Food Monopoly Aimed at Controlling Population Destroys Environment and Poses Serious Threat to Human Health by Dr. Mercola
Food Monopoly Aimed at Controlling Population Destroys Environment and Poses Serious Threat to Human Health
June 28, 2016|125,264views
Spread the Word to
By Dr. Mercola
"Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people." ~ Henry Kissinger, Ph.D.
"In so many poorer countries food is money, food is power." ~ Catherine Bertini, executive director of the U.N.'s World Food Program1
Yes, food is power, and all around the world we now see how
the monopolization of the food supply has created a vast gulf between
the "have" and the "have nots." Far from fostering greater food
security, we've become more food insecure than ever before.
It's quite simple really. If you have access to clean, nutritious food, you survive and thrive. If you don't, disease and premature death is your lot.
Today, malnutrition is not a problem relegated to developing
countries. Never before have affluent nations had so many malnourished
yet obese people — a paradox rooted in a poor and toxic diet, churned
out by industrial crop growers, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and fish farms.
The strategy to control people by controlling the food supply, first
through the conversion from many small farms to fewer, gigantic farming
operations and associated price fixing schemes, and later through the
creation of genetically engineered (GE) seeds, effectively destroyed
family farming both in the U.S. and abroad.
It wasn't that long ago (2011) that a class-action lawsuit on behalf
of consumers was filed against a number of dairy companies and trade
groups, charging they killed more than half a million young cows in
order to artificially inflate the price of milk — a classic price fixing
scheme, and certainly not the first, nor likely the last.2,3
In 2013, the Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) paid a $158.6 million
fine to settle a 2007 lawsuit alleging the DFA conspired with a number
of companies to suppress milk prices by closing bottling plants and
stifling competition.4
Consolidation, Concentration, and Monopolization
Today, 95 percent of all grain reserves in the world are controlled by just six multinational agribusinesses.5
The same concentration of power can be seen all through agriculture,
from beef packers (four companies) to flour milling (four companies) and
pork packers (four companies).6
As noted by The Natural Farmer, this consolidation and concentration
has occurred through horizontal integration, vertical integration, and
global expansion.7
Along with the destruction of family farms we also lost a tremendous
amount of diversity, both in terms of the types of foods grown and the
flora and fauna existing in the areas surrounding the farms.
All of this, and more, has occurred under the guise of improving food
availability and safety. Yet all of these "improvements" have led to
nothing but corruption, destruction and disease.
Worst of all, these corporations have become so wealthy and (as a
result) politically powerful, that in order to really affect change, we
must do it from the ground up, by altering our daily shopping habits.
Support House and Senate 'Meat Processing Revival' Bills
Slaughterhouse consolidation is particularly problematic for small
farmers specializing in organic and pastured meats. As noted by National
Public Radio (NPR) last year:8
"Under the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906, farmers who want
to sell meat commercially across state lines must get their animals
slaughtered and processed at a meat plant that has been approved by the
USDA.
Government meat inspectors are required to be on the floor anytime those plants are operating.
To make it easier for more homegrown meat to reach consumers, a
small but vocal group of farmers and local food advocates is trying to
change federal meat inspection law."
March 8, 2016 Senators Angus King (I-ME) and Rand Paul (R-KY)
introduced the Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption (PRIME)
Act (S. 2651), which would allow states to permit sale of meat processed
locally, thereby making it easier for small farms and ranches to serve
their consumers.9
Representatives Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Chellie Pingree (D-ME) introduced an identical bill, H.R. 3187,10 in the House of Representatives last summer. I encourage you to call your senators and urge them to support the PRIME Act.
You can find their contact information by clicking the button below, or by calling the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.
Plant Species and Food Choices Are Dwindling
As noted by Irish Times,11
more than one-fifth of all plant species are now threatened with
extinction. Reasons why include out-of-control plant diseases and
changes in climate.
But factory farming is also a significant contributing factor. In
fact, factory farming in and of itself is an "anti-biotic" in that it is
"against life."
Chemical monocropping (the repeated growing of a single crop on a
vast amount of land using chemical additives like fertilizers and
pesticides) prematurely denatures the soil, promotes "super pests" and
"super weeds," and destroys diversity of both plants and insects in the
wild, not to mention curtail food choices at your local grocery store.
Pesticide Exposure From Food Is Now a Serious Threat to Health
More than 1.1 billion pounds of pesticides are used on U.S. farmlands each year,12 and chemical exposure through food is now a serious health threat.
Worldwide, 5.2 billion pounds of pesticides are used each year, and
many of these chemicals are either known or suspected to be harmful to
human health. As noted by Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR):13
"The required toxicity studies do not include many important
endpoints such as immune system toxicity, endocrine system disruptions,
learning deficits, or chronic illnesses.
