed how federal, state, and local regulations hindered sustainable food practices. You also have a number of other writings in different journals and media outlets that I will not mention at this point, except that uh they can folks can look you up on your your biography online and uh and easily find those. You also uh have earned an LLM in agriculture and food law from the University of Arkansas School of Law and a JD from the American University, Washington College of Law, and serve on the nonprofit Food of Choice. And uh spent nearly a decade on the board of the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund and a founding board member of the Academy of Food Law and Policy. And of course, we know that you've done uh good work with um with the uh folks at Harvard and co-authoring with Emily Broadleave a an article on the growth of food law as well. So you've had your pulse on this field and its growth and and should be uh honored and recognized for that. And you now have an I think this is really a great position for you because this is where your heart is. It allows you to advocate and and represent um important issues to food and integrity, and and I think it's just a great, great fit for you. So welcome. Nice to have you.

Baylen Linnekin 3:16

Cool. That was a lovely introduction from both of you. Thank you very much. All the things you said are true, and I am also quite uh quite Googleable and um yeah, I'm I'm very uh happy to be with uh Government Accountability Project in the new role and and agree that it's a uh a good match for my skill set.

Diana Winters 3:36

I will also put links to your bio and to your publications on our show notes for our listeners to find.

Michael Roberts 3:46

Cool. Tell us a little bit about your position and and then while you're doing that, you can probably jump in and talk about the history of the government accountability project and your role in that eventually. But go ahead and talk about your position first.

Baylen Linnekin 4:03

Sure. Um, I started about uh again, thank you both for having me on. I should start there. But uh I started in the role uh mid-January, and um I'm deputy director uh of the food integrity campaign, which has been a part of the government accountability project for a little more than 15 years right now. And it's kind of been it's a formalization of work that Government Accountability Project's been doing since its founding in 1977. The work includes, you mentioned Ag Gag, that's certainly an element uh working with uh opponents of ag gag, which I don't know how familiar your listeners are about ag gag, but uh just to kind of briefly uh explain it, uh there have been laws that have been uh considered and or adopted and challenged and struck down in a number of states. And I was uh an opponent of it at least a decade ago. I wrote about these laws in my book that you mentioned. And I actually uh I think one of my first interactions with Diana, um, I helped to organize a uh group of food law faculty uh in combating the Idaho AGAG law, which was uh the ACLU and Government Accountability Project and others sued in order to overturn that law. And Diana was one of the uh faculty members who signed on to that amicus brief that I helped organize. And those are ag gag laws are laws that um states had passed essentially to combat uh undercover animal welfare, animal rights uh investigations of often horrendous practices on farms and typically large farms. And like I said, thankfully those uh many of those laws have been struck down on First Amendment grounds. So that's one area where the uh food integrity campaign does its work. Others are around uh contract agriculture, um representing poultry farmers, and uh, you know, it's it's uh working with uh food safety inspectors uh from the USCA or working with people who do inspections uh under the Food Safety Modernization Act, which has uh whistleblowing protections built right into it. And so I use the term whistleblower, which is a lot of the the work uh that that we do. We're representing the interests of uh you know holding government and corporations accountable to citizens, taxpayers, to make sure that um food is safe and that uh workers are treated fairly. And you know, I I did a lot of writing, uh interviewing of uh food safety inspectors in the USDA prior to joining this organization, and that served me well here as well. So that's kind of a brief overview. We uh government accountability project, I guess, differs from some other, you know, just kind of plain old whistleblower law firms in that we have campaigns. So we have a you know litigation arm, but we also have communications uh strategy. We're we're looking to litigate in the public interest and to represent uh people, whistleblowers often, um, who have uh you know, who are FSIS inspectors, part of USDA, or others who are blowing the whistle on on malfeasance by government andor corporate employees.

Michael Roberts 7:27

And and Balin, so so if my memory serves to be correct, uh the government accountability project was founded in the late 70s, right? Or around that time. That's correct, yeah.

Baylen Linnekin 7:38

It was connected to the Pentagon Papers, I believe, in Daniel Ellsberg or Yeah, that he sort of uh inspired the the founders of the organization. Um it was uh spun off from a separate uh nonprofit, uh which hence the name Project versus uh, you know, it was once a project of a larger organization. And actually at the founding conference in 1977, where government accountability project's kind of the germ for its founding, uh, one of the people present uh and who who worked with the organization was um John Coplin, who was a longtime FSIS whistleblower who had worked for two decades, I think, as an inspector, but also blowing the whistle on um actually it was grading of meat that he was blowing the whistle on because uh, you know, the obviously the USDA prime beef get re gets a higher price on the market than USDA choice beef. And so companies and or inspectors were misrepresenting the the quality of the cut or the uh you know the grade of the cut. And so he blew the whistle on that, and that exposed you know some some great uh malfeasance uh on the part of government and corporations.

