Homes without kitchens, houses without gardens, grocery shopping over the Internet. Every day we become further removed from our food and more dependent upon transnational corporations to provide this basic requirement. Do we know the people that provide our food? Have we been inside a food processing plant to see what happens? This Australian Freedom & Survival Guide reports.

Food Security verses Food Self Sufficiency

Transnational food titans, governments and the Organisations of Concern (OOC) are spearheading the drive for food security. This means even more highly centralised control, production and distribution of our food with standards set by the organs of global governance. International treaties for food security will affect the quality and availability of food. The standards set in the treaties come down in favour of transnational corporations who want us to eat their genetically modified and irradiated food. The Food and Agriculture Organisation, the WTO (through its Treaty on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures) and the proposed International Food Security Treaty will harmonise food policy. The noble aim is to eliminate hunger, but in reality, it means dumping polluted food products in the third world and declining food standards in the developed world. Indigenous and traditional food preparation techniques are becoming subsumed by the western fast food culture. Fast foods of poor quality have largely supplanted regional and domestic control.

Food Irradiation

The use of very large doses of ionising radiation to produce some desired change in food, typically to prolong shelf life or kill bacteria and insects which infest food. Food is irradiated by exposing it to radioactive cobalt 60 or cesium 137, both are toxic and deadly by-products of the nuclear power industry. The World Health Organisation, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation are behind the push to irradiate our food. Under the World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, nation – states will be unable to deny the entry of irradiated foods.

Genetic Engineering

Companies once considered chemical giants, have become gene giants with a new focus on controlling, patenting and profiting from life. Their market dominance, combined with monopoly patents gives them unprecedented control over commercial farming, food and health. Chemical companies such as Monsanto, Bayer, Aventis Group, Zeneca/Astra, DuPont and Novartis are acquiring seed and biotech firms. Acquisition of these enterprises will eventually prove irresistible to the food and beverage giants Nestle, Philip Morris, Unilever, ConAgra, PepsiCo Inc, Coca-Cola, and Mars Inc. Companies such as Du Pont, Kellogs and ConAgra are rushing to engineer foods that claim to enhance health and wellbeing. These so-called functional foods are already driving some of the world’s largest companies to seek alliances with pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

Food Additives

What’s in a number? What is an anti-caking agent? How do additives 390, 339, 221 and 545 affect us? Would you eat Butylated Hydroxytolulene? What about some tasty propylene glycol? Or a sprinkling of sodium aluminosilicate. Australian Freedom & Survival Guide keeps you up to date on the latest research in to food additives. Many are toxic wastes, derived from the petrochemical industry. Others are simply added to achieve desired cosmetic effects.

Did you know?

– In the USA, it is legal to dye the peel of citrus fruits with Citrus Red Number 2. The process is known as a ‘colour add’ and is applied to mature fruits, not intended for processing.

– In Australia, the Australia New Zealand Food Authority is currently considering an application to allow the use of Neotame, Monsanto’s aspartame-like artificial sweetener, which is reportedly 8000 times sweeter than sugar.

– Some common ingredients in the cheaper commercial icecreams are: Benzyl acetate – used to give ice-cream its strawberry flavour, also used as a nitrate solvent. Amyl acetate – gives ice-cream a banana flavour and is commercially used as an oil paint solvent. Diethyl Glucol – the cheap chemical emulsifier used as a substitute for eggs is identical to the chemical used in anti freeze and in paint remover. Butyralheyde gives ice cream a nut like flavour and is one of the common ingredients of rubber cement. Piperohal used as a substitute for vanilla in ice-cream is also used by exterminators as a chemical to kill lice.

Chemicals and pesticides

Our food is treated at every stage with toxic chemicals. When it’s grown, when it’s harvested, when it’s processed and when it’s stored. The overall nutritional quality of our food is declining dramatically. Artificial growth hormones and antibiotics are used to fatten beef, lamb, and chicken. Antibiotics are incorporated into animal feed. Even in the post harvest environment, fresh fruit and vegetables receive commodity treatments to prolong shelf life. Controlled ripening, controlled degreening, the use of mould inhibitors, waxes, sprouting inhibitors and disinfestation procedures contribute to chemical overload. Transnational seed corporations such as Monsanto have engineered seeds to become resistant to the herbicide round-up (Glyphosate). The traitor and terminator gene technologies mean an increased use of chemicals.

Ghost Acres – Modern day farmers have fed the world by converting barrels into bushels, but they cannot indefinitely expand their use of oil. Agricultural production peaked on a world basis in 1961 and world oil production peaked in the year 2000. Soils are being rapidly depleted and salted due to monoculture cropping, export cropping, overproduction of subsidised food staples, refined and fast foods. On average, farmers use the equivalent of one barrel of oil to produce a ton of grain. Each year, producing a ton of grain requires more and more oil. Beyond Petroleum – the end of Hydrocarbon Man for more details about oil dependence, genetic engineering and agriculture.

Commodification of Water

Nestle and Unilever, the world’s first and third largest food titans respectively, are leading the drive to commodify the world’s water supplies. The World Water commission for the 21st Century has developed a “Water Vision” for the year 2025 which was presented at the Second World Water Forum and Ministerial Conference held at The Hague, the Netherlands in March 2000.

A CEO panel, including representatives from Nestle, Unilever, Heineken, IT&T and the water corporations Azurix, CH2M and DHV presented their vision for our future.

Panel leader and Chair of Unilever, Anthony Burgmans presented the CEO statement, which said in part: Water is an economic good and its economic value should be recognised in the allocation of scarce water resources to competing uses. While this should not prevent people from meeting their basic needs for water services at affordable prices, the price for water must be set at a level that encourages conservation and wise use. The private sector has a growing role to play in the supply and management of water resources.

The commodification of water is strongly linked to developments in biotechnology. Because water will become an expensive commodity, farmers will be looking for ways to reduce water consumption. Transnational seed companies are engineering seeds to produce higher yields with less water. The corporations will benefit twofold – firstly by commidifying and profiting from water. Secondly by selling their less thirsty and drought resistant seeds.