but Rick Berman still rolls merrily along.
The Vultures in
Cargill
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
~ o ~
November 4, 2007
Cargill Inc. Recalls
Tainted Beef
WASHINGTON — The giant agribusiness company Cargill Inc. said Saturday it is recalling more than 1 million pounds of ground beef that may be contaminated with E. coli bacteria.
The ground beef was produced between Oct. 8 and Oct. 11 at Cargill Meat Solutions' plant in Wyalusing, Pa. and distributed to retailers across the country. They include Giant, Shop Rite, Stop & Shop, Wegmans and Weis.
Cargill learned the meat may be contaminated after the Agriculture Department found a problem with a sample of the beef produced on Oct. 8, the company said. The bacteria is E. coli 0157:H7.
"No illnesses have been associated with this product," said John Keating, president of Cargill Regional Beef, said in a statement. "We are working closely with the USDA to remove this product from the marketplace."
E. coli is harbored in the intestines of cattle. Improper butchering and processing can cause the E. coli to get onto meat. Thorough cooking, to at least 160 degrees internal temperature, can destroy the bacteria.
E. coli 0157:H7 is a potentially deadly bacterium that can cause bloody diarrhea and dehydration. The very young, seniors and people with compromised immune systems are the most susceptible to E. coli.
Cargill Meat Solutions, based in Wichita, Kan., is the umbrella organization of Cargill's beef, pork and turkey businesses.
The Wyalusing plant produces 200 million pounds of ground beef annually.
Cargill Inc., based in Wayzata, Minn., is one of the nation's largest privately held companies. It makes food ingredients, moves commodities around the world and runs financial commodities trading businesses.
www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Nov04/0,4670,BeefRecall,00.html
May 4th, 2006
Boycott Cargill Linked To Bush-Skull and Bones Yale, UN Oil For Food
Recent demonstrations and calls for a brief boycott by individuals and groups in favor of illegal immigration have been making the national news for the past few weeks. Several companies have been named in the media as being in favor of the boycott, by shutting down at least some of their operations on May 1, 2006.
The primary company noted was Cargill, the largest privately owned company on Planet Earth.
The Company is a “Bush Pioneer”, That is a name given to a person or company that gave huge sums of money to see Bush ‘43 become the Decider In Chief....
Corroboration:
The family behind the company has been closely linked to Yale University, the home of the most famous and powerful occult secret society in the World.
It is amazing how many people with “odd” issues surrounding them seem to
have a link to this school.
www.yale.edu/opa/newsr/97-10-10-02.all.html .
A top lobbyist for Cargill and former executive played a leading role in the
George H W Bush Presidency and had involvement in agricultural policy
towards Iraq.
www.eatthestate.org/07-22/NaturePolitics.htm .
The current Bush Presidency has placed this same Cargill lobbyist/executive
IN CHARGE OF AGRICULTURAL POLICY IN IRAQ.
www.organicconsumers.org/corp/oxfam050103.cfm
Cargill was one of the few American companies exporting to Iraq under the
now defunct Oil-For-Food Program.
www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,136267,00.html .
April 6, 2006
Our Pious Babylon
The law may have hauled Jack Abramoff off the stage,
but Rick Berman still rolls merrily along.
By Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect
Let us not think that Tom DeLay's decision not to seek reelection was prompted by merely temporal concerns. The Rev. Rick Scarborough, DeLay's sometime pastor, told the New York Times that The Hammer confided in him last Saturday that "God wanted him to get out of that race."
DeLay's apparently is the most obliging of Lords. He stuck with the embattled incumbent long enough for DeLay to give a "Texas whuppin'" to those infidels who ran against him in the Republican primary, only to counsel withdrawal when the polling made clear that a Democrat could still beat The Hammer in the fall.
The broader question is whether such a deity still rules in Washington. As gods go, He was surely more ethically flexible than most. Lesser gods might frown upon bribery, fraud, greed and the abrogation of the democratic process, but this one was willing to overlook such trifles if they strengthened the Republicans' hold on the House and were performed in a spirit of piety.
