By mTm Advisors
This is part three in a series. Read part one here.
Grower data
In 2003, the U.S. and Argentina accounted for 90% of the GE crops grown in the world. China, Canada, South Africa, and Australia together picked up the remaining 10%. All other countries at the time banned growth and/or importation of GE products because of consumer market rejection, fear of health risks, and unwanted cross-contamination.
In 2021, the U.S. is responsible for roughly 40% of the world’s GE food product output. There are also now 29 countries allowing GE food products. However, most of the remaining nations have partial or total bans on GMO products.
Most countries still reject the use of GMOs or are particular about the products they import. Almost all countries that import GE foods do not import seeds of any kind, only whole products like flour or oil. This either shows the advancement of biotechnology to aid developing countries for a stronger food supply or a strong influence of biotech companies on GMO tech and sales.
Consider the studies published against GE foods, the short amount of time available to study GMOs, the countries that reject GMOs, and the shadiness of the FDA and its regulations of the food. Ultimately, it appears that companies are taking advantage of the product’s cost-effectiveness and overlooking the health of the consumer.
Inevitable cross-contamination
In the risk analysis, the biggest concern listed for buyers of the plant product was cross-contamination. The reason was once you start using GE seeds, the DNA shares with all-natural seeds and takes over. Cross-contamination of GE plants with natural plants is irreversible.
This also means if a seed falls in the wrong silo or falls off a truck and is blown into a field, it can compromise an entire crop in a few years, unbeknownst to the farmer. Since the FDA doesn’t require farms that claim to be organic to test their crop for contamination, even foods that claim to be non-GMO have potential to contain GMOs.
For this reason, most countries with import bans on GMOs have a total ban on imports from that country of that specific crop, non-GMO or not, so their crop won’t be infected.
Even if GMOs promote bodily health and wellness, which they don’t, GMOs can irreversibly contaminate a crop, and it’s a serious matter. Preserving the natural state of the earth and the nutritional value of fruits and vegetables is important. It’s foolish to compromise the ancient technology of food for engineered crops that have only been approved for human consumption for a little over 20 years.
There could be long-term effects that significantly harm the earth or its inhabitants that cannot be reversed, leaving us in an extremely sticky situation.
Label regulations
On July 29, 2016, President Obama signed the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard. The law requires companies to disclose GMO ingredients to their customers with a label on the packaging. This law will go into effect in 2022, meaning, up to this point in history, no labeling requirements for GE foods existed.
Although this is a great step in biotech consumer relationship health, there are still noticeable problems. Just look at a list of GMOs that do not have to be labeled:
- Food products containing less than 5% GMOs
- Foods derived from animals, such as eggs, meat, and milk
- Refined ingredients like oils and sugars
- Food served in a restaurant
- Foods manufactured and sold by very small manufacturers (local shops, etc.)
- Non-food products
This is not transparent in many regards. Sugars and oils are of the greatest concern because they provide the biggest health risks and are cross-referenced in most foods. You’ll still be eating GMO sugars and oils without knowing it under this law. If you’re concerned with or have allergies related to GMOs, you’ll not be aware of where it’s used.
The new labeling law also lacks transparency for GMO ingredients. The FDA’s logo for GE foods will be easy to read on packaging, but our concern is of the Smart Label. This allows companies to place a QR code rather than the GE label that links you to a company website where they then reveal the product’s ingredients. This will be done whether or not it has GE products in it.
I understand the point of this analysis is to provide concrete data but let us use our heads for a moment. Guess how many Americans with access to a QR scanner and internet will take the time to scan and inspect the products they buy.
Further, you must still be aware of the ingredients exempt from the label requirement. In a series of polls ranging from 2008 to 2015, researchers found up to 96% of Americans supported mandatory labeling of GE foods. A 6% increase since 2003 to an already high number of Americans wanting GMO transparency.
