Political Cronyism, Chobani Yogurt & Millions In Wasted Food

TWIN FALLS, IDAHO — The Michelle Obama-inspired changes to Federal School Lunch program in 2010 have caused a disaster for school districts across the country, as the do-gooder central panning scheme has caused food waste as the Obama administration tied federal funding to the requirement that kids be given food that they may not want to eat.

Part of that zeal to enforce “healthy foods” led to the Obama administration pushing for the inclusion of Greek-style yogurt in school lunches. A detailed look at how Chobani Yogurt become part of the Federal School Lunch program demonstrates what seems to have become “business as usual” today, as political connections between Chobani owner Hamdi Ulukaya factored into the deal every step of the way.

Chobani’s Crony Capitalism

Chobani began lobbying efforts in 2012. As we reported in out profile of Hamdi Ulukaya’s political connections to the Clintons and their allies, New York Senator Chuck Schumer had suggested that Chobani, which has large factory in New York, get involved with the Federal School lunch program. As reported bythe Albany Times Union:

With encouragement from (New York Senators) Schumer and Gellibrand, Ulukaya and other New York Greek yogurt players entered the Washington fray in 2012. They wanted to get into the USDA‘s $15 billion school lunch, breakfast and summer food programs.

Another of Sen. Schumer’s other projects at the time was promoting the globalist open border immigration agenda. Schemer was part of the Gang of Eight, working with other Senator like John McCain and Marco Rubio as well as the Obama White House to promote their idea of comprehensive immigration reform.

In pushing for immigration reform — a concept with a lot of public resistance — the administration needed to roll out a variety of surrogates to create the appearance of a groundswell of support for the comprehensive immigration reform agenda.

On June 24, 2013 Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya got a rare honor and was called to the White House to meeting with President Obama to help promote the Senate’s bipartisan establishment full court press for amnesty via the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill.

C-SPAN covered the press conference held after the dog-and-pony show, describing it as:

Business Leaders on the Senate Immigration Bill Business leaders spoke to reporters after a meeting with President Obama at the White House to discuss the current immigration policy bill being debated in the Senate. They were mainly immigrants, or the children of immigrants, and entrepreneurs.

What C-SPAN failed to report, however, was that Hamdi Ulukaya is not a U.S. citizen, but a Turkish citizen. In other words, a foreign national was used a prop to impact United States immigration policy.

Ulukaya’s performance paid off. Just 15 days after Ulukaya visited the White House to promote immigration reform, The Hill reported:

The Obama administration wants to add Greek yogurt to school lunch menus.

On Monday, the Department of Agriculture announced it was looking to buy the yogurt for schools participating in a federally assisted program that subsidizes school lunches.

A department official said in a statement that the introduction of Greek yogurt, which is high in protein, was aimed at helping schools offer a variety of healthy foods to kids

This promoted Michelle Obama’s pet project, the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010” that passed Congress with bipartisan support and was signed by President Obama. Luckily for Chobani, the proposal was very specific: it didn’t want to add just any yogurt to school lunches but Greek-style yogurt…and the market leader there was Chobani. As Reason reported:

Greek-style yogurt is more expensive than other comparably nutritious yogurts. The USDA has to pilot this program in only four states — New York, Arizona, Idaho, and Tennessee — because the bureaucrats don’t know if they can get such a highly perishable item to schools that are situated further from the yogurt distribution centers. And most important, there is one particular state and one particular business that stand to benefit from a big increase in Greek yogurt sales.

Meanwhile, Sen. Schumer continues to be a Chobani-booster. When Russian authorities blocked a shipment of Chobani to the 2014 Winter Olympics, Chuck Schumer put in a good word for Hamdi Ulukaya’s company, saying in an official statement that reads like a company press release, ““The Russian Authorities should get past ‘nyet,’ and let this prime sponsor of the U.S. Olympic Team deliver their protein-packed food to our athletes.”

In turn, Chobani and Ulukaya helped to attack Russia on another issue that was key to the Democrat agenda: LGBT rights. As the Huffington Post reported:

On Friday evening, Greek-yogurt maker Chobani released on Twitter an image of stacked yogurt cups representing the colors of the rainbow with the tagline “Naturally Powering Everyone.” The post comes just after Chobani, a sponsor of the United States Olympic Committee and Team USA, publicly denounced Russia’s anti-gay laws.

“It’s disappointing that in 2014 this is still an issue,” Chobani’s CEO, Hamdi Ulukaya, told the Associated Press on Feb. 5. “We are against all laws and practices that discriminate in any way, whether it be where you come from or who you love — for that reason, we oppose Russia’s anti-LGBT law.”

It’s worth noting that Ulukaya doesn’t seem to have made any statements about LGBT issues in Turkey, where he is a still a citizen. However, Chobani showed it’s commitment to LBGT issues in 2015 with a provocative commercial that features their Simply 100 product, naked lesbians and a large amount of spoon licking.

