I have been attempting to alert liberal urbanites who care about the war in Iraq to the war they are actually losing here. It is not for control of oil, it is for control of food. As Henry Kissinger said - to warn us or jut flat out promoting the idea, you decide - control food and you control populations.
Your food is being taken over.
JBS is a Brazilian beef operation that is at warp speed buying out or merging with others in the beef "industry" to become far and away the largest beef conglomerate worldwide - and fully vertically integrated.
As I have been trying to say for some time, keep your eyes on agriculture. And look at what is happening here, not just abroad. Corporations are going after agriculture. That means they are now going after control over not oil in Iraq, not minerals in the Congo, but everyone's means of survival - food.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008 JBS-Swift preps to buy Nos. 4 and 5 in beef packing industry
by Bill Jackson
BS-S.A., the parent company of JBS-Swift of Greeley, has shocked the beef industry not only in the United States but worldwide with a purchase that will be officially announced today.
"Wow," was the reaction of Dick Monfort when told of the deal which involves three U.S. companies and one in Australia that JBS is buying for $1.7 billion. In July of last year, JBS bought the former Swift & Co. for almost $1.5 billion.
JBS-S.A. of San Paulo, Brazil, will announce its intentions to buy National Beef Co. of Kansas City, the Smithfield Beef Group and Five Rivers Ranch Cattle Feeding, which is a joint venture of Smithfield Foods and ContiGroup and headquartered at Centerra in Loveland. In addition, JBS is buying the Tasman Group, the largest multi-species meat processor in Australia.
The National Beef purchase was announced by that company late Tuesday; Steve Kay, publisher of Cattle Buyers Weekly in California, confirmed the other purchases with several of his sources. ...
"It's unbelievable. How did they bundle all that together?" Monfort said. And he, like Kay, wondered what the reaction of the U.S. Justice Department would have to the announcement, which means JBS will have the capacity to slaughter 42,500 head of cattle per day in the U.S. That's far ahead of the next two largest, Cargill Meat Solutions at 29,000 head per day and Tyson Foods at 28,300 per day.
In addition, with the purchase of Five Rivers, JBS will become the largest cattle feeder in the world. That company has 10 feedlots in Idaho, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas with a one-time capacity of 811,000 head of cattle.
-- Tribune reporter Sharon Dunn contributed to this story.
Now, let us pair that with a story that came in today.
Brazilian Cattle Ranchers Destroying Indians Habitat in Paraguay Written by Newsroom Sunday, 16 November 2008
In the Paraguayan side of the border between Brazil and Paraguay, the last uncontacted Indians in South America outside the Amazon basin have been spotted, apparently fleeing the rapid destruction of their jungle home. The Indians are members of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode tribe, who live in the dense forests of western Paraguay.
but sent the comment to Lynn by OEN internal mail. It wasn't a derogatory comment, but could be read as self-aggrandizing. Should Lynn wish to post it here, I encourage her to do so.
by
GLloyd Rowsey (72 articles, 18 quicklinks, 45 diaries, 565 comments)
on Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 1:23:31 PM
Far from self-aggrandizing. A pleasure to learn about.
11.17.08 Monday about 12:29am
Here is the comment. Please feel free to post what you want.
Date Sent: 11/16/2008 Subject: No, but I've heard of JBS Haldane,
Message:
the great British biologist-socialist-communist who died in the 1970's(?) in India where he spent his declining years away from the island empire he so relentlessly criticized. But things are much more complicated now, and the enemy is so much more powerful, and "public servants" so much more co-opted, that grandmothers (and grandfathers) might be in the forefront of the fight against international corporations, these days. At least, I hope so.
by
Linn Cohen-Cole (32 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 100 comments)
on Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 11:30:04 PM
And remember, this acquisition and domination of all our necessities is being carried out with the trashy fiction of finance, the same illusory stuff of swindles as we have seen exercised to our cost these last few weeks on Wall Street.
Don't you REALLY think it is time we did away with it, and stopped this creeping menace before it goes any further. Otherwise you will wake up one day to the fact that you will wake up no longer. And that process is what you will see already in train now, if you will only open your eyes and see.
by
Keith Pope (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 49 comments)
on Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 1:53:39 PM
I think the important word in what you said was "we." We need to stop it and that means everyone needs to find some means that feels comfortable to them, to start doing something active. I just wrote someone here who was upset about what we did to Indians and now what is happening to them in Paraguay. I suggested they contact Survival International which is defending tribal people around the world. But maybe others want to join OCM or R-Calf or start writing or be part of Farm to Ranch Freedom Alliance which is fighting NAIS. There are a lot of good groups and they all need help.
