Confined Animal Feeding Operations Spearhead Corporate Food Monopoly
CategoriesFactory farms or CAFOs, Confined Animal Feeding Operations, not only provide most of the foods that are eaten in "developed" countries the world over, they are a spearhead for establishing a food monopoly of giant biotech corporations and Big Food multinationals. That is the gist of an urgent call to action issued by Eileen Dannemann, the former director of the National Coalition of Organized Women, on the Progressive Convergence site:
The sudden overwhelming proliferation of Confined Animal Feeding Operations; the FDA approval of cloned meat and milk from cloned cows unlabeled at the consumer level; the Monsanto patents pending on GMO hog breeds; and the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) are all synchronized elements of the covert roll out of Monsanto's "GMO livestock conversion plan".
Image credit: Greenpeace
Dannemann adds that the purpose for the build-up of CAFOs is to establish a seamless infrastructure for converting our supply of meat to genetically engineered animals, just like Monsanto’s “acreage conversion plan” for GMO grains brought us GMO corn, soybeans and rice. The animal feeding operations are part of a grand plan to take agriculture out of the hands of farmers and put food production squarely under the control of corporations, controlled by patents and new "food safety rules" that control everything "from farm to fork" but are really designed to edge out small family farms in favor of corporate operations.Food as a Weapon?
Once control is established, food becomes a weapon just like any other. You're not voting for the right government? Well, there's a hitch in getting the meat shipments to your country this month, and just forget about the grains, they are needed more urgently elsewhere. Sorry guys...
Orwellian? Impossible? Perhaps I am exaggerating, but the signs certainly are ominous.
Monsanto has applied for a patent on ... the pig. That fits neatly with the designs of Smithfield Foods, a huge corporation that has killed and 'processed' 27 million of the animals last year, according to this article in Rolling Stone Magazine, causing huge problems of contamination because there is no provision for those CAFOs to treat their sewage before releasing it into the environment to seep into the ground water or simply be taken by the next river out to sea.
While Romania and Poland are two of the new EU members that are reducing the penetration of GM crops, Smithfield, according to Dannemann, is in the process of establishing some of its CAFOs there, "covertly destined for cloned and GMO hogs in the very two countries that virtually ban GMO planting to zero".
Meanwhile, the FDA has determined that milk and meat from cloned animals is ok to eat and doesn't even need to be labeled.
Honeybees are dying in what is termed Colony Collapse Disorder, but Canadian Organic beekeepers report no losses. Perhaps that is, as Michael Bush reports, because our commercial bees, in addition to being treated with chemical poisons and fed genetically modified corn syrup, are about one-and-a-half the size of normal bees, because they are grown in larger honeycombs.
"In case you weren't aware, and I wasn't for a long time, the foundation in common usage results in much larger bees than what you would find in a natural hive. I've measured sections of natural worker brood comb that are 4.6mm in diameter. What most people use for worker brood is foundation that is 5.4mm in diameter. If you translate that into three dimensions instead of one, it produces a bee that is about half as large again as is natural."Even salmon has been genetically altered, and comes, at least in the US, to market without being labeled in any special way.
Don't you get a longing for the good old days, where animals were animals and plants were plants, and where things grew as they had been for thousands of years?
Of course you do have a choice. You determine where you buy your meat and veggies. Whether they are "factory farmed" or organically grown, and there is a new trend as well - backyard gardens are starting up all over the place.
A book that might get you going in that direction: Anastasia by Vladimir Megre. Certainly in Russia, that book has made a lot of difference with a whole new organic gardening culture springing to life.
See also:Oxfam's Food and Farm campaign
Local Harvest - find organic produce close to you (USA)
Citizen's Guide to Confronting a Factory Farm
Factory Animal Farms Produce Meat Through Routine Torture and Environmental Destruction
Epic Battle in Pennsylvania: Corporate Agribusiness Versus Local Democracy
Because the Ordinance prohibits corporations from engaging in the land application of sewage sludge, it differs significantly from regulatory ordinances that set guidelines for how much sludge can be dumped, and what signs must be posted after dumping. Some attending the meeting wondered how Act 38, an agricultural law, could apply to their municipality's corporate Ordinance. "The Attorney General's role should be to make Pennsylvania safe for Pennsylvania families," said Annette Etchberger. "Tom Corbett is taking ACRE and manipulating it against the families in the commonwealth and in favor of corporations like Synagro, who want to dump sludge wastes in our communities. I don't think that's a normal agricultural operation."The Hidden Impact of the National Animal ID Plan on Human Health
In this case, organic farmers across the nation have blown the whistle, calling attention to the cost-prohibiting factor of this venture. Corporate-grown livestock would be allowed to be tagged as lots (as they are herded together by the thousands and never see the light of day), which wouldn’t cost these large-scale manufacturers much. They already have the mechanics in place for tagging and tracking. Organic farmers and small private farms, on the other hand, are looking at adding unreasonable, fixed costs. This may either drive up prices for organic meats, or worse, drive them out of business altogether.Monsanto to acquire Delta and Pine Land company
Monsanto has reached an agreement with the US Department of Justice that will allow it to complete its proposed acquisition of Delta and Pine Land Company, but it must divest its US cotton seed business. Monsanto plans to close its acquisition and resulting divestitures as soon as possible following the required approvals from the court and the DOJ.According to this interesting article by William Engdahl ... "In 1983, Delta & Pine Land (D&PL) joined with the US Department of Agriculture in a project to develop Terminator seeds. It was one of the earliest experiments with GMO. It was a long-term project. The US Government has been serious about Terminator beginning more than two decades ago. In March 1998 the US Patent Office granted Patent No. 5,723,765 to Delta & Pine Land for a patent titled, Control of Plant Gene _Expression. The patent is owned jointly, according to Delta & Pine’s Security & Exchange Commission 10K filing, ‘by D&PL and the United States of America, as represented by the Secretary of Agriculture.’ "
So Monsanto will be ending up with co-ownership of the "terminator" patent, a technology vital to its business plan of taking over the world's food supply and eliminating competition from traditional agriculture. Of course there is no guarantee that the terminator gene won't jump to other crops, potentially ruining much of what we are used to eating.Living in CAFO Country
Once in operation, the reality of the CAFOs hits. The most obvious are the putrid smells on some summer evenings. Plumes of air from these sites holding several thousand hogs and their accumulated wastes for the past year fan out across the countryside. The other consequences of CAFOs may be more insidious. You no longer know who your neighbor is -- there is no one to ask about electrical outages, to consult about fencelines, to ask to a community meeting. You no longer have a legal system to turn to when problems arise ... So enjoy your CAFO pork while numerous unwilling neighbors are consigned to permanent second-class citizenry
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