The intramural squabble in the sweetener industry died out quietly, with the a trade group for corn syrup producers halting its efforts to curtail subsidies for sugar growers, said Reuters. It quoted John Bode, chief executive of the Corn Refiners Association as saying, “I didn’t see a way we could win. So we put our efforts into other places.” The trade group dropped its campaign when it became clear in late 2015 that Congress would not vote on cutting the sugar program, Bode said.
“For the sweetener groups, the decision suggests a thawing of relations after years of battling for share of a shrinking market and over the definition of the term ‘sugar’ in the courtroom,” said Reuters.
With a trial under way in federal court in Los Angeles, the sugar and corn syrup groups announced an out-of-court settlement last Nov. 20 of a lawsuit that accused corn refiners of false advertising for saying high fructose corn syrup was no different than sugar.
The Corn Refiners hired 10 outside lobbyists “for an aggressive unorthodox attack on the federal sugar program just a year after the new farm bill was signed into law,” the Washington Post reported last June 24. The sugar program guarantees a minimum price to sugar growers and relies on tariff-rate quotas to limit imports and keep the domestic sugar price above the support price. Farm groups united this year with environmentalists and anti-hunger groups to oppose any changes to the 2014 farm law out of concern of an indiscriminate attack on federal spending.