Communist
2nd March 2010, 17:35
.
Pig Business: Who owns your food owns you (http://www.grist.org/article/pig-business-or-business-pigs/)
Ever feel like you were playing checkers and the other guy was playing chess?
Thats the impression I get when watching many of the recent spate of
food documentaries. Activists announce that this or that is wrong with
the food system; on the rare occasion when something appears to be
getting done about it, the folks who are doing things badly simply
change their tactics, not their strategy.
Thats how its gone with the British 2009 documentary film Pig
Business. I watched this film in several 10-minute segments via
YouTube (Part One) because it hasn't been released in the U.S.,
primarily due to legal pressure brought upon the director (Tracy
Worcester, who spent four years making the film) by the films main
villain, Smithfield Foods. The world?s largest pork producer,
Smithfield has 52,000 employees processing 27 million pigs per year in
15 countries, accruing annual sales around $12 billion. The UK's
Channel 4 ran the film last summer despite four letters from
Smithfield threatening litigation, but since no U.S. insurer would
back the film?s release here, it has become essentially a black-market
film. Score another one for corporate censorship.
Smithfield does, in one sense, have cause for concern: this film
certainly doesn't show their company in the most favorable light.
Right off the bat, the viewer is struck with some rather gruesome
images of pigs being brutally mistreated, apparently at the hands of
workers in Smithfield-run facilities. We hear from farmers and
neighbors complaining of health problems that they tie to the fumes
and water contamination from Smithfield hoglots. An owner of a small
family farm in Poland who this large corporation has pushed out of
business says, "I don't know whether I should retire, hang myself, or
leave the country."
In the early '90s, there were 27,500 independent pig farmers in
Poland. Today there are 2,200 hoglots, and 1,600 of them are wholly
owned by Smithfield Foods. Each of those factory farms in Poland
replaced 10 family farms with two to three minimum-wage jobs.
Smithfield accountants and shareholders might laud the boost to the
company's bottom line, but one protester in the film asks a different
question:
Why is it, when people are in bondage to their government it is called
'tyranny', but when the oppressor is a multinational corporation, it
is called 'efficiency'?
It was precisely this form of efficiency that the art and social
critic John Ruskin had in mind when he said ?"There is scarcely
anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and
sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this
man?s lawful prey."
Smithfield is not the only corporate specimen under Worcester's
microscope; she takes large financial institutions to task as well. In
an interview with noted Belgian economist Bernard Lietaer, he points
out that Big Finance has its fingers in absolutely everything, making
one-third of all political contributions in the United States (a
figure that is sure to only increase in light of the Supreme Court's
recent decision). Big Money's influence, along with that of many other
large and wealthy corporations, dictates the type and scope of laws
throughout the U.S. and the world. My daddy used to call this the
Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
That influence is precisely what makes the competitive practices of
Smithfield (not to mention many other agribusiness conglomerates)
patently unfair. As Pig Business points out, if the likes of
Smithfield had to pay for the damages they cause, to the environment
and to human health, then any small farmer in the world could
out-compete them. But they don't, because the game is rigged.
So most of the time, agribusiness will take its profits and steam
obliviously onward. But if anyone points out that the wreckage these
companies leave in their wakes, they have scads of lawyers and PR
professionals to make certain no one hears. Watching Pig Business on
YouTube is one small way to get past their invisible hand.
http://www.grist.org/phpThumb/phpThumb.php?src=http://civileats.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/pigbiz.jpg&w=615 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz1_knWUpVk)
"Pig Business" part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz1_knWUpVk
Pig Business: Who owns your food owns you (http://www.grist.org/article/pig-business-or-business-pigs/)
Ever feel like you were playing checkers and the other guy was playing chess?
Thats the impression I get when watching many of the recent spate of
food documentaries. Activists announce that this or that is wrong with
the food system; on the rare occasion when something appears to be
getting done about it, the folks who are doing things badly simply
change their tactics, not their strategy.
Thats how its gone with the British 2009 documentary film Pig
Business. I watched this film in several 10-minute segments via
YouTube (Part One) because it hasn't been released in the U.S.,
primarily due to legal pressure brought upon the director (Tracy
Worcester, who spent four years making the film) by the films main
villain, Smithfield Foods. The world?s largest pork producer,
Smithfield has 52,000 employees processing 27 million pigs per year in
15 countries, accruing annual sales around $12 billion. The UK's
Channel 4 ran the film last summer despite four letters from
Smithfield threatening litigation, but since no U.S. insurer would
back the film?s release here, it has become essentially a black-market
film. Score another one for corporate censorship.
Smithfield does, in one sense, have cause for concern: this film
certainly doesn't show their company in the most favorable light.
Right off the bat, the viewer is struck with some rather gruesome
images of pigs being brutally mistreated, apparently at the hands of
workers in Smithfield-run facilities. We hear from farmers and
neighbors complaining of health problems that they tie to the fumes
and water contamination from Smithfield hoglots. An owner of a small
family farm in Poland who this large corporation has pushed out of
business says, "I don't know whether I should retire, hang myself, or
leave the country."
In the early '90s, there were 27,500 independent pig farmers in
Poland. Today there are 2,200 hoglots, and 1,600 of them are wholly
owned by Smithfield Foods. Each of those factory farms in Poland
replaced 10 family farms with two to three minimum-wage jobs.
Smithfield accountants and shareholders might laud the boost to the
company's bottom line, but one protester in the film asks a different
question:
Why is it, when people are in bondage to their government it is called
'tyranny', but when the oppressor is a multinational corporation, it
is called 'efficiency'?
It was precisely this form of efficiency that the art and social
critic John Ruskin had in mind when he said ?"There is scarcely
anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and
sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this
man?s lawful prey."
Smithfield is not the only corporate specimen under Worcester's
microscope; she takes large financial institutions to task as well. In
an interview with noted Belgian economist Bernard Lietaer, he points
out that Big Finance has its fingers in absolutely everything, making
one-third of all political contributions in the United States (a
figure that is sure to only increase in light of the Supreme Court's
recent decision). Big Money's influence, along with that of many other
large and wealthy corporations, dictates the type and scope of laws
throughout the U.S. and the world. My daddy used to call this the
Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
That influence is precisely what makes the competitive practices of
Smithfield (not to mention many other agribusiness conglomerates)
patently unfair. As Pig Business points out, if the likes of
Smithfield had to pay for the damages they cause, to the environment
and to human health, then any small farmer in the world could
out-compete them. But they don't, because the game is rigged.
So most of the time, agribusiness will take its profits and steam
obliviously onward. But if anyone points out that the wreckage these
companies leave in their wakes, they have scads of lawyers and PR
professionals to make certain no one hears. Watching Pig Business on
YouTube is one small way to get past their invisible hand.
http://www.grist.org/phpThumb/phpThumb.php?src=http://civileats.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/pigbiz.jpg&w=615 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz1_knWUpVk)
"Pig Business" part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz1_knWUpVk