Do you feel comfortable with 4 companies controlling 85% of the meat you eat?

My wife and I have a newborn and a baby nurse staying with us and Monday night when I was booted out of my living room early I decided to take my lappy in to the bedroom and watch some streaming content on Netflix. Since The Wire is only on disc and I had an hour and a half before bedtime chose to watch Food, Inc. I always watch documentaries with a grain of salt. I commend Michael Moore for doing what he does, but hes more editoral than journalistic.

I found Food, Inc to be very journalistic. It presented Robert Kenner's research in what appeared to be a rather low bias manner. The movie explains how cattle and poultry were historically raised and grown and how the industry has evolved over the last couple decades. He states that 85% of meat produced in the US is now controlled by 4 major corporations. The concerns are of course with how the animals are treated, how the meat is processed and the proceedures used to help ensure that what we eat is sanitary, and how much influence Cargill, Tyson, Smithfield and Perdue can exert on the farmers and on government to get the best business results. I encourage you all to watch Food, Inc and form your own opinion.

For the purposes of this blog I am only interested in how corporations pressue government officials to get their needs met. The movie argues that the meat producing corporations exert pressure via soft money and other tactics on congressional officials to ensure continued government subsidies for corn crops. Keeping the price of corn artificially low allows meat producers to feed their cattle corn at an incredibly cheap price. Now cows don't naturally eat corn, they eat grass but its much easier to feed cattle a cheap crop than have cows graze on vast acres of land. This keeps meat prices artificially low as well. Tie in McDonalds that is the largest purchaser of ground beef (and I think they said chicke too) in the US and its logical that meat producing companies will cater to their best client. Have you ever wondered why you can buy a McDonald's hamburger for $1 but theres no way you could make one for $1 yourself?

So what upsets me? The fact that congress continues to subsidize corn farming to the extent that it does. It seems pretty clear to me that its corporate influence rather than constituent demand that encourages our government to keep corn prices low.

Are your representatives representing you or their financial interests? Do they need campaign money and are voting with corporate interests to get funding? Make sure they are representing your interests by contacting and getting to know your representatives. Make them earn your vote, don't let them buy it.