Chobani continued to spend money on lobbying and Hamdi Ulukaya continued as an outspoken public advocate for expanded immigration and refugee resettlement. With the pilot program for Federal School Lunches underway, in April 2014, New York Timesreported:

Chobani, a fast-growing company in upstate New York, said on Wednesday that it had secured a $750 million loan from TPG Capital, a big private equity firm. The fresh capital, coming after a competitive process in recent weeks, is intended to help Chobani add new products and expand overseas.

Chobani, which is based in New Berlin, N.Y., and has a manufacturing plant in Twin Falls, Idaho, has gained political allies in New York, who have embraced yogurt production as a booming business.

However the company also hit some snags in their booming business when they were forced to recall some of their live-culture (i.e. mold) enhanced yogurt product. As NBC News reported in a September, 2013 article titled Chobani yogurt on school lunch menus, weeks after mold forces recall:

School lunch programs in four states will be dishing up Chobani Greek yogurt to kids, weeks after problems with mold and complaints of illness forced the firm to launch a nationwide recall.

Some 230 New York school districts have ordered more than 3,300 cases of Chobani products, while Idaho schools have requested more than 3,400 cases, school officials said.

In 2014,NBC News reportedthat some scientists were saying Chobani’s claims about the risk posed by the mold weren’t entirely accurate.

Ten months after a nationwide recall of Chobani Greek yogurt linked to reports of more than 400 illnesses, microbiologists say the fungus responsible for the outbreak isn’t as harmless as company officials indicated.

“The potential risk would be higher than we might have thought,” said Soo Chan Lee, a senior research associate with the Duke Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology. The study is published in the journal mBio.

That contradicts the position of experts cited by Chobani who said the mold is “not considered a disease-causing microorganism,” and might pose risk only to people with compromised immune systems.

The school lunch pilot program promoted by Senator Schumer and the White House was going full speed ahead, however, and would lead to a big contract. In June 2015, Syracuse News reported:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has selected Upstate New York-based Chobani Greek Yogurt to serve as the main supplier nationwide for its school lunch program beginning this fall.

Like most central planning, Michelle Obama’s meddling in school lunches had unintended consequences. The federally assisted program had one big flaw: kids weren’t eating the Obama-lunches. The issue of food waste was getting press, even before Chobani was made part of the Federal School Lunch program.

There were financial costs and other side effects because any parent knows hungry kids are cranky kids. In 2013, the New York Daily News reported that:

…students who began avoiding the lunch line and bringing food from home or, in some cases, going hungry.

“Some of the stuff we had to offer, they wouldn’t eat,” said Catlin, Ill., Superintendent Gary Lewis, whose district saw a 10 to 12 percent drop in lunch sales, translating to $30,000 lost under the program last year.

“So you sit there and watch the kids, and you know they’re hungry at the end of the day, and that led to some behavior and some lack of attentiveness.”

Bigger school districts yielded much bigger problems. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2014 on the food the feds are virtually forcing Los Angeles students to toss in the garbage every day. The Obama administration’s policy is sending a staggering $18,000,000 worth of food into the trash per year in Los Angeles alone:

And so it goes on hundreds of campuses in Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school system, which serves 650,000 meals a day. Students throw out at least $100,000 worth of food a day — and probably far more, according to estimates by David Binkle, the district’s food services director. That amounts to $18 million a year — based on a conservative estimate of 10% food waste — which Binkle says would be far better spent on higher-quality items, such as strawberries or watermelon.

But under federal school meal rules finalized in 2012, Parrish and other students must take at least three items — including one fruit or vegetable — even if they don’t want them. Otherwise, the federal government won’t reimburse school districts for the meals.

Back in Twin Falls, food waste in the public schools is still a problem, a source who wishes to remains anonymous inside the school system tells me. One of the foods the source says they’ve often seen thrown in the garbage is Chobani yogurt.

The Consequences of Globalism

Of course, all this wasted food may be repugnant morally and a gigantic waste of taxpayer dollars but it doesn’t impact the bottom line of the companies selling food to the feds. The big contracts given to companies like Chobani and other vendors pay them whether their food is enjoyed by kids or chucked in the trash can.

The entire Twin Falls story is an object lesson in the unintended consequences of globalism. Most people first heard of the refugee situation in Twin Falls when it was reported a five-year-old girl was raped by refugee boys back in June. That story was disparaged by national media such as the Washington Post and covered up and lied about by local politicians.

Publicly, corporate executives and politicians mouth platitudes and flaunt their good intentions, but the reality is open corruption as large multinational businesses and big government politicians work hand in hand to advance an open borders agenda that favors “immigrants” over U.S. citizens.

The result is a series of disasters that the establishment media does not cover in-depth, nor does it connect the dots to inform the public about mind-boggling waste, blatant cronyism, or the human costs of oligarchy.