Michael Roberts 8:49

And the project is headquartered in Washington, D.C. Is that correct?

Baylen Linnekin 8:53

Yeah, yeah. Um it's been uh for a long time on K Street, uh not too far, I guess halfway between Farragut Square and McPherson Square, right near the White House.

Michael Roberts 9:04

So it's its precise relationship to food and agriculture is what?

Baylen Linnekin 9:08

Well, I guess it's the the same as the overall mission of the organization, which is to um promote uh government and corporate accountability, often through working with whistleblowers. And a lot of those historic uh whistleblowers have, you know, in cases such as pink slime, you know, which uh was a kind of, I would think the the industry term was uh thinly textured meat. Um, you know, just kind of gross. And I think it was uh perhaps treated with ammonia. And it was in school lunches and it was in fast food hamburgers, and when that was exposed, uh yeah, people were rightly grossed out. And so the the organization's connection to food goes back uh basically to its inception almost 50 years ago. And yeah, there's uh there are various arms of the organization. Immigration is one key uh arm today, uh, and that's key because obviously there's a uh crackdown at the federal level. I don't know how much you want to go off the food reservation, but um yeah, the Trump administration is doing awful things when it comes to immigration, and my colleagues are are fighting that. And yeah, we're a nonpartisan organization. Um we do and would fight uh regardless of who's doing the bad things. And I like that. I'm nonpartisan, and so I appreciate that that element of the organization's work.

Diana Winters 10:38

Right. I'm wondering why it makes sense to me that there is a specific food integrity campaign within the project. But why do you think that food is a specific topic singled out there? I mean, I understand you just said there's also work going on on immigration, but I would guess there could be tens or hundreds of topics that could be specified. But food, you have a specific food integrity campaign. Do you have a take on that?

Baylen Linnekin 11:11

Sure. I mean, I think it's probably the same reason that there's a uh food law and policy center at UCLA and then there are you know others around the country is that everyone eats. And you know, there's uh I'm I'm working on a whistleblowing guide, and we can talk about that later. But yeah, we have whistleblowing guides uh for people for journalists who work with whistleblowers or for uh whistleblowers who are uh contractors or government employees, you know, and there are these kind of big areas, but food is one of the most central, and I don't need to convince either of you of this, uh, most important, most central issues in law and policy. And because we all eat, uh, there's there's opportunities for doing things really, really well and the right way, and there's the uh opportunities for you know to do things really, really badly and the wrong way. And you know, we exist in the food sphere, perhaps for you know many of the same reasons you do, which is you know, to point out where things aren't right and to try to make those things right. So it's just uh, I mean, obviously I've devoted uh you know a good part part of my career and you each have two to food law issues. And yeah, I wouldn't say that we're two sides of the same coin because it's a um it's a coin with many, many sides, but we're all kind of working on different sides of it. And you know, this is just one, I think, logical side of the coin is that you know our founders saw fit to hold uh government and corporations accountable in the area of food. And there's certainly uh, you know, every nonprofit hopes to put itself out of business. That's that's the ideal, right? But uh so long as that work needs to be done, then this organization, just like yours, uh, is doing it.

Michael Roberts 12:55

Diana doesn't mind a little teasing. I will weigh in and say my question is why wouldn't food be on the agenda? Uh it seems uh like that's uh uh something that we would always expect. Absolutely. But good question, Diana. You mentioned the food guide. Let's turn to the area of publications. Uh so tell us a little bit about your publication and how that's a part of the campaign and about this research guide that you're putting together.

