Among these reasons is a growing global middle-class, particularly in developing economies such as China and India, resulting in increased demand for meat and grains. In fact, the U.N. estimates 50% more food will need to be produced by 2030 to meet these growing needs.
This shows that the majority of processed food eaten in the world is made by only 10 different companies. Many people are not even aware that many of their favourite brands are owned by massive multinationals. Although it can be argued that there are some advantages to this setup, such as economies of scale, I would personally reply that it it by far outweighed by the increasing consolidation in the food industry, who knows, in 5 years, we might have only 6 companies, and in 15 years, maybe it will just be Unilver and P&G battling it out. Of course, one could argue that we have made our bed and now we must lie in it. There is now way we could all go back to organic faming without some kind of massive catastrophe, and I bet all of us would miss fast food.. =)
However, one of the big problems with these massive multinational companies is that thier advertising never makes any mention and never shows the conditions in which the food is actually made. Instead, the advertising is all designed to make an emotional connection to the consumer to make them want to the eat the food. After all, if you showed how it was being made, quite a few people would be sickened. Now this is an old argument with meat, for example, many people eat meat but dont want to see the cow slaughtered. However, I would argue that the way some of our modern foods are made, if the consumer actually saw the processes used to manufacture them would make them feel far sicker than watching the slaughter of a cow. I'm referring to things like mechanically scavenged meat (which is basically any scrap of meat that mechanical rollers can scrape off the bones after every other part of the cow has been cut away) as well as shipping a tanker full of liquified egg to be used to make such things as quiches. Now I am not suggesting that there is necessarily anything intrinsically unhygienic about these practices, but it means that most products purchased in a supermarket today contain a multitude of ingredients, sourced from all over the globe. It only takes one of those ingredients to become spoiled to poison all of the resulting food that is made downstream with it. Personally, one thing I am glad about living in the EU is that they have not legalised GMO's and they have a much stricter policy on meat that the United States, which is why in the USA from 2000-2007 there were 16,000 cases of food poisoning for every 100,000 people, which is nearly 20% ! During the same period in France, there were only 1210 cases per 100,000 people, or 1.2%. However, Spain is the chink in Europe's armour, it has been growing GMO crops for years, mind you, under much more isolated and responsible ways than the way they have been doing it in America, but more importantly, a law to label GMO food is sure to pass in Europe, since it is such an emotional issue.
As we ride on into the future, food is becoming increasingly removed from what it was, ie people working the land to grow crops that they would then eat. Now it is large Agriculture firms with masses of land who use massive quantities of chemical pesticides and fertiliser and then sell the product on to another set of manufacturers who turn it into everything from breakfast cereal to chocolate bars. However, none of this would concern me as much if it wasn't for Monsanto.
Monsanto - The Most Evil Corporation on the Planet
If I had to give a prize to the most Evil Corporation on the Planet, there would be many contenders, Hallibuton, for their help starting 2 wars and screwing over the very servicemen they were supposed to protect. Or JPMorgan, just one of a number of companies who presided over the biggest robbery of public money in recorded history, but still, I would still have to choose Monsanto.
Monsanto seem to be unflinchingly evil. They do things that many sane people would surely stop and ask 'Is this really a good idea, given that we could possibly destroy all plant life on the planet?' a classic example of this is the terminator seed. A terminator seed can only grow one copy of the plant and produces no germinating seeds of it's own. In other words, it it genetically programmed to commit suicide after just ome crop. So every year, instead of using the seeds collected from last years crop, the farmer has to go cap in hand to Monsanto, who will sell them the single use seeds, as well as the fertiliser and pesticide to go with them, since many of Monsanto's GM crops are designed to be resistant to Monsanto herbicides such as Roundup(tm). As if this were not bad enough, if this gene spreads through the wild, it could potentially cripple the ability of wild plants to reproduce and thus cause a massive famine of previously unseen proportions and all the while, Monsanto would be sitting pretty.
The goal of Monsanto seems to be complete dominance of the food chain, it's as though a group of bright, but totally amoral marketing execs got together around a table and said to themselves,
'What is it that people really need?' 'I know! Food!'
'Why if we controlled the world food supply, they would have to pay us anything we want!!'
Now whether this plan can actually be accomplished as far as the whole world goes is debatable, but one thing is sure, Monsanto is doing a hell of alot of damage to many innocent people in their quest for dominance over the global human food chain. In addition to getting extra land by planting their seeds next to someone elses farm and just letting the wind do it's work. Because Monsanto's GMO products are actually patented, if just one seed from their stock is found on your farm, then you are in breach if copyright laws, which means that if you are a poor farmer, you can kiss your land goodbye,
Another good example would be Monsanto's BT Corn, which synthesises a toxin from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis. This toxin works by essentially poking holes in the intestinal tracts of various insects that eat it. Unsuprisingly (perhaps) tests have also shown that it pokes holes in the guts of people who have eaten BT Corn and that the BT Gene may infact cross with the bacteria in your gut to create little factories that continually pump out BT toxin into your gut. BT toxin is also shown to induce allergies to substances other than itself. As if that was not bad enough, BT toxin is also carried in the pollen of the GMO plants, leading to severe allergic reactions during pollenating season. Since the BT toxin is thousands of times more concentrated inside the plant than it is when sprayed by plane, the people who pick the plants get massive exposure to BT toxin and so too, does anyone who eats the final product.
As much as many Europeans think that we are safe from GMO's, there have been extensive trials going on in Spain now for years. The real problem for them is I dont think there is any way they can bribe the EU government to ban labelling of GMO products the way they did in the US, the outcry would be massive. However, just because you dont eat GMO crops doesn't mean necessarily you are safe. One of the main uses of GM Soy is to feed animals, which are then eaten by people. Although I have yet to see conclusive tests, I cannot help but think that if they cows are eating BT Soy, then the amount of BT toxin in their system must be huge, and that cant be good for the consumer.
BT Toxin could easily become the next thalydamide, since we have no data on what it does to people in the long term and the short term data that is coming in is not good. If it is true that BT toxin combines with bacteria in the gut to forever produce more BT toxin, which will slowly rip holes on the epithelial lining of the gut, then the results will be catastrophic. We can expect a massive rise in intestinal ulcers as well as possibly rectal and colon cancer
I guess what I am trying to get at is to try and eat as little BT toxin as possible, whether in Corn or Soy. However, the current law which means that products made with GMO's don't have to be labelled in America makes that much harder if you are an american living in an urban area.
Only by spreading awareness of the danger of this toxin is there any chance of getting it removed from the world's diet. However, with Monsanto cackling at the wheel while driving the whole planet into unimaginable danger, I am not holding my breath..
Christopher Carrion
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