Saturday, April 10, 2010

FIX OUR BROKEN FOOD SYSTEM!!


CREDO Action | more than a network. a movement.

Fix our broken food system.
Stop Big Food.


Urge the Department of Justice and Department of Agriculture to break up the agribusiness giants.


take action

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/food_monopoly/?r=5438&id=8593-2187342-xwsuh8x

Dear Friend,

America's supermarket bounty is deceiving. Of those hundreds of brands on grocery store shelves, the vast majority are owned by a handful of industrial food companies like Kraft, Conagra and General Mills.

This concentration of power in the hands of a few large corporations is repeated in all sectors of the food system — from Monsanto's stranglehold on seeds, to Dean Foods and Dairy Farmers of America's control over our milk, to Smithfield, JBS and Cargill's near total dominance of meat processing. But there was nothing inevitable about this kind of corporate control of our food. Decades of deregulation and governmental inattention to industrial consolidation brought us our broken food system, one that features non-stop food safety recalls, an obesity epidemic and the hollowing out of rural America as family farmers are forced to sell out to corporate interests.

It's time to stop letting Big Food control what we eat. Urge the Obama administration to fix our broken food system.

Fortunately, the Obama administration has taken the first step towards addressing this crisis. The Departments of Justice and Agriculture recently convened a set of "workshops" to discuss potential antitrust practices by the agribusiness giants who control of the food industry. Family farmers were finally able to air some of their grievances against the abusive practices by large food corporations. Though only a baby step, these workshops represent one of the first admissions from the US government that its past policies have weakened, rather than strengthened, our food system.

We can't let this initiative lose steam. As consumers, we have a vested interest in the future of our food system. Tell Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack that that it's time to break up America's corporate food monopolies before they do more harm.

Please join CREDO and our friends at Food Democracy Now in signing the letter thanking Holder and Vilsack for the workshops and demanding they follow up with real action on antitrust enforcement. The era of Big Food must come to an end.

Thank you for working to break up the food monopoly.

Adam Klaus, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

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