The latest in the litany of outrageous acts by pious men was revealed in Tuesday's Los Angeles Times, where reporters Tom Hamburger and Ken Silverstein documented the efforts of lobbyist Jack Abramoff to sell his services to the Sudanese government in 2001. Quoting both the Sudanese ambassador and an unidentified former Abramoff associate, they recount how Abramoff offered to improve the image of the quasi-genocidal regime among Christian evangelicals in return for a retainer of $16 million to $18 million.
An Abramoff spokesman rebutted the account, insisting that Abramoff merely told the ambassador of his objections to the Sudanese government's war on its Christian population. But the very setting of this encounter -- Abramoff's skybox at FedEx Field during a Redskins game -- casts some doubt on the spokesman's account.
"This persecution has got to stop and -- say, check out that second cheerleader from the right!"
Is it even possible, in the age of DeLay and Karl Rove and the K Street Project, to satirize Washington? Doesn't reality outrun apprehension here and exceed the satirical imagination? A fine new comic film, "Thank You for Smoking," written and directed by Jason Reitman from a novel by Christopher Buckley, is putting this question to the happiest of tests in theaters this month.
In the spirit of the immortal Billy Wilder, the picture recounts the exploits of a bright young spinmeister for the tobacco industry whose modus operandi is to besmirch tobacco's critics and hire scientists to blow smoke around all actual data. His only two friends are lobbyists for the gun and alcohol industries; they lunch regularly and call themselves the MOD Squad -- MOD being an acronym for Merchants of Death.
But even the MOD Squad is a pale imitation of the reality of the Beltway's most outrageous advocate, who goes by the name of Rick Berman. In recent months Berman has been in the news for placing full-page ads in major newspapers (funding sources unidentified) that gently compare America's union leaders to Fidel Castro and like authoritarians. The unionists' sin, Berman argues, is their support for allowing workers to join unions simply by signing affiliation cards rather than subjecting themselves to a National Labor Relations Act election process in which pro-union workers are frequently fired.
But Berman's salvos against unions are just the latest in a line of attacks he's leveled against drunk-driving laws, anti-smoking statutes, food safety ordinances and minimum-wage standards. He is, broadly speaking, the lobbyist for the Hobbesian state of nature.
Working chiefly under the aegis of his Center for Consumer Freedom, Berman has accused Mothers Against Drunk Driving and kindred groups (in the words of one of his Web sites) of "junk science, intimidation tactics, and even threats of violence to push their radical agenda." Another Berman Web site was devoted to dismissing the dangers of mercury levels in fish.
Berman's center was jump-started in 1995 with money from Philip Morris, and, thanks to memos that were made public in the discovery process during the lawsuits against Big Tobacco, his strategic vision is now plain for all to see. "The concept," he wrote Philip Morris at the time, "is to unite the restaurant and hospitality industries in a campaign to defend their consumers and marketing programs against attacks from anti-smoking, anti-drinking, anti-meat, etc. activists."
The industries apparently have appreciated Berman's work. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, a former Berman associate has produced documents showing that Coca-Cola, Wendy's, Tyson Foods, Cargill and Outback Steakhouse are among Berman's largest donors.
The law may have hauled Abramoff off the stage, and DeLay may be huddling with his counsel and his Creator to plan his next move. But Rick Berman rolls merrily along, an inexhaustible source of material for the Reitmans, Buckleys and all who aspire to chronicle our depravities.
Harold Meyerson is editor-at-large of The American Prospect. This column originally appeared in The Washington Post.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=11373
April 22, 2002
Cargill/Dow--From Frankencorn
to Frankenfleece
Fabric from Corn: Greenfleece, or Greenwash?
By Tom Price
Special to Corpwatch
The dramatic ads feature thought provoking tag lines such as "the seeds of a revolution are sometimes just that," and "unlike every other revolutionary product, this one won't change the world." Blanketing the outdoor equipment trade press over the last several months, the ads hype the biggest environmental breakthrough in fabrics since the creation of fleece from recycled plastic soda bottles.
The marketing blitz by Cargill Dow heralded the unveiling of a line of fabrics called "NatureWorks PLA" (polylactic acid), made entirely from corn. At first blush it seems like the sort of environmental wonder technology always promised.
Rather than spinning the fuzzy fabric from oil, NatureWorks uses the natural sugars in corn, an annually renewable crop. Cargill Dow boasts its invention is a virtually limitless, 'clean' product, free of the taint of the pollution and controversy of the oil industry.
