If you trace the supply chain of food, such as those shrink-wrapped meats, you will find the unexpected truth that these foods are produced in factories. Not a farm, but a factory. These meats are produced by large multinational corporations and have nothing to do with idyll at all. Now, our food comes from huge production lines, which is abusive for workers and animals alike. Produced foods are also more dangerous, but their dangers are deliberately concealed. The entire food supply chain has been mastered by a few multinational corporations, from seeds to food in supermarkets, and they are gradually controlled by them. It's not just about what we eat, it's about our right to speak the truth and know the truth. It's not just our health that is at stake.
From Fastfood to All Food
The industrialized food production system actually originated from fast food. The McDonald brothers run "drive-through restaurants," restaurants where customers simply order food in their car and have it delivered by a waiter. But they still decided to save costs and simplify the process, so they cut all the waiters and simplified the menu as much as possible. This is their "a revolutionary innovation" in the restaurant industry. They basically moved the food factory behind the restaurant kitchen. They only train each employee to do one thing and do the same thing over and over again. Because each employee only needs to do one thing, their wages are low and it is easy to find others to replace these employees. This idea of producing indiscriminate and cheap food has been widely used in various ways, with a series of unintended consequences.
When McDonald's became the largest buyer of ground beef in the U.S., they wanted their burgers to taste the same no matter where they were bought, so they led to a revolution in how ground beef was produced. McDonald's is the world's largest buyer of potatoes and one of the biggest buyers of food items including pork, chicken, tomatoes, lettuce and even apples. These huge fast food chains want big suppliers and it turns out there are only a few companies that control our food supply system right now.
In the 1970s, the five largest beef suppliers only accounted for about 25% of the market. Today, the four largest suppliers account for more than 80% of the market. The same thing happens in the pork market, even if you never eat at a fast food restaurant, the meat you eat is produced by this system.
Never before in history has there been such a large and powerful food company, for example, Tyson, the largest meat supplier the world has ever seen. The food industry has revolutionized chicken farming. Today's chickens take half as long to be slaughtered as they did 50 years ago (1950 vs 2008), but they are twice as big as 50 years ago. People like to eat white meat, so food companies pass Breeding and genetic engineering to make chicken breasts grow bigger. Not only did they change the chickens, they also changed the chicken farmers. Today's chicken farmers no longer own the chickens they raise. A big company like Tyson owns the chicks from the time they hatch until they are slaughtered.
Let's look at the top of the industry, such as chicken. According to the National Chicken Industry Association, "The chicken industry has set an example, a model of integrating the production, handling and marketing of meat products, and other industries are operating in this model. Because they see the huge gains we get Economic benefits.” In a way, we’re not raising chickens, we’re producing food. The industry is highly commercialized, so all chickens coming out of the farm must be about the same size. The result of intensive production systems is the production of large quantities of food at low prices using a small amount of land. Who would think this method of production is inappropriate?
A chicken farmer working with Tyson said that his area turned to chicken farming after weak demand for tobacco. The growth of the chicken industry has contributed to the development of the local community. "Tyson has been in this business for many years. They know the insides. If you can raise a chicken in 49 days, how can you raise a chicken in 3 months? You can earn more "These chickens never see sunlight, they basically live in the dark all the time." The farmer originally allowed the cameraman to enter the coop, but changed his mind when a representative from Tyson arrived. He said, "If it's just for you to see what we're doing, of course. But if you have to interfere, we won't agree." After that, the farmer stopped his interview with him.
After interviewing dozens of chicken farmers, only one allowed the cameraman to enter the chicken coop. The chicken farmer said, "I understand why the chicken farmers are reluctant to say more. Food companies can do whatever they want, as long as the chicken farmers make money, it's all about the food companies anyway. But the problem now is that this This is wrong. I've made up my mind that I'm going to say what I have to say. I understand why other people don't want to. But I can't stand it anymore. The environment here gets dirty, dusty everywhere, fences everywhere, it's not farming at all, it's just mass production, like a production line in a factory. The chicks here go from hatching to 5 and a half pounds in just 7 Weeks, their bones and internal organs can’t keep up with this growth rate, and many chickens here can only walk a few steps and then fall because their bodies cannot support their own weight.” Because of the abnormal development, this chicken Mortality is high - but the "efficiency" of raising chickens more than makes up for it anyway. "Antibiotics are mixed in the feed, and the chickens eat it and pass it on to people, and the bacteria (in humans) develop resistance and the antibiotics don't work. I'm allergic to all antibiotics. I can't use antibiotics anymore."
