Posted on 07/20/2014 11:26:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
From our fields to our forks, huge corporations have an overwhelming amount of power over our food supply every step of the way. Right now there are more than 313 million people living in the United States, and the job of feeding all of those people is almost entirely in the hands of just a few dozen monolithic companies. If you do not like how our food is produced or you don't believe that it is healthy enough, it isn't very hard to figure out who is to blame. These mammoth corporations are not in business to look out for the best interests of the American people. Rather, the purpose of these corporations is to maximize wealth for their shareholders. So the American people end up eating billions of pounds of extremely unhealthy food that is loaded with chemicals and additives each year, and we just keep getting sicker and sicker as a society. But these big corporations are raking in big profits, so they don't really care.
If we did actually have a capitalist system in this country, we would have a high level of competition in the food industry. But instead, the U.S. food industry has become increasingly concentrated with each passing year. Just consider the following numbers about the U.S. agricultural sector...
The U.S. agricultural sector suffers from abnormally high levels of concentration. Most economic sectors have concentration ratios around 40%, meaning that the top four firms in the industry control 40% of the market. If the concentration ratio is above 40%, experts believe competition can be threatened and market abuses are more likely to occur: the higher the number, the bigger the threat.
The concentration ratios in the agricultural sector are shocking.
-Four companies own 83.5% of the beef market.
-The top four firms own 66% of the hog industry.
-The top four firms control 58.5% of the broiler chicken industry.
-In the seed industry, four companies control 50% of the proprietary seed market and 43% of the commercial seed market worldwide.
-When it comes to genetically engineered (GE) crops, just one company, Monsanto, boasts control of over 85% of U.S. corn acreage and 91% of U.S. soybean acreage.
When so much power is concentrated in so few hands, it creates some tremendous dangers.
And many of these giant corporations (such as Monsanto) are extremely ruthless. Small farmers all over America are being wiped out and forced out of the business by the predatory business practices of these huge companies...
Because farmers rely on both buyers and sellers for their business, concentrated markets squeeze them at both ends. Sellers with high market power can inflate the prices of machinery, seeds, fertilizers and other goods that farmers need for their farms, while powerful buyers, such as processors, suppress the prices farmers are paid. The razor-thin profit margins on which farmers are forced to operate often push them to "get big or get out"—expanding into mega-operations or exiting the business altogether.
Of course the control that big corporations have over our food supply does not end at the farms.
The distribution of our food is also very highly concentrated. The graphic shared below was created by Oxfam International, and it shows how just 10 gigantic corporations control almost everything that we buy at the grocery store...
And these food distributors are often not very good citizens either.
For example, it was recently reported that Nestle is running a massive bottled water operation on a drought-stricken Indian reservation in California...
Among the windmills and creosote bushes of San Gorgonio Pass, a nondescript beige building stands flanked by water tanks. A sign at the entrance displays the logo of Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water, with water flowing from a snowy mountain. Semi-trucks rumble in and out through the gates, carrying load after load of bottled water.
The plant, located on the Morongo Band of Mission Indians’ reservation, has been drawing water from wells alongside a spring in Millard Canyon for more than a decade. But as California’s drought deepens, some people in the area question how much water the plant is bottling and whether it’s right to sell water for profit in a desert region where springs are rare and underground aquifers have been declining.
Nestle doesn't stop to ask whether it is right or wrong to bottle water in the middle of the worst drought in the recorded history of the state of California.
They have the legal right to do it and they are making large profits doing it, and so they are just going to keep on doing it.
Perhaps you are thinking that you can avoid all of these corporations by eating organic and by shopping at natural food stores.
Well, it isn't necessarily that easy.
According to author Wenonah Hauter, the "health food industry" is also extremely concentrated...
Over the past 20 years, Whole Foods Market has acquired its competition, including Wellspring Grocery, Bread of Life, Bread & Circus, Food for Thought, Fresh Fields, Wild Oats Markets and others. Today the chain dominates the market because it has no national competitor. Over the past five years its gross sales have increased by half (47 percent) to $11.7 billion, and its net profit quadrupled to $465.6 million. One of the ways it has achieved this profitability is by selling conventional foods under the false illusion that they are better than products sold at a regular grocery store. Consumers falsely conclude that these products have been screened and are better, and they are willing to pay a higher price.
The distribution of organic foods is also extremely concentrated. A little-known company, United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) now controls the distribution of organic and natural products. Publically traded, the company has a contract with Whole Foods and it is the major source of these products for the remaining independent natural food stores. This relationship has resulted in increasingly high prices for these foods. Small manufacturers are dependent on contracts with UNFI to get their products to market and conversely, small retailers often have to pay a premium price for products because of their dependence on this major distributor. Over the past five years, UNFI's net sales increased by more than half (55.6 percent) $5.2. billion. Its net profit margin increased by 88 percent to $91 million.