Even more miraculous, the technology isn't limited to apparel. Cargill Dow has plans to further "green" the marketplace with a bewildering array of corn-based products including carpeting, wall panels, upholstery, interior furnishings, outdoor fabrics, as well as plastics like film around CDs and golf ball sleeves. These products are even environmentally friendly when finished -- PLA can be completely recycled in commercial compost facilities. All this from an engineering process that cuts fossil fuel use in half compared to traditional oil-based technologies. What could environmentalists possibly find wrong with these wonder products?
Behind the Hype
Missing from all the hype is the fact that the source material for these
products is genetically engineered corn.
Missing from all the hype is the fact that the source material for these products is genetically engineered corn, designed by one of Cargill Dow's corporate parents, Cargill Inc., a world leader in genetic engineering. The obvious implication: by creating massive non-food markers for genetically engineered (GE) products, Cargill and other biotech companies expect to do an end run around the global campaign to stop GE proliferation. They hope that by creating so many products with such an irresistible green appeal, any voices of concern will be drowned out by the sheer weight of the marketplace.
Of course, this isn't the story Cargill Dow wants you to hear. They'd rather you logged on to their relentlessly self congratulatory web site, which boasts that "Cargill Dow is launching an industrial revolution in which petroleum based products are replaced with annually renewable ones in other words, unlimited resources to replace limited ones."
"Reducing our environmental impact while at the same time producing a superior product is why our company exists," gushes the company website.
In fact, Cargill Dow exists to create new markets for the products of its parent companies. Cargill Dow is a stand-alone company created by two of the leaders bioengineering, Cargill Inc. and Dow Chemical. Minnesota-based Cargill is both the world's largest privately held company and the planet's largest producer of corn. In fact, it already controls about 60% of the corn market in India, despite higher prices for their GE corn seed.
A study by the Dutch banking conglomerate, Rabobank, estimates the global market for hybridized and genetically engineered crops at $30 billion and anticipates that it will go to $90 billion.
Cargill and Dow spun off the new company to take advantage of strategic strengths each had, namely biotechnology and advanced chemical processes, and the first outlet for their products was the environmentally friendly, health-oriented outdoor clothing industry.
Some PR Gaffs
Unfortunately for Cargill Dow, they stumbled twice right out of the gate in their promotion of PLA as a "green" alternative to oil-based products. Their first SNAFU was trying to dupe the company they chose to market their material.
Given that the outdoor apparel industry is always on the lookout for better/greener products, meant Cargill Dow could have their pick of companies to team up with. They chose Patagonia, based in Ventura, California.
* * *
"It seemed almost too good to be true. Unfortunately, it was."
-- Jill Zillengen, Patagonia
* * *
It seemed a natural fit: Patagonia is well known for a commitment to environmental sustainability, and as developer of green technologies. They jumped at the new technology and spent years working with Cargill Dow on its development. But the relationship eventually soured. As Jill Zillegen, Patagonia vice president for Environmental Affairs put it, "At first, we could barely contain our excitement about the promise of PLAit seemed almost too good to be true. Unfortunately, it was."
Patagonia bailed out of the project when executives found out that Cargill Dow couldn't -- or wouldn't -- guarantee a GE-free source of corn for the new fabrics. Currently about 30% of domestic corn is Genetically Engineered. But as Dan Dye, vice president of the North American Grain Group for Cargill Inc., points out keeping them separate is "neither practical nor economically viable" for the company.
So, despite the obvious production and marketing benefits of using PLA, Patagonia passed. "We have invested a significant amount of time, research, and even hope in PLA, explained Zillegen. After many difficult discussions she says the company decided that "using inadequately tested, genetically engineered organisms is not a solution to the environmental crisis."
Unfortunately for Cargill Dow, the clothing company didn't go quietly. At the Outdoor Retailer trade show where PLA was unveiled, Patagonia devoted two full pages of their catalogue and put up large billboards explaining why they weren't using the product.
At the same show, Cargill Dow was forced into an embarrassing about face, after they were caught implying an endorsement for their products from eco-group Greenpeace. In the weeks leading up to the unveiling, Cargill Dow PR executive Vicki Bausman brandished an article in a Greenpeace, UK magazine by Cargill Dow VP for Technology Dr. Pat Gruber extolling the virtue of PLA process, hinting that it was an implicit endorsement by the environmental group. After repeated questioning by reporters she admitted that Gruber never told Greenpeace, a long-timeopponent of genetically engineered crops, that Cargill Dow intended to use GE corn as their source material.