"If the coop is darker, the chickens will be calmer, and they will have less effort when catching them." They are illegal workers. In their opinion, they have no rights here. The company likes this kind of worker. It doesn't matter if the chicken is sick. All the chickens will be sent to the factory and slaughtered." Farmers, because they all owe debts -- the cost of building a chicken coop is about $280,000 to $300,000. When you make the initial investment. The company will periodically ask for technical improvements, additional equipment, and chicken farmers. There is no choice. They can only do as the company asks, or they will be threatened to rescind the agreement. This is how they control the chicken farmers. This is how they force the chicken farmers to invest more. Don't have a say in your own business (often a chicken farmer with two coops would loan over $500,000 but only make $18,000 a year). It's disgraceful, like being a slave to the company." The farmer's contract It was her refusal to so-called "technological transformation" that was interrupted by Tyson.
A bountiful choice? A Corncopia Of Choices
When you shop at the supermarket, the dazzling array of choices in front of you don't actually exist, the variety of food is just an illusion. Only a few companies and only a few crops are involved in the production. "What amazes me the most is that when tracing the source of food, it always leads me to the same place."
In the United States today, 30 percent of the arable land is used for corn. The promotion of government policy is the main reason. Current government policies allow us to sell corn below the cost of growing it. In fact, we still get subsidies even if we overproduce. This is actually due to the interests of large multinational corporations. The reason our government promotes growing corn is that the Cargills, the ADMs, Tyson, Smithfield... can make a profit by using cheap corn to make food. They used these profits and their vast capital to lobby Congress to issue what we now know as "farm bills." The so-called "farm bills" should be called "food bills", which set the rules for the operation of the food economy. The focus of agricultural policy has always been on cash crops. Because they are easy to store. We've always encouraged farmers to do what they can to grow corn, grow, and incorporate each other. We subsidize by yield, we produce a lot of corn, and they decide what to do with that corn.
"We have mastered the method of improving food. We know where the characteristics of food come from, such as texture and taste. We can combine these aspects to transform new food. Of course, the biggest improvement in recent years is high fructose. content of corn syrup, believe it or not, I can say that 90% of the food in the supermarket has either corn or soy in it, and a lot of times it has both.” —Quoting an agricultural scientist.
Corn is an all-purpose raw material, and its starch-rich core is broken down and reconstituted to make high fructose corn syrup, maltoxanthin, diglycerol and xanthan gum and vitamin C; and you can also use it to feed Poultry and corn are the main raw materials of animal feed for chickens, ducks, cattle and fish. Because we have so much corn sold below cost, the price of meat has been reduced.
The national transportation network built in the United States continuously sends corn from its origin to intensive farms. Grass-fed cows should be fed corn, simply because corn is cheap and it makes cows grow faster. The stomach structure of a cow is formed to digest grass. Studies have shown that acid-fast Escherichia coli bacteria increase in corn-raised cows, making these bacteria more harmful. As a result of continued corn feeding, certain mutations in these common bacteria have led to the global spread of a new strain of Escherichia coli 0157-H7. This is the result of feeding corn to cattle in a feed mill. It is also the result of this way of doing business. The cows were standing in the knee-high pastures all day long, and if one was infected, the others would be infected too. When they are sent to slaughter, the feces stick to their skin. However, slaughtering companies that blindly pursue slaughtering speed cannot guarantee that beef products are not stained with feces. This is how meat is contaminated with feces.
Unintended Consequences Unintended Consequences
Once fecal contamination was revealed after a 2-year-old died from bacteria in a beef burger, 140 tons of ground beef had to be recalled nationwide. Those E. coli bacteria are not only found in beef, but also in pineapples, apple juice, vegetables, which are by-products from factory farms. During the Bush administration, U.S. agriculture secretary has been the beef industry's leading lobbyist in Washington. Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and former vice president of the National Association of Food Processors. These regulators are already controlled by the companies they are supposed to oversee. In 1972, the US Food and Drug Administration still came forward to investigate 50,000 food safety incidents. By 2006, the number had dropped to 9,164.
As more technology is applied to the food production process, you might expect food to become safer, not more dangerous. But food processing plants are growing in size, providing an excellent environment for the infection and spread of harmful microorganisms. In 1973 there were thousands of slaughter companies in the United States, now we have only 13. Today, every beef burger actually contains ground meat from thousands of cows. The likelihood that one of these cows has been infected with a harmful microorganism increases exponentially. When you look closely, our food regulators are incompetent, and the food industry expects them to be.