Baylen Linnekin 13:26

Sure. It's um I'm researching it, but it's really a guide for practitioners in the area of food and agriculture. Um, and that's really anyone from the USCA uh meat inspector to someone who's working in a FISMA Food Safety Modernization Act regulated facility producing FDA regulated foods, to other people working in government, to corporate executives who find some sort of uh malfeasance going on in their midst. It includes farm workers, it includes literally anyone who could work in food and agriculture and who might become aware through their employment of some sort of wrongdoing. And that wrongdoing generally as it applies to a whistleblower, is anything from fraud, waste, gross waste. We're talking uh gross mismanagement and any real violation of uh law, regulation, rule, and especially uh as is is relevant to uh to the food realm, to violations uh that impact public health and safety. So it's this is a guide for people who are doing the day-to-day work of wherever it is in the food system, they're doing the work. We want them to kind of see themselves in this and say, hey, I've witnessed wrongdoing or I'm witnessing wrongdoing. Perhaps my employer is retaliating against me. Do I have any recourse? How can I, you know, how can I make this right? Because so many people who work in the in the food system, you know, they're they they're doing it because they care, because they want to produce, let's say, safe food so that kids or the elderly or kids in school can eat healthy food and can do so safely. And so this is a guide for the people doing that work, whether they're an inspector, whether they're a farm worker, whether they're a head of a big corporation or some senior person there, a meat inspector, that, you know, if they see wrongdoing, if they decide that they want to tell someone, we we can help them learn how to do it, how to do it safely or as safely as possible. You know, this is a it's a risky endeavor, whistleblowing. It's not, it's not easy to do it. It's not easy to decide that you want to share the this with whether it's with your superior, whether it's with a member of Congress, whether it's reporting it to an organization like ours, and then working with us to to try to make it right. You can face retaliation, you can, including obviously the loss of your job, there are risks, but lots of people do it, and they do it because they really care about the integrity of the food system.

Diana Winters 15:58

How will you try to get this publication into the hands of the people who need it? Do you have a specific distribution network or what do you do?

Baylen Linnekin 16:09

Um, that's a great question. We have hard copies that we certainly can and will hand out to you know people at conferences. We also have all of our guides posted at our website, whistleblower.org. Thank you for asking. And uh you can download them all there for free, um PDF. And this guide's going to be a little bit shorter and kind of written. Um, I think, you know, like I said, we have, for example, a guide for whistleblowers or for journalists who might work with whistleblowers. And that's written, you know, for journalists. This is this guide's going to be written for people who work in and around food. And we're also thinking to have a uh maybe like a two-pager kind of crumple-proof, waterproof thing that you could fold up in your back pocket, forget about it, run it through the wash, and then think about it a month later, like, oh, I actually could I need that now. And you can unfurl it and ideally it'll spring back right to life. We're going to have some QR codes that people can access more information at our website. And so, you know, but sure, I'd love to be able to share it with people, for example, at a prestigious food law and policy center. Um, so if they're having a conference, for example, where farm workers will be present, or I'd love to be able to share that with farm workers. I'm in Florida and then there are plenty of uh farm workers here. I'd love to be able to drive copies of that out to them and hand it out myself. And again, it's downloadable, uh, the longer guide will be. And so, you know, getting it in more hands uh is is yeah, it's especially important at a time when we need whistleblowers, uh, which I think is given the kind of climate in this country today, I think is uh just as important, if not more important than ever.

Diana Winters 17:52

That makes sense. I'm thinking about the social media, the use of social media to distribute it. And I was wondering whether maybe getting into the hands of unions or union leadership would be useful. But I'm sure you guys have thought about all of that. But yeah, no, it seems extraordinarily valuable and just the question of making sure that it's um accessible, which it seems like it absolutely is, and we can also make sure that once it's ready, we can post it on our show notes here. And as you said, if we have any opportunities to distribute, we certainly will. Thank you. For sure. For sure.

Michael Roberts 18:32

Let's turn down to another part of your responsibilities, and that's the advocacy piece. So talk a little bit about litigation and how that fits into your role, especially since we have a law audience in front of us.

