A rchive Date
[ 03-06-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Biotechnology ]
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[http://www.electricarrow.com/carp/tiller/archives/backlog.htm
"A Corporate Agribusiness Thanksgiving Day Meal"
Soon many of us will once again be sitting down with our families to celebrate Thanksgiving. We will all be looking forward with mouth-watering anticipation to the bounty that will be spread before us.
But for most Americans the turkey is not likely to be from Uncle Ray's farm, nor the potatoes from Aunt Jean's recipe, nor the dressing from Grandma's stove, nor the biscuits from Mom's oven, nor the dessert from Aunt Belle's kitchen.
No, more than likely for most Americans the turkey might well be from Butterball or maybe a ham from Cook Family Foods; someone might suggest that a few Singleton Butterfly Shrimp be put on the "BarB" before dinner, the grill already hot from the Just Light Charcoal Briquets underneath; we might also want some Jack Rabbit Long Grain Rice; maybe potatoes from Golden Valley Foods, and someone might note that the flour in the bread is from Peavey Grain.
We also might want to enjoy some of our favorite private label pasta from the local supermarket; tomatoes from Hunt's; perhaps a touch of Oriental from La Choy; the pudding from Swiss Miss, or the frozen dairy dessert from Healthy Choice, topped perhaps with some Reddi Whip; the salad oil from Wesson; the cheese from Miss Wisconsin; the canned beans from Van Camps; some spices from Armour Dairy, and the tomato or apple juice cocktail from Mott's.
While watching the traditional Thanksgiving Day football game on television we might want to dip into the popcorn bowl for some Orville Redenbacher's, putting another handful on one of our Budget Buy paper plates for future munching, or we might also want to "partake" of the barley malt in a bottle of Carlsberg Beer as we watch the game.
All in all it will be quite a day and quite a meal, a testimonial to the cornucopia of food that most of us now living in America have come to take for granted in the land of Freedom of Choice and the Home of the Private Entrepreneur.
But wait one minute here, let's take a little closer look at that meal. True, we saw a wide range of different products that composed this Thanksgiving Day feast we so heartily consumed.
Yet, the reality of the matter is that all that food, all those products and all those brands came in fact from just ONE company - ConAgra Inc. - the nation's second largest food processor and manufacturer, where six cents out of every American food dollar is today spent.
Here is a company which now operates in many different markets where it totally dominates the market shares and where it reaps enormous profits at the expense of family farmers, workers and consumers. For example, if one had invested $30,000 in ConAgra stock in 1982, the day its former CEO and Chairman of the Board Charles M. "Mike" Harper joined the company (he would later become the CEO and Board Chairman at RJR Nabisco, the nation's third largest food company), that stock would have been worth $5 million when he left ConAgra ten years later.
So, let's not forget that when we sit down to our modern day Thanksgiving Day dinners we are making an increasingly small handful of American and international corporate agribusinessmen exceedingly wealthy.
We can be forgiven, therefore, if we begin our holiday meal with the prayer: "Bless us O Corporate America that these thy `Healthy Choice' foods which we are about to receive, through the bounty of corporate agribusiness and ConAgra Inc. Amen."
Happy Thanksgiving, America!
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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