"After a time of pressure to create a food safety system, people started to lax, less money went into the FDA, and we became more and more reliant on the self-discipline of the food industry. As a result, the system is now finally out of control." — —Speaking out an FDA official.
Since 1998, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has issued a microbial monitoring system for Salmonella and Escherichia coli 0157-H7. This system stipulates that if a factory fails to pass the test repeatedly, the Department of Agriculture will continue to Due to the problem of food contamination, the plant was required to stop production. The Meat and Poultry Industry Association immediately sued the Department of Agriculture. The court initially ruled that "the Department of Agriculture has no power to shut down the plant, which means that a pound of meat or poultry products you buy is actually a petri dish for Salmonella." The Department of Agriculture was helpless. To address this, a new bill, named after a 2-year-old victim, was drafted, the Kevin Act. It could give the Agriculture Department back the power to shut down substandard factories, but six years on, it still hasn't passed. The food giant has also refused to apologise for the suffering and even the deaths of its many young victims.
In fact, cows were able to excrete 80 percent of Escherichia coli by taking a 5-day break from corn and switching to grass. But the food giant is not solving the problem from the production system, but seeking technological improvements (sterilization) so that corn farming can continue to exist. Sweets and sodas at
The Dollar Menu are cheap, but vegetables are staggeringly expensive.
Compared with very cheap fast food, people are more willing to choose the latter as their daily diet. The reason for this price difference is that fast food suppliers have been receiving subsidies. and relevant to existing agricultural production methods and agricultural policies. High-calorie foods are produced from commercial crops such as corn, soybeans, and wheat. The food industry blames excessive obesity on people's disregard for their own healthy lifestyles. However, it is the food industry that transforms food, and it is also the food industry that changes people's lifestyles. In fact, humans are born with a preference for the taste of three foods: salt, fat, and sugar. These things are rare in nature. These high-fructose and high-starch foods lead to a surge in insulin secretion by the human body, and the human sugar metabolism system gradually collapses.
One in three Americans born after 2000 will have early symptoms of diabetes. In minority groups, the proportion is as high as 1/2.
Inside The Grass
We now put independent agricultural production decisions in the hands of others, and let the board of directors of a food company in a big city thousands of miles away. With decision-making power, those who make the decisions do not have to face the consequences of those decisions.
"Cows don't eat corn, and they don't eat feed made from dead cows, dead chickens, and chicken manure, which is what food companies feed them." Open environment (this farmer kills chickens in an outdoor shanty). The Department of Agriculture once asked us to propose, they took a showdown with us and asked us to close the business on the grounds of unsanitary conditions. Then we sent a few samples to a local microbe In the lab, our samples had an average CFI of 133, and store-bought meat samples had an index of 3600. Of course, store-bought meats have been cleaned many times with detergent, but ours has never been exposed to chlorine. "I think that if a civilized society only sees a pig as a pile of lifeless meat, a pile of meat that human beings can add all kinds of so-called innovative ideas to it without hesitation, then this society will The same attitude towards its own people and other co-existing civilizations, i.e. disrespectful and vain control over everything.” —A peasant who resents industrialized food production.
The largest slaughterhouse in the country is located in a small town called Tahir, an area of economic backwardness, and the Smithfield Company has mastered how to select the labor force that can be squeezed - originally locals, poor white people and blacks, who quickly drained the local labor force. Now, they have to transport workers from Dansville, South Carolina, to Clinton, North Carolina, in coaches. From here draw a circle with a radius of 50 miles from which the factory workers are hired. Food companies treat workers like they treat pigs. You know, the company doesn't really care if the pigs are comfortable because their existence is temporary and will be sent to slaughter one day. That's how they treat their workers, the company doesn't care about the health and longevity of their employees because in their eyes, everything has an end.
32,000 pigs are slaughtered here every day. These factories process 2,000 pigs an hour, and the workers in them get infected by handling guts, their fingernails, and other places all day long. Their nails fell off their fingers. Daily contact with blood, feces, and urine can easily cause injury. You do the same thing with every pig, over and over, and you're basically being used as a machine. Smithfield is well aware that once these workers lose their jobs, there is no other way to make a living, and that's how they control their workers.
