WASHINGTON, Oct 16, (AP): Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is suggesting he will have significant influence on American agriculture policy if Donald Trump is elected president, the latest in a series of roles he has envisioned for himself in a second Trump administration. Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist and environmentalist who ran for president as an independent before endorsing Trump, on Monday posted a video on social media that he filmed outside the US Department of Agriculture headquarters in Washington.

"Corporate interests have hijacked the USDA dietary guidelines to make natural unprocessed foods merely an afterthought. That’s one reason why 70% of the American diet now consists of ultraprocessed food. We’re going to change that,” Kennedy said, before listing off a series of policy ideas that would seem to run counter to much of what Trump’s Agriculture Department did in his first administration.

"When Donald Trump gets me inside the building I’m standing outside of right now, it won’t be this way anymore. American agriculture will come roaring back, and so will American health.” The Trump campaign has said in a statement that formal discussions of who would serve in a second Trump administration are "premature.”

But the former president himself has said at recent rallies that RFK Jr. is someone who could help his administration if he wins. "We will make America healthy again. You know who’s going to do that? RFK Jr. He’s got some good ideas,” Trump said at a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania. The prospect of Kennedy’s influencing a wide array of federal policy has raised alarm bells among advocates of sound science.

Public health experts have pointed to Kennedy's pivotal role in spreading false information and sowing fear around the world about vaccines, as well as conspiracy theories about technology like 5G. While there are rare instances when people have severe reactions to vaccines, the billions of doses administered globally provide real-world evidence that they are safe. The World Health Organization says vaccines prevent as many as 5 million deaths each year.