Monday, December 28, 2009

Sick of Corporate Control Over Your Food? from Firedoglake

Monsanto GM Corn

Monsanto GM Corn

Have you ever played Monopoly? You know how it goes. It's pretty fun for a while, until one player puts hotels and Boardwalk and Park Place and then amasses crazy amounts of money while the other play goes broke. Often in our house this would end with one player walking away from the game (or worse, turning the game board upside down in anger). This is no coincidence.

When a market is competitive, everyone wins. Businesses that can innovate or grow more efficient rise to the top while consumers get the best products for the best price. However, when one (or a few) corporations gain too much power over the market, those benefits go away. Think about it – if there was only one company out there selling something essential for life (for example, seeds for all of our major food crops) – they could charge whatever they wanted and we'd have to pay it. Especially if they figured out a clever way to keep new companies from emerging and gaining any share of the market.

This post is first about that exact example and the company, Monsanto, who is under investigation by the Obama DOJ (Dept of Justice) for anticompetitive behavior. But this post is even more about the larger picture – how corporate consolidation affects MANY areas of our food supply, what that means for us, and how you can send in your comments to the Obama administration in the next few days (they are due by December 31).

rest at

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/21159

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