100 years ago, when Upton Sinclair wrote the novel "The Butchery," a trust of beef suppliers was influential. In the absence of a government-designated regulatory system, migrant workers from Eastern Europe were squeezed in meat factories. There have been incidents of injury and death, and the situation has gradually improved. President Theodore Roosevelt (in office from 1901-1912) sanctioned the beef trust, and unions slowly organized the workers, making meat production one of the best jobs in America. By the 1950s, a meat production worker was paid about the same as a car production worker. Salary is high, benefits are generous, and pensions are also available.
But what happened then? To meet the needs of the fast food industry, its largest customer, the meat supplier expanded. Some meat suppliers, such as IBP, have borrowed certain employment systems from the fast food industry—cutting wages, banning unions, speeding up production, and making workers do one thing over and over again. Meat production is now one of the most dangerous jobs in America. Meat suppliers are also now hiring a new crop of immigrant workers, both illegal and recent immigrants to the United States from Mexico. Many illegal immigrants to the United States originally grew corn in Mexico. The creation of the North American Free Trade Area made Mexico a target for cheap U.S. corn dumping, costing more than 1.5 million Mexicans their jobs. Their products can't stand up to cheap imported corn. What about these 1.5 million Mexican farmers? IBP, as well as National Beef, Montfort and others, began aggressively recruiting workers in Mexico. These companies advertise on radio and newspapers. IBP also provides a shuttle service for workers to come to work from Mexico to the United States. For years, the government turned a blind eye to the practice of recruiting illegal workers by meat suppliers. But now, when the anti-immigration movement is on the rise, the government is taking drastic measures, not against food companies, but against workers. The immigration brigade came to escort a group of Smithfield workers with live ammunition, but they did not touch the managers involved. These workers have worked here for 10 to 15 years, producing a lot of meat products, and now they are caught like criminals. Smithfield declined to comment.
Hidden Costs Hidden Costs
subsidizes the food industry to create the "fake" food price. But if you consider the harm to the environment, society and people's health, these foods are actually expensive. Whether it's price, method of production or processing, the videos of industrial production are extremely deceptive, and there is pure deception behind these foods.
“The organic food industry is the fastest growing part of the food industry. We can’t get rid of capitalist production methods, and we can’t get rid of capital when we also need to fight global warming, improve air quality, and reduce food and water pollution But we have to speed things up, if we continue to profit from this system that is against the public interest, and continue to feed from this so-called perfect system for the convenience of life, we will never achieve our goals. ” — said the owner of an organic food production company.
The rise of the organic food industry can indeed account for a part of the market share, but the daily chemical and food giants will invest in the acquisition of these nascent small companies, making their fate unknown. Big food companies expand not through their own growth, but through acquisitions. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kellogg, General Mills, they all entered the organic food market by sprinting rather than incremental, and
Walmart expanded its market by placing orders for organic food production companies.
From Seed To The Supermarket
A company can monopolize a food crop, a new concept that emerged in the 1980s. Things went haywire ever since the Supreme Court ruled that living things are also patentable. Businesses compete for patents on one of the most important organisms, the crops we all depend on. Monsanto, a chemical products company that manufactures DDT and defoliants used in the Vietnam War. Later they developed a herbicide called "Roundup". Then, we started hearing about a genetically modified soybean that was Roundup tolerant. When Roundup is sprayed on soybean fields, all other weeds are removed except for soybeans that are tolerant to Roundup. In 1996, when Monsanto began marketing Roundup-tolerant soybeans, only 2 percent of U.S. soybeans had the tolerance gene. By 2008, more than 90 percent of U.S. soybeans had tolerance genes.
When the company that patented the seed first banned farmers from keeping their seeds, most farmers were disgusted by the practice. But interestingly, over the next 11 years, our attitude towards the ban on keeping seeds has changed from contempt to silent acceptance. What if the farmers kept the seeds? In fact, there is only one company that does this (referring to the prohibition of keeping seeds), and that is Monsanto. They hired a team of investigators to tour the country and set up a hotline. If they get a report that someone is keeping the seeds privately, they send investigators to find out. Monsanto has a 75-person team (probably hired from ex-military police) dedicated to investigating and monitoring farmers. Anyone who retains the seed is required to be investigated for patent infringement. Thanks to Monsanto's efforts, the seed washers and operators used to preserve seeds for next year's cultivation have all but disappeared from the country. In Indiana, there are only six of these machines, whereas in the past there were three in every town.