Everywhere you look, the corporations are in control.
And this is especially true when you look at big food retailers such as Wal-Mart.
Right now, grocery sales account for about half of all business at Wal-Mart, and approximately one out of every three dollars spent on groceries in the United States is spent at Wal-Mart.
That is absolutely astounding, and it obviously gives Wal-Mart an immense amount of power.
In fact, if you can believe it, Wal-Mart actually purchases a billion pounds of beef every single year.
So the next time someone asks you where the beef is, you can tell them that it is at Wal-Mart.
On the restaurant side, the ten largest fast food corporations account for 47 percent of all fast food sales, and the love affair that Americans have with fast food does not appear to be in danger of ending any time soon.
Personally, if you do not like how these corporate giants are behaving, you can always complain.
But you are just one person among 313 million, and most of these big corporations are not going to consider the ramblings of one person to be of any significance whatsoever.
Collectively, however, we have great power. And the way that we are going to get these big corporations to change is by voting with our wallets.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans seem quite satisfied with the status quo. So the population as a whole is likely going to continue to get sicker, fatter and less healthy with each passing year, and the big food corporations are going to keep becoming even more powerful.
You are a food fetishist. Facts get in your way.
/johnny
“A corporation is answerable to NO ONE except stock holders. “
Who do these multi billion dollar fines I keep seeing in the news go to? It sure ain’t stockholders.
Anyone who thinks this nonsense is worthy of consideration should look at what it costs to feed a family these days, as a percentage of total family income, versus 30, 40, or 50 years ago. That fact should make you realize that this article is unmitigated garbage.
The author probably liked the anti-capitalist theme in the movie, Food Inc. and has a poster of Michael Moore on his wall.
Nonsense. The relationship between Big Food (and Big Pharma as well) and the FDA (r the USDA) is highly adversarial. It is no different with small food, small pharma, medium food and medium pharma.
You need more tin foil.
i wonder how much of this is due to all the mom and pop farms being run out of business my the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT??? most of them can't afford a full time person to keep up with all the rules/regulations the seem to come out daily from unelected entities like the USDA/FDA/EPA/USDL/OSHA not to mention local/county/state edicts
"I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."
I see.
Michael R. Taylor: Deputy Commissioner for Foods, Food and Drug Administration 1976, after passing the bar examination, Taylor became a staff attorney for the FDA, where he was executive assistant to the Commissioner.
1981 went to work at King & Spalding, a law firm, one client of which was the biotechnology company Monsanto,[3] where he established and led the firm's food and drug law practice.[
1991, Michael Taylor left King & Spalding, returning to the FDA to fill the newly created post of Deputy Commissioner for Policy. During that time, he signed the Federal Register notice stating that milk from cows treated with BGH did not have to be labeled as such.
1996 he moved to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), where he was Administrator of the Food Safety & Inspection Service.
2000 after briefly returning to King & Spalding, he then went to work for Monsanto as a Vice President for Public Policy.
2009, Taylor once again returned to government as Senior Advisor to the FDA Commissioner.[21] And on January 13, 2010, he was appointed to another newly created post at the FDA, this time as Deputy Commissioner for Foods
Michael A. Friedman, M.D. . . former acting commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Department of Health and Human Services . . .now senior vice-president for clinical affairs at G. D. Searle & Co., a pharmaceutical division of Monsanto Corporation.
Linda J. Fisher . . .former Assistant Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Pollution Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances...now Vice President of Government and Public Affairs for Monsanto Corporation.
Marcia Hale . . . former assistant to the President of the United States and director for intergovernmental affairs . . .now Director of International Government Affairs for Monsanto Corporation.
Michael (Mickey) Kantor. . . former Secretary of the United States Department of Commerce and former Trade Representative of the United States . . . now member of the board of directors of Monsanto Corporation.
Josh King . . . former director of production for White House events. . . now director of global communication in the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation.
Terry Medley . . . former administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture, former chair and vice-chair of the United States Department of Agriculture Biotechnology Council, former member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) food advisory committee...and now Director of Regulatory and External Affairs of Dupont Corporation's Agricultural Enterprise.
Margaret Miller . . . former chemical laboratory supervisor for Monsanto, . . .now Deputy Director of Human Food Safety and Consultative Services, New Animal Drug Evaluation Office, Center for Veterinary Medicine in the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
William D. Ruckelshaus . . . former chief administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), . .now (and for the past 12 years) a member of the board of directors of Monsanto Corporation.