Yet, all of these endpoints have been linked to pesticide
exposure. Harm also occurs because pesticides are reviewed only every 15
years, leaving long lag times between science and regulations.
Recent Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) research revealed
another problem with pesticide regulation: the majority of pesticide
products are granted "conditional registrations" without all required
information.
Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) own analysis confirmed
NRDC's findings that 69 percent, or 11,000, of all 16,000 pesticide
registrations are conditional. An NRDC report of this problem is
currently in preparation.
The failure of conditional registrations was highlighted this
summer when the conditionally approved herbicide Imprelis® was linked to
tree deaths around the country, prompting the manufacturer, DuPont, to
recall the pesticide."
Industrial Agribusinesses Destroy Family Farms and Quality Foods
In North Dakota, a 1932 state law banning nonfamily corporations from
owning farmland or operating farms has been challenged by agribusiness
lobbyists, calling the law discriminatory and unconstitutional.
In March 2015, the state Legislature passed a bill that would "relax
the corporate farming ban," The New York Times (NYT) writes,14
adding that North Dakota residents are now voting on a referendum that
would allow corporate farms to buy up and displace many of the 30,000
family farmers currently in business.
"A vote against the measure would repeal the new legislation and
restore the law that had governed farm and dairy operations in the state
for more than eight decades.
While the debate is very much focused on maintaining the
character of North Dakota, it also taps into widespread fears about the
disappearance of family farms throughout the United States and the
spread of big corporations and their farming methods into rural
America," The NYT writes.
Such fears are well-founded. But farmers are not the only ones who
should be concerned about industrial agribusinesses taking over. This is
an issue that affects every single person who likes to eat food. Monoculture and livestock CAFOs do not make food tastier and/or more nutritious. Nor do they make it safer.
On the contrary, factory farms produce inferior quality food that is far more prone to cause foodborne outbreaks and spread pandemic diseases among farm animals (and in some cases among humans too).
It's important to understand that human life is interrelated with the
environment, and most epidemics, such as AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, SARS,
and Lyme disease, just to name a few, are a direct result of man's
failure to live in harmony with nature. By severely disrupting our
environment, we create our own demise.
We now know that CAFOs create a negative feedback loop where safety
hazards are compounded and spread around, affecting animals, humans and
the environment in equal measure.
CAFOS and Processing Monopolies Promote and Cause Deadly Outbreaks
The congregation of thousands or tens of thousands of animals in
confined spaces is a recipe for disease, and CAFOs have become notorious
for spreading pandemic diseases and causing serious food outbreaks. Now
the situation is being ratcheted up another notch, with the presence of
bacteria equipped with the much-feared mcr-1 gene — a gene that confers resistance to antibiotics of last resort.
First discovered in China last year,15,16,17 it's now been detected in Europe, Scandinavia,18
and most recently, in the U.S. The first American report occurred in
March, when the gene was found in a pork sample from a slaughterhouse in
South Carolina. In May, Escherichia coli (E.coli) carrying the gene was
discovered in a pork sample collected in an Illinois slaughterhouse, as
well as in a Pennsylvania patient admitted with an E. coli infection.19,20,21 As noted by The Washington Post:22
"Each of the three U.S. cases involves different strains of E.
coli. The latest animal case suggests the gene is already circulating
through multiple routes here ... In all three cases here, the gene was
carried on a plasmid, a mobile piece of DNA that easily can transfer the
gene to other bacteria. That would result in a kind of super-superbug,
invincible to every life-saving antibiotic available."
Foodborne Illness Kills 5,000 Americans Each Year
According to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
(PCRM), foodborne diseases cause about 76 million illnesses, 325,000
hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, costing the
health care system as much as $6 billion in direct medical expenses and
lost productivity.23
Bacteria account for 75 percent of the outbreaks, with Salmonella
being the most common culprit. However, in the past two decades, a
number of "previously unrecognized" foodborne pathogens have emerged,
including:
Campylobacter jejuni (poultry products)
Listeria monocytogenes (dairy products)
Clostridium botulinum
Shigella
Escherichia coli 0157:H7 (ground beef)
Bacillus cereus
Clostridium perfringens (beef)
Staphylococcus aureus (pork)
There's no telling what the death toll might amount to should many or
all of these foodborne pathogens develop antibiotic resistance, but it
might be a fair guess that many of the hundreds of thousands
hospitalized might not recover.