For farmers who don't want to use Monsanto's GM soybean seeds, their conventional soybeans have to deal with contamination from GM soybean seeds—even if it is contamination, it counts as a patent infringement. Once Monsanto investigators found out about genetic contamination, farmers, as victims, had to prove their innocence.
Previously responsible for cultivating communal seeds were universities that had been granted land by the government. Most of the breeding and strain improvement work is done by these public institutions. Monsanto is about the same as Microsoft. Microsoft owns the intellectual property rights to the software that runs on most computers in the United States, while Monsanto owns the intellectual property rights to most of America's food products. Breeding in public institutions is a thing of the past, and there are no more public seeds. "Right now there are only about 4 or 5 seeds to choose from. I still have a little Illinois soybeans (community seeds) in reserve. What can I do when I can't buy certified seeds anymore? What else do I have? Choice?” For farmers and operators (including seed washing machine operators) who use Monsanto seeds without permission (actually mostly genetic contamination), do not intend to apply for permission, keep seeds, and rebel against Monsanto (including seed washing machine operators), and all who challenge Monsanto’s authority , will be blacklisted, unable to buy Monsanto seeds, fined, and even prosecuted. Anyone who wants to confront Monsanto in court must pay at least several hundred thousand in litigation costs.
"In my opinion, it's like the goddess of justice holding the scales. You pile money into it. Someone who can afford an expert, even if they tell a big lie, wins. That's how our judicial system works." "You have to give what they want. Monsanto has the upper hand in this, and as long as you want to keep farming, you have to give in to them. Because they monopolize soybeans. For it, they go from seed to supermarket Commodities are in control.” — of a soybean farmer who was forced to submit to Monsanto.
The Veil
Monsanto has been sending people to lobby various regulators and legislatures with major decision-making powers. Judge Clarence Thomas was a former Monsanto attorney. Monsanto has deep roots in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense) was a senior official at a drug company acquired by Monsanto, and John Ashcroft (Senator of Missouri) received election sponsorship from Monsanto. Robert Shapiro (adviser to Clinton) was a former CEO of Monsanto and Mickey Kantor (not mentioned in the government job video) was a Monsanto representative (?). Wendell Murphy (Governor of Northern California) was the Borad Of Directors of Smithfield Corporation. Margaret Miller (formerly Monsanto's chemical lab supervisor) works for the Food and Drug Administration. Linda Fisher (one of the vice presidents), later head of the EPA, has ties to Monsanto... [This paragraph is not subtitled, so my translation may be wrong]
Of course someone familiar with the food industry can be a competent regulator, question It is the interests of whom they represent. The point of discussion is power, a highly concentrated power. Now, this power is used against people who produce food, such as farmers, against workers who work in food companies, and against those who, because of the deliberate concealment of food companies, are ignorant of their own food sources and health concerns. The dangers are ignorant to consumers.
The FDA excludes meat from cloned animals from inspection and even exempts them from labelling them for consumers to choose from. In this regard, the dignitaries' defense is that "the logo will cause unnecessary panic among consumers."
The food industry hates bills that uphold consumers' right to know. They refuse to release calorie data for fast food, and refuse to tell that foods contain trans fatty acids. Meat companies have for years resisted labelling of origin and opposed the labelling of genetically modified foods. 78% of processed foods in supermarkets now contain genetically modified ingredients. Not only do food giants not want consumers to know where their food comes from and how it's made, they also want to make any criticism an offence - the Vegetarian Defamation Act makes it possible for anyone who questions ground beef to go to jail. Oprah, who was sued on her talk show only for questioning the safety of beef, won after six years of litigation and legal fees of up to $1 million. Several agricultural states have made it illegal to publish photos of industrialized food production processes or livestock farms, and at the same time. These states also passed so-called "Cheeseburger Acts," making it nearly impossible to sue food companies. These companies have legions of lawyers, and sometimes they just want to warn you that they know there's no chance of suing you.
Shocks To The System The factoryisation
of the food industry has led to a huge reliance on oil and therefore food has been linked to oil prices. Unsubsidized farmers in other countries could not compete with the United States, which sold cheap grain around the world, so their ability to support themselves was severely diminished. The food shortages we are facing go unnoticed, with extremely low levels of food reserves. Cows that were inconvenient to walk due to illness were forced to stand up for transport to the slaughterhouse. Millions of tons of concentrated pig manure are dumped into rivers. Government-protected food dictators say there are no clues to the source of the salmonella outbreak.
The modest efforts of every consumer can transform the world's most powerful companies.
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