But maybe more than anything, people should make sure to contribute to legal defense funds because we are badly short-handed and under-gunned in battling mega-corporations.
Best,
Linn
by
Linn Cohen-Cole (32 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 100 comments)
on Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 6:19:11 PM
we can't wait for things in finance to collapse or change before making moves to save farmers, seeds, animals, land and water. We have to focusing on this now and funding legal defense funds that badly need our help.
Thanks for your comment.
by
Linn Cohen-Cole (32 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 100 comments)
on Monday, November 17, 2008 at 5:45:22 PM
Disarm the "protein myth" and this issue loses some of its steam. Most Americans eat 10 times the amount of protein they need and they still believe that animal sources of protein are superior to plant based sources. Similar to the oil glut, the meat glut just perpetuates other exploitative industries in the world. The for-profit health mafia in the US would be devastated if Americans transitioned away from subsidized animal products... yes, meat production is not a sustainable industry, for personal health or planetary health.
on who is critical to food, and by that I mean family farmers and independent ranchers.
We need to be careful to distinguish between industrial and non-industrial agriculture and do everything we can protect the latter because those people and their land are all that stands between us and the complete corporate take over of food and land.
The interim need is for local, sustainable agriculture, including beef, because there is no way we can shift on a dime to a vegetarian diet and the largest need is to get rid of industrial agriculture. I want to see our farmers and ranchers safe and holding down the land. If people want to make a shift themselves to a more vegetarian diet, it would be gradual, allowing farming and ranching to shift without tearing culture and structural webs that support communities to pieces. When we do that, bad things fill that vacuum.
I can't speak to the protein issue. I am concerned with the preservation of farmers and ranchers, the undoing of the laws being put in place to undo human ownership of food and animals and water, and the building of a sustainable, local and organic agricultural system.
Thanks for writing.
Linn
by
Linn Cohen-Cole (32 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 100 comments)
on Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 11:26:13 PM
Eating processed Beef is what caused my colon cancer.
The more cancer that is infecting people, and the cause, is from eating all Processed foods and the chemical additives in the food supply.
The hormons injected in the Beef and hogs is why I got colon cancer and all the chemical additives is causing obesety in people. When people wake up and realize we have to return to organic food to be able to survive is when all those cattle will rot on the shelves in the supermarkets.
You can't keep ingesting chemicals into your body and expect to stay healthy, the sooner you find that out the longer you will live.
I made that change several years ago and I now live much better and feel so much better. At 75 I am doing things I couldn't do for a lot of years.
I just ate what ever was stuffed in front of me for many years, and then one day when I was 62 I ended up in the VA hospital and was diagnosed with colon cancer. So I did some years of research and found out just what is causing all the cancer, and it is caused by all the junk we eat that is not natural to our system. Plus Fungus is what is making our bodies sick and tearing down our immune system.
We then fall pray to all types of sickness and disease. Mainly because the soil in so depleted from necessary minerals, that our system needs, to have proper health.
Lets hope the people will wake up and not eat all those contaminated cattle the huge corporations are banking on to hold the world market on our food supply. I certainly am not going to eat any of it.
These cattle feed lots are what is wrong with most of the food that is contaminated with E-coli and other problems people are having with their health. You can't screw with Mother nature and expect to come out on top.
We have to learn to live with the Land not just on it and exploiting it.
I appreciate your talking about your colon cancer and using that to help people. I really agree about the danger of processed meats. I'm glad you found a way to get well.
I also agree about our working with the land. But I think we have to start working with each other - all of us - if we are going to save that land.