Michael Taylor . . . former legal advisor to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s Bureau of Medical Devices and Bureau of Foods, later executive assistant to the Commissioner of the FDA... still later a partner at the law firm of King & Spaulding where he supervised a nine-lawyer group whose clients included Monsanto Agricultural Company... still later Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the United States Food and Drug Administration, . . . and later with the law firm of King & Spaulding... now head of the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation.
Lidia Watrud . . . former microbial biotechnology researcher at Monsanto Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri, . . .now with the United States Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Effects Laboratory, Western Ecology Division.
Jack Watson. . .former chief of staff to the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, . . .now a staff lawyer with Monsanto Corporation in Washington, D.C.
Clayton K. Yeutter . . . former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, former U.S. Trade Representative (who led the U.S. team in negotiating the U.S. Canada Free Trade Agreement and helped launch the Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations), now a member of the board of directors of Mycogen Corporation, whose majority owner is Dow AgroSciences, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company.
Larry Zeph . . . former biologist in the Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, . . . now Regulatory Science Manager at Pioneer Hi-Bred International.
and the list goes on and on and on.
Now why did I post all of this? Because you see Big Agra and big Government are hopelessly intertwined. So you see when Big Government gives the average American Farmer problems it isn't because they just decided to do that out of the blue. They do so at the behest of Big Agra to help eliminate the competition.
Big Agra wants to make big bucks. If healthy food produced by average farmers makes people healthier and the word gets out Big Agra can get hammered by market forces they can't control. The worst thing to happen to big Agra is people and local farmers growing their own food and raising their own meat and dairy. That is why Big Government is hammering any farm operation that works to produce food that tries to use methods that does not require fertilizers and seeds and pesticides manufactured by Big Agra.
You see I live in a farm community and I know lots of farmers and they tell me what is going on they know the problem is that they government is in bed with big pharma.
Right so you are saying that your body is healthy... yet, you had your thyroid removed. The medicine you take is to replace the functions of the thyroid, thus your body needs the medicine to be healthy.
QED
Let me explain to you how this works: you see, the corporations finance Team America, and then Team America goes out... and the corporations sit there in their... in their corporation buildings, and... and, and see, they're all corporation-y... and they make money.
Yes, but do they sell organic snake? An important question. ?..........
The govt already controls the cherry industry. The govt decides the price and how much of what they grow can be sold.
Which is why much of the annual cherry production ends up in the garbage.
There is no difference between the big corporations and big govt. Neither are answerable to the people.
Corporations don’t care if people are starving, they only care if they are making money.
“Keep government out of it. Government is the cause of problems, not the solution.”
Trouble is these corporations aren’t the corner store, they are the multi-national most likely run by someone in India, Europe, or Asia.
The buy politicians on a daily basis. They hire ex-govt workers and their executives go to work in the govt agencies. The govt does the bidding of these companies.
They also control the market, deciding what goes into stores and what doesn’t for the vast majority of the population.
Good grief, how do you manage to get out of bed in the morning possessing so much chemicalphobia? Your body, at any given time, probably has about 4 lbs. of glutamate in it. Without glutamate, your brain won't function and your central nervous system would never have developed. You consume 10 times more glutamate from natural sources than you do from added sources. Glutamate is found in nearly all foods. You can't avoid it. Yet here you are fearing something you eat every day.
Why is it the people who know the least about something are always the ones who fear it?
Starving your customers isn't much of a business plan. The management would be replaced with management that keeps the customers paying. Can't make money without customers.
/johnny
The people decided that "New" Coke sucked, and they weren't going to buy it. Coca-Cola didn't try to keep selling it.
If people won't buy it, it won't make any money.
/johnny
There used to be a packing plant in every other town and little feedlots and sale barns, the feds regulated them all out of business just like the corner gas station.
There are very few produce companies just a few very large cooperatives. They are the only ones who could take the hit if something happened and they got sued.
We used to have at least 10 chile canneries in the state and now there only 2, the largest owned by the Japanese. The little guy can’t make it. Regulation costs so much that only the large companies can afford it.
Most economic sectors have concentration ratios around 40%, meaning that the top four firms in the industry control 40% of the market. If the concentration ratio is above 40%, experts believe competition can be threatened and market abuses are more likely to occur: the higher the number, the bigger the threat.
On the restaurant side, the ten largest fast food corporations account for 47 percent of all fast food sales, and the love affair that Americans have with fast food does not appear to be in danger of ending any time soon.
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