Not surprisingly, when Greenpeace activists caught wind of Cargill Dow's plans, they were furious. "The proliferation of genetic pollution through these GE crops has the potential to be the greatest environmental disaster in history, and it is highly disingenuous to claim this is green when it uses GE corn," said Craig Culp of Greenpeace USA.
A Green Company?
Meanwhile corporate parent Cargill is attempting an image makeover as an eco-friendly business in the face of growing worldwide opposition to its genetically engineered products. In February executives unveiled a new corporate logo featuring a green leaf, and ads displaying a butterfly with the tag line "there's a new Cargill taking shape, " a move sure to make GE activists wince, since Monarch butterflies have been among the signature species impacted by GE pollen. Their TV ads feature young children standing outside in rain-drenched fields and in front of green-power windmills.
* * *
"Kellogg's has Franken-food, and Cargill Dow is now making Franken-fleece."
-- Craig Culp, Greenpeace
* * *
Most recently, Cargill quietly bankrolled a new "academic organization" in Thailand aimed at extolling the virtues of GE crops, according to the Bangkok Post. Activists, like Isabella Meister of Greenpeace, believe that the biotech giant chose Thailand because it "the only country in the region that has formulated a clear policy about GMOs, such as a ban on the import and commercial plantation of GM seeds." While the new institute's director denies any ties to international biotechnology companies, her group's website admits it is funded by those same companies.
Back in the US, Cargill Dow presses ahead with their plans to create not just the raw material, but the finished product as well as marketplace for their GE corn. While the potential benefits of this technology to reduce dependence on non-renewable sources is indeed enormous, it remains to be seen whether Cargill Dow will follow through on their promises to create non-GE sources for PLA such as straw.
Until they do, critics of bio-engineered crops see no difference between PLA and the GE corn Kellogg's uses in its cereal. "Kellogg's has Franken-food, and Cargill Dow is now making Franken-fleece," explained Craig Culp of Greenpeace.
Still unanswered is the question of whether enough concern will be raised about PLA products, before they are so deeply entrenched in the marketplace that removing them becomes impossible.
Cargill Dow isn't waiting around to find out. On April 2nd, they announced the opening of a new $750 million factory, the largest producer of polylactic acid on the planet. Sprawling over sixteen acres of former cornfields in Blair, Nebraska, the massive facility can generate more than 300 million pounds of Natureworks PLA per year, using some 40,000 bushels of Cargill corn every day in the process.
– After spending eight years working as a conservationist on Capitol Hill, Tom Price returned to his home town of Salt Lake City. He now works as a freelance journalist covering environment, culture and travel.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/fleece042402.cfm
February 9, 2002
Bush Promotes More
Global Markets
By Lawrence Knutson, Associated Press
DENVER - President Bush told cattlemen yesterday that Congress should pass legislation providing a "safety net" for farmers, "while opening opportunities to sell beef and other farm products around the world.”
Backed by cattlemen in broad-brimmed Western hats, Bush said he wants a farm policy that is affordable and protects farmers without "political gimmickry."
"What we don't want is to overpromise and underperform," the president said as he addressed the 2002 Cattle Industry Convention and Trade show.
Bush said it is likely that a farm bill will pass Congress providing spending of $73.5 billion over the next ten years....
Bush also said he wants a farm bill that supports trade.
"Our ranchers and farmers are the best in the world at what they do and it seems logical to me that we need more opportunity to sell around the world," he said.
"We want people in China eating U.S. beef," Bush said, adding that he wants a policy that will make sure "that places like Europe make markets for healthy American beef."...
For more on The Pride and The Prejudice of President George W. Bush, GO TO > > > Impeach Bush!
###
For more, GO TO > > >
The Dirty Little Secrets of Dow Chemical
The Impending Impeachment of George W. Bush
~ o ~
MORE OF THE CATBIRD’S FAVORITE LINKS
~ o ~
FAIR USE NOTICE. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml . If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Last update December 23, 2007 by The Catbird