Hope you'll keep commenting.
by
Linn Cohen-Cole (32 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 100 comments)
on Monday, November 17, 2008 at 5:41:58 PM
This is another example of the granddaddy of economics exploitation: mercantilism. The English did it to the world and to us before our belated industrial revolution. The way it works is that we raise the raw goods, they control the processing or manufacturing and take the profits on selling the finished product back to us. The Japanese did this prior to WWII. The Chinese are doing it now. It's being done TO us, with our government complicit in the process. It is the highway to second or third-world status, and we're on it, my bunnies!
by
Rafe Pilgrim (41 articles, 0 quicklinks, 14 diaries, 64 comments)
on Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 4:22:08 PM
It's bad for us, bad for the animals we consume, and bad for the planet. Eating meat is a major cause of disease, famine and pollution. JBS Swift would go out of business if everyone ate like me. Let change begin with us, the consumers.
by
Deeplip (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments)
on Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 5:31:46 PM
I understand why it seems that way but that isn't going
to happen any time soon and we have to save farming itself, and that includes ranchers who are holding onto land that would a set up for industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, mining, development, etc.
We have a lot of work to do to save things but if we can, THEN people's eating habits can change gradually to something more vegetarian and the shift will allow farmers to keep up and make changes themselves without losing land or community or culture or the web of a farming economy.
Become part of stopping the dangerous things happening. I recommend starting with NAIS.
Thanks for writing.
by
Linn Cohen-Cole (32 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 100 comments)
on Monday, November 17, 2008 at 5:59:32 PM
Did any of you vegans, who take every opportunity to make a Hyde Park speech on the merits of vegetarianism, understand that the issue here is corporate control of all farming, not just beef farming. All farming includes Monsanto's control over genetically modified seeds, as the author at least implied.
In a war, one does not give up a hill because the hill contains cattle rather than corn. One still defends the cattle, so as not to be forced to fall back to the hill that contains the corn. I sometimes think I am arguing with college sophmores everytime I argue with a vegan. Grow up! We are in for the battle of a lifetime, if not the ultimate battle of human history. Most of us will be willing to eat anything before this battle is over. Take the time to read Stephen Lendman's headlined article, "Worse Than the Great Depression," in detail, and try to understand it, and you may realize that your issue is meaningless beyond the very near future.
by
W.M.L. (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 440 comments)
on Monday, November 17, 2008 at 1:55:14 PM
Your point is really a good one but while I can lose it
sometimes, too, we have to connect to each others. Vegans care about the earth and they understand that cattle have a large impact but to save farming, we need to help them understand that something MUCH bigger is at stake and has to come first. You do a very good job making that point very succinctly and if you do it in a more friendly way, you're going to reach a lot of people we MUST reach.
Thanks for commenting. I really like how you explained what is at stake.
by
Linn Cohen-Cole (32 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 100 comments)
on Monday, November 17, 2008 at 6:08:44 PM
I think it's time that you heard from someone who actually raises beef cattle. There are numerous misconceptions about cattle ranching.
1. Cattle ranching does not have to compete against grain or vegetable farming. The land I graze my cattle on CAN NOT support any sort of feed grain or vegetable farming (I can barely manage a little vegetable garden). The soil and the climate are not suitable. This land, however, does a great job of growing grass. If I didn't put cattle to graze on it, it would be a fire and weed hazard.
Other farmers can successfully integrate cattle raising with grain farming.
2. Feedlots are a relatively recent development and are NOT necessary. Cattle can be butchered and eaten straight off of pasture. The do not need to be injected with hormones or other additives. They should hardly ever need antibiotics if they are raised in a suitable environment --- NOT a mega-feedlot which is a disease magnifier.
Knee-jerk hatred of beef and beef producers will not produce a healthy or sustainable food supply.
by
lwarman (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 71 comments)
on Monday, November 17, 2008 at 9:18:09 PM
The problem is the 'industry' aspect of everything: vide the medical industry, the education industry, the food industry - It is all intended to make 'the money' for its practitioners, and the bigger the practitioners, the more the loot.
It is the illusory existence of the mirage of money that is the basic problem.
Sustainable agriculture is just that - the culture of growing plants and animals, rather than simply of raking in ever more shekels and pumping its consumers full of whatever harmful substance you can to shuffle them and their kind off the planet - which intention Rockefeller openly declares.
Organic farming is best, but that is not in the interest of the fertilizer industry and the herbicide industry, and their ill-effects on us are what is best for the medical industry.
Do you see what I mean?
Yet maybe even the best brains in all these industries have never stopped to think that what they are striving for is just another fiction. But then their delusion is what is best for the financial industry, isn't it.
So why not just do away with it and let us, all these misguided industrialists included, enjoy the real world?
by
Keith Pope (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 49 comments)
on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 at 2:47:30 AM
19 comments
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