Part of what's causing foodborne illness rates to rise relates to the
centralization of meat processing, coupled with outdated slaughterhouse
inspection rules. Since 1906, meat inspection has relied on noticing
changes in the sight, smell, or feel of the meat. But foodborne
microorganisms cannot be detected this way.
The Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point program (HACCP) was
created to identify areas in the food processing chain where
contamination might take place, and based on the findings of the HACCP,
procedures such as using microbiological tests at key control points
have been developed. However, the program is useless unless microbial
control is mandated.
At present, slaughter line speeds are too fast to perform these
tests, and few are willing to voluntarily comply with them as slowing
down the pace cuts into profits. Cross-contamination is another serious
problem largely relegated to factory farms, processing monopolies, and
industrial food processing plants.
Most recently, Listeria-contaminated sunflower seeds led to the recall of about 100 different food products,
including Brown & Haley Mountain Thins trail mix and more than
33,600 pounds of Trader Joe's' broccoli and kale chicken salad.24
That kind of scenario simply could not happen in a small-scale, local
food system, and it's precisely why — if you're concerned about food
safety — your most effective strategy is to support your local farmers
by buying their food and cooking from scratch, rather than buying
processed fare and foods imported from all over the globe.
Across the World, Farmland Ownership Is Being Gobbled up by the Few
North Dakota certainly isn't the only place industrial agribusinesses
seek to infiltrate and take over. GRAIN, an international non-profit
organization that supports small farmers and social movements around the
world, has documented more than 490 cases of corporate land grabs over
the past decade. These deals cover more than 30 million hectares
(74,131,614.3 acres) in 78 countries. According to GRAIN:25
"While some of the worst land grabs have been shelved or toned
down, a number of new deals are appearing, many of which are 'hard-core'
initiatives to expand the frontiers of industrial agriculture. We say
hard-core because these deals are large, long-term and determined to
avoid the pitfalls that earlier deals ran into.
Much of the Asian-led oil palm expansion in Africa, and the
advance of pension funds and trade conglomerates to secure access to new
farmlands, fall into this category.
Increasingly, gaining access to farmland is part of a broader
corporate strategy to profit from carbon markets, mineral resources,
water resources, seeds, soil and environmental services. As land deals
rise and fall, policymakers and corporate boards are hard at work trying
to facilitate their success.
Instead of the wild land rush of before, we now have multiple
'frameworks' and 'guidelines' on how to conduct these deals while
minimizing social and environmental costs. All of these new rules are
voluntary, however, and do more to obfuscate the problem than to solve
it.
Many argue that the heightened political attention around land
grabbing has helped bring land and agrarian reform back into public
debates in parliaments and other legislative fora. But the main
objective of regulatory processes is still to formalize land markets and
titles, which experience tells us will lead to further concentration of
land in the hands of few."
Industrial Farms Are Proliferate Polluters of Soil, Water and Air
I cannot get over the irony of the fact that agriculture is now one
of the worst polluters of all industries out there, contaminating not
only soil, but air and water as well. For example, according to a report26
by Environment America, Tyson Foods, Inc. is the worst polluter of U.S.
waterways, releasing 104.4 million pounds of toxic pollutants into
waterways between 2010 and 2014, second only to a steel manufacturing
company.
In third place, we have the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD),
followed by Cargill and another steel manufacturer. Of the top 15
polluters on this list, six are food companies, commingling with some of
the largest chemical producers in the world, including DuPont and BASF.
Even paper and gasoline producers, two industries well-known for
their environmental impacts, are cleaner! International Paper and Exxon
Mobil are ranked No. 14 and 15 respectively, releasing less than 20
percent of Tyson's toxic emissions into our waterways.
And guess what? Farms are exempt from federal water-pollution regulation.27 This is despite agriculture being the primary reason why America's waterways fail to meet Clean Water Act standards.28,29
(For an interesting story about how an Indiana teen is proposing to
tackle nitrogen and phosphorous pollution in Lake Eerie with the use of
duckweed, see this June 15 Student Science article.30)
Agriculture is also responsible for nearly one-fifth of the entire
U.S. carbon footprint, and that still does not include all of the fuel,
transport emissions and synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use.31 A 2009 article also pointed out the following:32
"The Pew Charitable Trust and the Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health conducted a study in 2008 and
determined that the U.S. factory farming system is dangerously
out of control and that many practices, including animal confinement,
and the prophylactic-use of antibiotics and hormones must be phased out. A second study, also in April of 2008, by the Union of Concerned Scientists concluded much the same.
