Originally published October 22 2009
The Food-Pharma-Government Coalition Brings Fear Mongering and Death
by Aaron Turpen
(NaturalNews) In the United States, one of our favorite slogans comes from our national anthem: "The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave." Most Americans don't seem to realize that this statement is no longer relevant to our nation and its people. We have become the land of the diseased and the home of the wholly owned subsidiary.
Through control of the government, gained by usurping the People, large corporations have used the power of the regulatory to control who can and who cannot compete and profit in their markets. Big Agriculture and their industrialized minions have completely taken over the United States Department of Agriculture, the Congress, and the Food and Drug Administration and awarded themselves billions in subsidies for their efforts.
Every year, these corporate giants of agriculture reap rewards in the form of government (taxpayer) largesse, which they use to artificially lower food prices and edge out the little man who might compete. When a new trend, such as organic foods, emerges as a consumer preference in the marketplace, they move quickly to gain control of what is and isn't allowed to be labeled, working the rules to their favor, and to profit even more.
Pharmaceuticals play a similar game, controlling the FDA - the very agency meant to regulate them - and thus pushing any alternatives out of the market. Despite whatever a Doctor or health expert might say about a product, if it's not approved by the FDA (and thus Big Pharma), it's not allowed to say anything relating to its benefits beyond the overly-general.
Through these tactics, both the Big Ag and Big Pharma cartels have managed to not only gain near-total control of the food and drug markets in the United States, but they've managed to generally give their competition (the alternatives) a bad name in the process by wreaking total ruination on the terms that used to mean "good" and "healthy."
No longer is "organic" anything more than a marketing buzz word with little or no meaning. "Alternative medicine" now virtually means "quackery" to most people.
Big Pharma Owns Medicine
In his documentary film Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease and Pushing Drugs, Ronit Ridberg1 manages to outline how the pharmaceutical companies have accomplished their iron fisted control of the American health care industry.
In this film, you see how total control of the industry, whose goal is supposedly to put patient care and your health needs above all else, is primarily controlled, instead, by pharmaceutical profits. What's more, the pharmaceutical companies promote propaganda that's so effective that Goebbels himself would be impressed - from virtually unheard-of diseases made mainstream (ala "Restless Leg Syndrome") to diseases whose definitions are so vague that they could include nearly anyone (the "disorders").
By controlling patent law and what can and can't be labeled as a "medicine," the pharmaceutical giants own the market. Then you look at who "regulates" them and you see the rest of the picture. The FDA is made up of two basic arms: scientific and managerial. The management arm ultimately makes the decisions and thus national policies on the drugs allowed to be sold on the market. Time and time again, management routinely ignores the science and sides with the pharmaceutical company.
The Vioxx scandal was a glaring example of this in action. Even after Merck, the makers of Vioxx, pulled it from shelves as being dangerously deadly, the FDA stood behind the drug anyway, even claiming before Congress that it was "safe."2, 3
Big Agra Rules Your Dinner Plate
The giant agricultural conglomerates and their regulatory arms (the USDA and the FDA) are no better off. Currently, in the U.S., genetically modified seed crops make up 91% of our soybean crops and 68% of corn.4 That's just two crops. They're working on sugar beets, wheat, and others now as well.
That is just one facet of the game. Working the other end of the stick, the big agricultural conglomerates have managed to reap up to $9 billion per year in corn subsidies.5 Then comes the corn as fuel subsidies, or corn ethanol payoffs from our tax dollars. This amounts to another $1.3 billion (in 2007) on top of the other subsidies the agricultural giants already receive.6
These subsidies don't go to the happy family farm with a couple of milk cows out to pasture, a few crops on a hundred acres, and mom and pop working together with their teenaged son to grow healthy food. The tens and even hundred of billions in total farm bill subsidies the government throws around every year largely go to the single-crop, big agricultural conglomerates rather than to Farmer Dan and his family.
Those farmers who use traditional methods (aka "organic" or "sustainable" methods) versus the new, industrialized way of using synthetic fertilizers cannot sell their produce as "organic" or with "organic" on the label without submitting to heavy regulatory requirements and filings with the FDA.7 Yep, it's illegal to use a word to describe your product without government approval.
These are just a few of the means by which Big Agra controls your food. You are fed corn syrup from genetically modified corn, sugar from over-processed cane and beets (which could also be GMO), and worse. Your milk, meat, and even your table salt are all controlled and manipulated to profit them and potentially kill you. One needs only to read a few days' worth of headlines here at Natural News to see these concepts in action.
The Final Control
New legislation makes it basically illegal to sell naturally-sourced supplements as anything more than their scientific name and to force small, artisan and local farms and food producers out of business by adding odious requirements to their overhead and costs. These bills are brought before either of the houses of Congress every year - usually more than once per session.
Often, regulatory changes at the FDA and USDA will just slightly alter one thing or another, always to the detriment of small business and natural production.
It's time Americans stopped being the victims and once again become the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Fight back against these infringements on your health. They're working on taking over your well-being at the most fundamental of levels with food and medicine and on controlling what those things are and what you can have access to.
We need to take control back now, before it's too late.
Footnotes:
1 - Big Bucks, Big Pharma low-res version (full length, about 45 minutes) available online: http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?...
2 - Despite Warmings, Drug Giant Took Long Path to Vioxx Recall, New York Times, November 14, 2004: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/business/1...
3 - Reputation of the FDA in shambles after Vioxx scandal, NaturalNews, November 6, 2004: http://www.naturalnews.com/002157_the_FDA_Vi...
4 - Racing Toward a Roundup-Ready Food Future, The Huffington Post, July 17, 2009: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-scola/ra...
5 - Corn Subsidies by Year, the Environmental Working Group: http://farm.ewg.org/farm/progdetail.php?fips...
6 - Are Corn Ethanol Farm Subsidies Too Complex to Understand?, gas2.0, October 24, 2008: http://gas2.org/2008/10/24/are-corn-ethanol-...
7 - USDA-FDA Organic Foods Label: http://usda-fda.com/Articles/Organic.htm
About the author
Aaron Turpen is a professional writer living in Wyoming in the USA. His blogs cover organic/sustainable living and environmental considerations (AaronsEnvironMental.com) and the science debunking mainstream medical and proving alternatives (HiddenHealthScience.com).
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