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Corporations

US DOJ to Investigate Meatpacking Oligopoly

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From Dean Henderson

In a move that was long overdue, on November 7th President Trump ordered the Department of Justice to launch an antitrust investigation into what Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) called the “meatpacking oligopoly”.

Four giant multinational corporations have come to control the vast majority of beef processing in the US. They are Brazilian firm JBS, Cargill, Brazilian-owned National Beef and Tyson Foods.

According to Farm Action, ranchers have gone from earning 70 cents of every beef dollar in 1970 to earning only 37 cents today. Meanwhile the Big Four packers have gone from controlling 36% of the market in 1980 to processing 85% of all cattle today.

A statement issued from the White House read,

“For too long, a handful of giant meat packers have squeezed America’s cattle producers, shrunk herds, and jacked up prices at the grocery store. By examining whether these companies have violated antitrust laws through coordinated pricing or capacity restrictions, this investigation will root out any illegal collusion, restore fair competition, and protect our food security…Two of these companies, including the largest meat packer in the world, are either foreign-owned or have significant foreign ownership and control.”

Things are not much better for swine and poultry producers. Four corporations (JBS, Tyson, Hormel and WH Group) control 70% of US hog processing, while four (Tyson, JBS, Wayne Sanderson and Perdue Farms) also control 60% of poultry processing.

The Brazilian JBS is owned by the Batista brothers. Earlier this year they donated a record $5 million to Trump’s inaugural committee while doubling their PAC spending. This year also saw JBS listed on the New York Stock Exchange, which will only increase their access to capital and further consolidate their growing market share.

Cargill is a private corporation owned by the Minneapolis-based Cargill and MacMillan families. They control 50% of the global grain trade and own more Mississippi River ports and cargo ships than any other corporation. They also monopolize the trade in Brazilian orange juice, Moroccan sulphur, Filipino rice and the global egg and fertilizer industries just to name a few.

Tyson Foods is an Arkansas company which purchased Iowa Beef Packers in 2001 to become one of the Big Four beef processors. Their control over pork and poultry processing increased under AR Gov. and US President Bill Clinton, whose political career was heavily funded by Don Tyson and Winthrop Rockefeller’s International Paper. Their brands include Hillshire Farms, Ballpark, Sara Lee and Bryan.

Kansas City-based National Beef is owned by another Brazilian multinational called Marfrig. They bought Farmland Industries in 1992 and are run by the powerful dos Santos family. They worked closely with Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) to create PlantPlus foods. ADM is in turn tied to the Brazilian/Swiss Bunge and Born families. Bunge is one of the top four grain traders in the world.

WH Group is based in Hong Kong and is the largest pork producer and processor in the world. They own Smithfield Foods in the US and were a pioneer in funding inhumane hog confinement systems that now dot the US landscape. Despite myths that Smithfield is “Chinese-owned”, it was Goldman Sachs that funded is meteoric rise. As of 2013 Goldman Sachs still held a controlling 5.2% share.

Much of the inflation in the US economy can be attributed to concentration of power within nearly every industry. The era of deregulation ushered in by President Ronald Reagan must be reversed. Cartels must be broken up using antitrust laws. And there is no better place to start than the food processing industry.

Dean Henderson is the author of seven books, including, Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf, Illuminati Agenda 21, Nephilim Crown 5G Apocalypse and Royal Bloodline Wetiko & The Great Remembering. Subscribe free to his Left Hook column at deanhenderson.substack.com

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

Corruption, Environment, Indigenous, News, WWF

In bed with the world’s biggest polluters the WWF is also accused of committing violent crimes against indigenous peoples, contributing to 20 million ‘conservation’ refugees

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Not new, as is from 2014. Stories like this deserve to be shared over & over lest the revelations be forgotten. I stopped donating to this cause long ago after I learned some of the ugly truth.

From Natural News

World Wildlife Fund’s hidden role in spreading harmful corporate practices is revealed in new book

Monsanto, Coca-Cola, Shell, HSBC, Cargill, BP, Alcoa and Maine Harvest have reportedly all benefited from the WWF’s green label while continuing business as usual … Wilfried Huismann

NaturalNews) Overcoming adversity by piercing through the corporate fabric in which the world’s corporations are banded together, PandaLeaks – The Dark Side of the WWF exposes the ugly underbelly of the planet’s largest conservation group.

Written by award-winning German journalist and filmmaker Wilfried Huismann, the book almost didn’t make it to print after the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) fought tooth and nail to stop its sale. The group’s efforts to stop the book’s publication, which included a massive campaign of threats and a series of lawsuits, fell short of preventing the controversial report from reaching the market.

Two years of on-the-ground investigative research reveals a number of horrid, and incredibly disappointing, facts about the WWF. While earlier skepticism has surrounded the conservation group for years, their unethical and hypocritical tactics have not yet been exposed in depth until the release of Huismann’s recent research.

The book accuses the WWF of “selling its soul” to corporations in exchange for their donations, as well as forging alliances with powerful, non-sustainable businesses that are destroying the planet and “greenwashing” their operations under the conservation group’s label.

New book blows the whistle on WWF’s cozy relationship with Big Business

Originally released under the name The Silence of the Pandas in 2012, the book became a German bestseller before being recently published in English following a series of injunctions and court cases, according to The Guardian.

Monsanto, Coca-Cola, Shell, HSBC, Cargill, BP, Alcoa and Maine Harvest have reportedly all benefited from the WWF’s green label while continuing business as usual, said Huismann. While publicly condemning such corporations, behind closed doors the WWF has set up “round tables” of industrialists on hot commodities such as palm oil, timber, sugar, soy, biofuels and cocoa.

An ethnic group residing in the Congo, the Baka people, say they’ve been forced from their ancestral lands in the name of “conservation.”

“WWF is a willing service provider to the giants of the food and energy sectors, supplying industry with a green, progressive image… On the one hand it protects the forest; on the other it helps corporations lay claim to land not previously in their grasp. WWF helps sell the idea of voluntary resettlement to indigenous peoples,” said Huismann.

WWF involved in the beatings and torture of indigenous peoples in the name of “conservation”

An elite club consisting of 1,001 of the world’s richest people, including philanthropists, industrialists and upper-class naturalists, are reportedly operating out of the WWF, which was set up more than 50 years ago by Prince Philip and Prince Bernhart of the Netherlands. This elite club serves as an “old boys’ network,” holding “influence in the corridors of global and corporate and policy-making power.”

Aside from being in bed with some of the world’s biggest polluters, the WWF has also been accused of committing crimes against indigenous peoples by funding their “displacement” and “cultural extinction,” contributing to more than 20 million people who are now classified as “conservation refugees.”

READ MORE

https://www.naturalnews.com/047517_World_Wildlife_Fund_corporate_practices_PandaLeaks.html

Photo: Pixabay