Both studies found that the current factory farming
paradigms are simply not sustainable for the land, the drinking water,
the confined animals, the rivers, and the oceans, and they are seriously
damaging our public health. The Union of Concerned
Scientists (UCS) reminded us that we will be subsidizing these bad
farming practices once again on April 15th when we pay our taxes. That
is the second payment for 'cheap food.'"[Emphasis mine]
No one in their right mind, or at least no one who has ever
experienced a factory farm first-hand or even read a book or watched a
video about what's going on, supports CAFOs. That's why corporate
agribusiness is working overtime to pass state "Ag Gag" laws making it a crime to take photos of CAFOs.
That's why the beef cartel and Big Food spend hundreds of millions of
dollars a year to keep you in the dark not only about CAFOs, but also
about whether or not your food contains genetically modified organisms
(GMOs) and about the country-of-origin of your food.
Boycott Factory Farm Food System
The time has come to shift the American diet away from unhealthy,
polluted and polluting factory farmed food. Factory farms are a
disaster, not only for the animals, but also for the communities where
manure and chemical fertilizers and pesticides pollute the air, the
soil, streams, lakes, rivers and drinking water.
The same goes for gigantic monoculture farms growing mostly GE grains
and corn with vast amounts of toxic pesticides and fertilizers. The
2015 edition of "Factory Farm Nation," a report by Food and Water Watch,
reveals the many problems with and high cost of factory farming.33
Embed this infographic on your website:
Click on the code area and press CTRL + C (for Windows) / CMD + C (for Macintosh) to copy the code
If you worry that regenerative agriculture might not be able to compete with conventional chemical agriculture in terms of yield, don't. Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that organic yields are comparable to conventional, and about 30 percent higher during drought conditions.
For more information, I recommend reading through the International
Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) report, "From
Uniformity to Diversity: A paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to
diversified agroecological systems."34
It's important to realize you do have options, even if they may not be
quite as convenient as going to your local grocery store. Your best
alternative is to grow your own, although this also requires the
greatest level of time and commitment.
The idea of planting Victory Gardens goes back to World War I and II,
and was advertised as a way for patriots to make a difference on the
home front. Planting these gardens helped the citizens combat food
shortages by supplying themselves and their neighbors with fresh
produce.
Planting your own Victory Garden can go a long way toward healthier
eating and in the long run, it can provide incentive for industry-wide
change, and a return to a diet of real food for everyone, everywhere. A
great way to get started on your own is by growing sprouts. They may be small, but sprouts are packed with nutrition and best of all, they're easy and inexpensive to grow.
Where to Find Real Food
Your next best option is to buy fresh produce, pastured eggs, raw
organic dairy and grass-fed meats from a local farm or farmers market.
There are positive signs that people are taking such advice to heart.
According to Michael Pollan, the total number of farmers in the U.S. has
begun to rise for the first time since the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) began keeping track.35
Most of these farmers are younger people who have embraced the notion
of growing real, healthy food. If you live in the US, the following
organizations can help you locate farm-fresh foods:
EatWild.com
EatWild.com provides lists of certified organic farmers known to
produce safe, wholesome raw dairy products as well as grass-fed beef
and other organic produce. Here you can also find information about
local farmers markets, as well as local stores and restaurants that
sell grass-fed products.
Weston A. Price Foundation
Weston A. Price has local chapters in most states, and many of them
are connected with buying clubs in which you can easily purchase
organic foods, including grass fed raw dairy products like milk and
butter.
Grassfed Exchange
The Grassfed Exchange has a listing of producers selling organic and grass-fed meats across the U.S.
Local Harvest
This website will help you find farmers' markets, family farms, and
other sources of sustainably grown food in your area where you can buy
produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.
Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals
The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of sustainably raised
meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns,
and hotels, and online outlets in the United States and Canada.
FoodRoutes
The FoodRoutes "Find Good Food" map can help you connect with local
farmers to find the freshest, tastiest food possible. On their
interactive map, you can find a listing for local farmers, CSAs, and
markets near you.
The Cornucopia Institute
The Cornucopia Institute maintains web-based tools rating all
certified organic brands of eggs, dairy products, and other
commodities, based on their ethical sourcing and authentic farming
practices separating CAFO "organic" production from authentic organic
practices.
RealMilk.com
If you're still unsure of where to find raw milk, check out Raw-Milk-Facts.com and RealMilk.com.
They can tell you what the status is for legality in your state, and
provide a listing of raw dairy farms in your area. You can also find a
slew of information about raw milk on their "facts about real raw milk" page.
The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund36 also provides a state-by-state review of raw milk laws.37 California residents can also find raw milk retailers using the store locator available at www.OrganicPastures.com.
Spread the Word to
Friends And Family
By Sharing this Article.
Email
No comments:
Post a Comment