Dec 05 2014 December 5, 2014 December 5, 2014 NoComment by Mike Callicrate

Local Food Efforts Undermined by Pretenders, Predators and Corrupt Cops

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Local Food Efforts Undermined by Pretenders, Predators and Corrupt Cops

By:Mike Callicrate

December 5, 2014

In today’s unhealthy, unfair and broken corporate controlled industrial food system, more and more people want to know where their food comes from and how it’s produced. The biggest food companies on the planet are well aware of this fact and the shift towards local.

Farm to table and the new local food movement is being hijacked by Big Food. The world’s biggest food companies, including meat packers, processors and food distributors are carefully strategizing and planning on new ways to capture this growing market, intending to kill all possibilities of rebuilding healthy, locally based food systems that serve farmers, eaters, the environment, and livable communities. Small producers, lured by the siren call, are losing
everything they have – including federal grant money from USDA and other sources, believing the opportunity to connect to their local communities is real.

Since Ronald Reagan was President, antitrust law enforcement has been abandoned in favor of a globalized, no- rules food system. “It takes big companies to do business globally,” responded Ag Secretary Dan Glickman, when I asked him in 1999 why he didn’t enforce the Packers and Stockyards antitrust law. Captured government agencies refusing to enforce existing antitrust laws, failed litigation and legislative fixes have given Big Food the green light to continue their plundering and pillaging of the world’s farms and farmers.

Further concentrating the supply and distribution channels is crucial for Big Food to fully capture the global food system. It feels like a return to the time of the American Revolution when we rebelled against the abusive control of the British Empire and their East India Company partner. MORE