Corporate Multi-national Factory Hog Farming in USA

Originally from: Burkie
                        
Dear Friends: This is a very graphic website I discovered last night. Apparently, PMWS is rampant in the U.K. and Europe (not in Sweden, yet), resulting in death losses of over 20% in affected herds. Many of these affected facilities have also been operated by multi-nationals, much like Seaboard's operations in the USA. In reviewing The Pigsite's forum, which has pages of comments about PDNS, PRRS, and PMWS....it is obvious that these animal porcine disease problems have not been generally made public in the U.K....and also swept under the rug, here, too. On PURPOSE, especially since 1999, throughout your FMD outbreak in 2001.

Please Read this! My comments are my own. I have done a little sligt editing from my original post on FMDNEW

Burkie in Kansas

A reply to Juanita by Burkie clipped from the FMDnew Smartgroups website for your benefits:

Dear Juanita: I agree 100%. The immediate beneficiaries Free Trade policies are mult-national corporate entities who have already pulled out money from the USA for investment in capital assets to produce products in foreign countries, under less strict rules and regulations than they have to meet and comply with, as do independent owners and producers in the United States.

What fails to be mentioned by our President, is that these companies are self-serving, wooed to invest in facilities in these countries, where labor is cheaper than ours, where EPA and OHSA-similar rules are non-existent, where fuel and operating costs are less expensive, where the dollar goes farther than it does for us U.S. producers, comsumers and tax payers. In addition to this, in countries like Brazil or Argentina...tax incentives wooed our multi-nationals and those in other countries (Like U.K.) to them in the first place...some of which were quite significant....ie, John Deere in Brazil...Fiat in Argentina....ADM, Cargill and Bunge, to name just a few.

The Big Boost (under new Free Trade agreements) for companies like this would be to eliminate our protective tariffs so that these companies can make additional profits to import their products back into the U.S. for us to buy. The ocean and air freight companies love this. No wonder Bush is out there in Aussie land trying to get this under way.

A lot of the Aussie and New Zealand primary industries would receive an immediate benefit, enabling them to ship more beef, lamb, wine, spirits, fruit and vegetables, and sugar, into the U.S. while their Aussie Dollar is still weaker than our dollar. Our only protection device on this is COOL (Country-of-origin labeling) and that's still an issue being debated here, even though it's supposed to be implemented next year. Of course, let's not fail to mention the multi-national grain companies with ALL their foreign subsidiaries that are not identifiable unless you research who owns them.

Bottom line for us all, is loss of family farms, retention of our children to run a farm, as these corporations have so many more advantages and volumes of scale, that to compete against them is suicidal. I believe, if these Free Trade issues are going to happen, we will see only niche farming by independent landowners producing specialty products to survive.

Juanita, just study the actions of such companies as Smithfield Foods and Seaboard, to name two. Here is one perfect example of how these companies operate here in the States:

Warning, This site contains Graphic Images of Factory Farming, but it's the article I would like to have you see.

http://www.factoryfarming.com/empirepigs.htm

Burkie in Kansas