Baylen Linnekin 18:50

Sure. Um, yeah, I've I've uh as as we discussed, I've you know been interested in and involved in the ag gag area for a while. Um, I've written some amicus briefs, I've I've represented some some people, I've served as an expert uh witness, but I haven't really done this sort of direct whistleblower representation. Um, and so that's new to me. And so I, you know, I'm not speaking as the world's foremost expert on that. I, as you, you know, uh as each of you, or is the case with each of you, you know, I my my food law bona fides are are are good. And I'm learning more and more about whistleblowing and whistleblowing laws as I go. And I can't really speak about specifics on cases because uh, you know, these are whistleblowers who I'm working with who perhaps haven't filed their disclosures yet or have filed disclosures but are keeping their identities private uh for one of a number of reasons. And so, you know, I guess in general terms, um, you can disclose, like I mentioned, the Food Safety Modernization Act, for example, which covers FDA regulated facilities where food is produced, you know, canned uh for your audience, canned spaghetti that does not contain meat sauce, for example, that's a FSMA regulated food. Well, that law has a whistleblowing provision written right into it. And again, I'm not representing any canned spaghetti makers, so I'm just you know, giving that as an example. And so, you know, if someone in a facility that makes canned spaghetti uh sees something wrong and decides to report that, you know, whether to their superior and their superior does nothing, or whether just directly it's you know, they decide to report it directly to Congress or to us. Any of those things are appropriate for a whistleblower, as long as it's you know that their reasonable belief that this disclosure would be related to one of the uh facets that I outlined earlier, the elements of you know what makes a protected whistleblower. So they would do that. Let's say they report it to us after they talk to their supervisor, who doesn't, you know, who ignores them or who retaliates that against them, something like that. Then we would use the provisions in FISMA to uh file a disclosure with the FDA or another agency if they decide to go a slightly different route. And then that would be uh, you know, a complaint that the person has with the federal government. Uh the federal government, you know, is uh uh I I wouldn't say that they're uh always uh the most responsive. Courts aren't the most responsive, agencies aren't the most responsive, but we would work with them to make sure that their concerns are shared with the appropriate agency, andor you know, there are some uh some laws with provisions that you can, after a certain time, or given certain circumstances, you can file directly in court. And so we represent them. And we do have campaigns, we have a communications staff, for example, we have a litigation team. And we have a legislative team as well who works on Capitol Hill to try to expand whistleblower protections. A lot, like I said, the Food Safety Modernization Act, those whistleblower provisions are largely thanks to the work of Government Accountability Project. And so, you know, it's a this kind of like an advocacy uh approach that is common in DC. You have, you know, various arms of an organization working towards a one goal, one issue of public interest, and trying to amplify one case to solve what is usually a larger problem.

Michael Roberts 22:39

Let's talk about that for a minute because I think that's really interesting. And food is a nice way of showing how this strategic litigation, if you can call it that, works with campaigning area. So litigation combined with campaigns to magnify public policy impact, I suppose is how we can say it. And again, like you said, it allows you to use litigation as a way to take one case and sort of magnify that in a way to draw attention and to seek resolution to larger issues. So what are some of the barriers and challenges to that to this combined approach?

Baylen Linnekin 23:19

Uh I mean, I don't think they're necessarily unique to this organization or to whistleblowing. You know, it's just kind of a, you know, it's uh let's say uh, you know, uh let's say there's let's go back to the canned spaghetti example. Let's say there's a huge issue with canned spaghetti. Again, that I'm not saying there is. In fact, I don't know of any. I don't want to pick on the canned spaghetti people. But let's say there is the canned spaghetti companies are going to unite and push back against that. They're gonna say, what are you talking about? There's no problem. They're gonna do the exact same thing that we're doing, but on the flip side, you know, kind of like bizarro versus Superman. In that case, we'd be Superman, and the other side would be Bizarro. I don't know how good you are with the superhero examples. No? Follow no? All right, your your listeners will know. So, you know, we'd be basically fighting back against a much larger set of corporate interests who probably have you know stronger and better connections and ties to lawmakers uh who have more lobbying bucks to spend. And you know, it's a battle, it's the David and Goliath thing uh that happens a lot. Um, but you know, sometimes David wins. The laws are supposed to protect everyone equally, and certainly whistleblowing laws are important for this reason because you know they're they're protecting the little guy in a way that I think many other laws don't. You know, there's whistleblowing laws are specifically designed, I think. And again, I'm speaking as someone who's you know still learning the field, but uh the whistleblowing laws that I've read, that I've uh read about, that I've experienced, you know, deep throat, things like that. I mean, this was whistleblowing that brought down a presidency. And in this country, no one's really more powerful than the president, especially today. And so, you know, it's the laws that that help people who might uh otherwise not have much strength, much of a voice to impact a public policy and change uh, you know, to change laws, change minds, and really make an impact on an enormous number of people in a way that, you know, a the little guy, I'm using finger quotes, probably wouldn't have that sort of impact in any other way except through whistleblowing laws.

Diana Winters 25:39

I know you haven't been in this position for too long, Baylin, but in your experience and or in your colleagues' anecdotal experience, has there been a rise or a drop off in whistleblower suits over the past couple of years? I mean, have people been more willing to bring suits, less willing to bring suits because of fear of retaliation by their executives or uh government officials, or have the numbers been relatively consistent? Or can you not answer this?

Baylen Linnekin 26:17

I don't know that I can answer just in terms of quantity, but I can say that my understanding, and this I think uh probably tracks with numbers, is that there's definitely, it seems, a correlation between kind of the need for whistleblowers that as that need increases, the risk and the potential for retaliation is also on the rise. So as you know, as an administration, uh uh I talk about whistleblowing like it's all federal. It's not, you know, most states, perhaps every state has some sort of whistleblower protection. Some states are better than others. But I think as, you know, as we need more whistleblowers, it also becomes riskier to do so. And that's probably a function just of the idea that the need for whistleblowers goes up as we have fewer and fewer freedoms. And when we have fewer and fewer freedoms, risks are also uh correspondingly higher. And so I'm not good with uh charts and graphs. Uh and so, and I your listeners probably wouldn't be able to see it anyways if I drew it. But just picture something where risk is, you know, of retaliation is on the rise at the same time as the need for whistleblowers is also on the rise.

