That size translates into political influence: In 2014, the industry spent approximately $10.8 million in contributions to political campaigns, and an estimated $6.9 million directly on lobbying the federal government (calculated by combining totals for the meat processing and products and livestock sectors, as reported by the Center for Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets website).

While the USDA is tasked with regulating the meat industry, it also has a role in promoting it. This tension plays out every time the U.S. government wants to give out dietary advice—and the results generally wind up favoring the industry.

The pattern traces back to at least 1977, when Congress—a no less conflicted institution when it comes to coziness with the meat industry—had a more prominent role in setting nutrition guidelines. That year, a Senate committee report recommended that Americans decrease consumption of meat, eggs and other foods high in fat. This did not sit well with producers in those industries, who made their displeasure known at a hearing on the guidelines. As shown in the below exchange between the representative from the American National Cattlemen’s Association and senator Bob Dole of Kansas, the organization objected to a recommendation to decrease consumption of any of its products, even if paired with a recommendation to increase consumption of other ones.

In December of that year, the committee released the second edition of its report. A proposal to “decrease consumption of meat and increase consumption of poultry and fish” had been replaced with a recommendation to “decrease consumption of animal fat, and choose meats, poultry, and fish which will reduce saturated fat intake.” Senator George McGovern, who chaired the committee, was quoted as saying that he “did not want to disrupt the economic situation of the meat industry and engage in a battle with that industry that we could not win.”

A similar battle played out in the early 1990s when the USDA replaced its food wheel, which visually put eggs, meat, poultry, and dairy on the same footing as vegetables, with a food pyramid, which made it clearer that Americans should eat more fruits and vegetables than meat, poultry, and eggs. In April 1991, the Washington Post published a story about the arrival of the “Eating Right Food Pyramid.” “There is no question that the basic food groups as they used to be presented really gave the impression that the most important things were meats and dairy products,” Joan Gussow, a nutritionist with the Columbia University Teachers College, told the paper. “This is a real mark of progress.”

By the end of the month, though, the pyramid had been pulled. “Yielding to pressure from the meat and dairy industries, the Agriculture Department has abandoned its plans to turn the symbol of good nutrition from the ‘food wheel’ showing the ‘Basic Food Groups’ to an ‘Eating Right’ pyramid that sought to deemphasize the place of meat and dairy products in a healthful diet,” the Washington Post reported. As Alisa Harrison, a director of information for the National Cattlemen’s Association told the Post, her organization worried that consumers would think the pyramid meant they should “drastically cut down on their meat consumption.” A year later, another pyramid was released with 33 small changes, including numbers that showed how many servings from each food should be eaten.