Domestic markets and the Food Cartel
The food cartel exercises an iron hand over the domestic agricultural economies of nations, especially those that comprise the four export source regions of the food cartel. This is exercised through the processing industries.
If one controls the processing industries, one controls domestic trade.
Except for use as animal feed, corn, wheat and soybean cannot be eaten in their unrefined form. The grain or soybean must be processed. The same is true for meat, which must be slaughtered before it is fit for human consumption.
This is where the processing/milling industries and the packing/slaughtering houses come into play. Take America as a test case. In 1979, the top four millers controlled 41% of the industry. Today, they control 92%!
Finally, four of the six leading grain cartel companies own 64% of America’s grain elevator storage capacity. However, this figure is deceptive. Many of the grain elevators are in local areas, where there is a substantial degree of individual or cooperative ownership.
When one gets to regional grain elevators, the grain cartel’s ownership percentage is much higher. And at ports, where grain is transshipped, the four-grain cartels own 89% of all grain facilities. A farmer must sell his grain either to a grain elevator or, in the rarer case where he can afford transport, to a grain miller.
In either case, it’s the grain cartel to which he must sell. By this process, the grain cartel sets the price to the farmer – at the lowest levels possible.
Much of their workings are shrouded in mystery as well because they release little information to the public. People attempting to write books about the grain companies have spent years without getting a single interview from any of the reigning grain companies’ families.
Many American companies see their founding family depart, like with Morgan bank. But the grain cartel companies are run by the same families that have run them for centuries.
There’s the inter-married MacMillan and Cargill families running Cargill, the Fribourg family running Continental, the Louis Dreyfus family running Louis Dreyfus, the André family running A, and the Hirsch and Born families running Bunge and Born.
While evading taxes and inspection, Cargill also uses its network to move large shipments of goods anywhere on the globe on split-second notice. It even has an in-house intelligence service that matches the CIA’s. It uses global communication satellites, weather-sensing satellites, a database utilizing 7,000 primary sources of intelligence and several hundred field offices.
Cargill is representative of all of the grain companies. A brief examination of it gives insight into the others. Cargill, which had $101 billion in annual sales in 2014, has a dominant position in many aspects of the world food trade. It’s the world’s number-one grain exporter and has a market share of 25-30% in several commodities.
More so, it’s the world’s number-one cotton trader, U.S. owner of grain elevators (340), and U.S. manufacturer of corn-based, high-protein animal feeds (through subsidiary Nutrena Mills).
If that’s not enough, it’s also the number-two U.S. wet corn miller and U.S. soybean crusher, number-two Argentine grain exporter (10% of the market), the number-three U.S. flour miller (18% of the market), and more.
It also has a fleet of 420 barges, 11 towboats, two huge vessels that sail the Great Lakes, 12 ocean-going ships, 2,000 railroad hopper cars, and 2,000 tank cars. Cargill has been able to place its people in top posts around the world.
Today, Cargill Company is privately owned and run by the MacMillan family. The MacMillan family’s collective wealth sits at $15.1 billion.
The food cartel continues to consolidate its worldwide control in the face of the oncoming financial disintegration. In the past 30 years, the food cartel has bought up many milling-processing plants and bakeries throughout the former Soviet Union and East bloc, bringing these nations under tight food control.
The food cartel has also built up its control, in the food distribution industries, through such combines as Philip Morris, Grand Metropolitan-Pillsbury, and KKR-RJR-Nabisco-Borden. This is also known as Philip Morris (Kraft Foods), General Foods (Post cereals), the Miller Brewing Company, and a host of other brand names.
Clearly, the food cartel’s power must be broken.
But the Anglo-Dutch-Swiss-American cartel is playing for high stakes—the ability to constrain the supply of raw materials, and above all, food. They want to turn back the clock of history and reduce mankind from the 7 billion population it currently enjoys to a few hundred million semi-literate souls scratching out a bare existence.
That assault cannot be fought timidly. The full truth about the food cartel must be known.
To be continued in Part Four…