Michael Roberts 27:35

Let's uh close here by talking about lessons to be learned. Uh so for example, one lesson I have learned is not to eat canned spaghetti tonight for dinner. But if you look, uh you've been around food and law for a long time, but and every new every new opportunity brings with it chances of learning interesting new lessons. So, what new lessons have you learned uh by being associated uh with this new organization? And how does it relate to food and and food law as a certain in general?

Baylen Linnekin 28:10

I mean, I guess I don't know that I've learned anything new, but I think I've been reminded uh that's not true. I mean, I'm learning about whistleblower law, but kind of for bigger kind of food lessons. I didn't know that uh government accountability projects food-related work stretch back 50 years, and yet I'm not the least bit surprised. You know, the it it's having done a lot of historical research, some of which you alluded to earlier, the food law and policy article that I wrote with uh Emily Bradley, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago, something like that. You know, we we looked at the history of the field of food law and policy and it you know stretched back a hundred plus years. And you know, we we talked about uh, I believe how uh you were you probably taught the first course in food lawn policy, if I recall uh correctly. And so, you know, learning about the history is not the same as I guess being surprised about the history. I guess I'm surprised that I hadn't thought about it. There's often a food law element or food is at the heart of some sort of legal element. When we go back, you know, one of the first patents, I think, if not the first patent, was for something that's no longer patentable, but it was, I think, a uh a recipe in ancient Greece. And you probably talk about this in your food uh law text, but I didn't know that. And and you know, when I found that out, I was not the least bit surprised. I'm I'm often more surprised when food isn't at the heart of something than when it is. And so, yeah, I'm I'm learning about those connections and their existence uh as I go along, learning about the organization's history and you know, working with uh with other groups uh uh and with colleagues who have these kind of interesting food histories that I I really didn't know about until I started this role. And so that's you know, as someone who I I have no history degree, but someone who's very interested in history and how it relates to food, um, I'm enjoying that uh that element of the work very much.

Michael Roberts 30:17

Yeah, it's it's interesting. I I appreciate your perspective on this. When we typically talk to people who know very little or nothing about food law, folks are always surprised that food has some level of controversy because food is seen as such it's everyday sustenance. We we interact with food all the time. It seems to be rather innocent and rather neutral, at least, but very necessary. And so when we're talking about accountability and integrity and campaigning and advocacy and litigation, it still catches people by surprise. But we the work you're doing kind of brings all those things together in a way that really speaks to the problems of food, the challenges of of having nutritious, wholesome, uh authentic food in front of us. And it's like you said, it's been a problem, and that's the surprising thing to most of us. It's been a problem for a long, long time, and even more so today, right?

Baylen Linnekin 31:22

Yeah, I mean, uh in many ways, uh, you know, I've I've heard maybe you and and I've said this, uh, you know, the the nation's food supply is is uh largely safe, you know, and and that's thanks to regulations that I've looked at that go back to you know colonial American times and before around provisions around inspection, uh anti-adulteration, anti-misbranding. And that's kind of the same stuff at the core of food law today. That's basically what we have is this system. And there are other things going on in food. Um, but yeah, it's uh it it does surprise people often, the controversies and the problems that we have in the food system. I think we're more cognizant of that uh today. And by we, I mean people, you know, who study this. Yeah. A lot of Americans, they they go about their days, they eat their food, they don't really think about where it comes from. And that's not a bad thing. You know, uh historically people always had to think about their food because they had to get their next meal. And now we can we can have cans spaghetti in our cabinets and and we can enjoy that, you know, at every at every dinner if we want to. You can you can go through your entire life without thinking about it, but if you think about it, the more you think about it, you know, it's it's a it's a snowball. It it leads to more thinking still. And you know, that's why we're all stuck here and the people listening to this podcast are all stuck doing that too. They care about this stuff.

Michael Roberts 32:55

Thank you so much. And Diana, would you like to have the last word on can spaghetti or anything else?

Diana Winters 33:02

I was just gonna say thank you so much for joining us, Baylin. Yeah, can spaghetti was a through line through this podcast, but we have learned so much today, and so we appreciate you being our guest. And thank you to all of our listeners. Join us next month.

Baylen Linnekin 33:20

Thank you both. Thank you.