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General News    H2'ed 11/16/08

Ever heard of JBS Swift. You badly need to.

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Message Linn Cohen-Cole
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.

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Met libertarian and conservative farmers and learned an incredible amount about farming and nature and science, as well as about government violations against them and against us all. The other side of the fence is nothing like what we've been (more...)
 
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