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PLEASE SHARE WITH ALL YOUR CONTACTS, BLOGS, SITES, FORUNS

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:: Humans - The Cruelest and Most Destructive Specie on Earth ::

Who's the Cruelest Species of Them All?
We are, of course, but a new book on animal cruelty will make your jaw drop
about how vicious humans can be to other animals.


MUST WATCH - DOCUMENTARY EARTHLINGS:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1282796533661048967
(The best documentary on Animal Rights and Human interaction with animals)







Shamu's mother was harpooned.

She was killed in the wild by the crew that captured the first in a series of
young orcas that have since been trained to do tricks at San Diego's Sea World
marine park, known sequentially as America's most famous performing sea mammals.
And maybe that's all you need to know to realize just how far humans will go.
Maybe that's all you need to know -- were you beside me on those bleachers,
years ago, cheering Shamu? -- to see blood, even faded and vestigial, on your
hands.

Erin E. Williams and Margo DeMello's Why Animals Matter: The Case for Animal
Protection (Prometheus, 2007) is a book so jam-packed with literal crimes
against nature that it's hard to read more than a few pages in one go. Williams
works for the Humane Society of the United States. DeMello is an administrative
director of the House Rabbit Society.

Together they have painstakingly assembled statistics, news reports, anecdotes,
and observations exposing the sufferings of so many creatures in so many
industries -- food, fashion, entertainment, medicine -- as well as hobbies
ranging from hunting to ostensibly positive pet-ownership that you recoil from
revelation after revelation about Chinese cat-fur coats, say, or "spent"
racehorses that are slaughtered for dogfood. On information overload, you blink:
Wait . my species does that?

Indeed it does.

It hunts over 22 million mourning doves in the US every year.

It rounded up tens of thousands of pet dogs in China in 2006 and slaughtered
them in an alleged health campaign.

It gorges on salmon factory-farmed in such overcrowded tanks that their
skeletons become malformed and their skullbones burst through their skin in a
condition called "death crown."

Imitating rap stars and other fashion icons, it has enthusiastically revived a
moribund fur and exotic-animal-skin industry.

It wears the hides of alligators that were either slashed and bled to death or
flayed alive.

It indulges in cosmetics tested by the weeks-long application of toxins to the
eyes of rabbits locked in stocks.

It bets on battles between fowl drugged with steroids, strychnine and
amphetamine and bred specially to tear out each other's eyes, rip each other's
flesh and break each other's bones in fight after big-money fight.

It shoots zebras and yaks in Texas.

We tell ourselves that we already know enough about this: at least the basics,
all we need to know. Yet just as car accidents don't let you look away, this
book's breadth and specificity compels you to linger and learn more, then more
again: collecting grisly tidbits to marvel at. To sling later at idiots. To
arrange side by side along those moral lines that will shimmer in some future
sand as you wonder which shampoo to use, which clothing brands to buy or what to
eat.

This is the rest of the tour that Eric Schlosser began in Fast Food Nation --
paced not quite at a bovine plod but still deliberately, somberly slow -- of
that bustling, bloody world-within-a-world in which terrible things happen to
animals. The evidence is everywhere: in the bedroom closet, the medicine
cabinet, the fridge, the restaurant, the cupboard full of cleansers under the
sink. It's at the pet shop, circus, zoo, aquarium, boutique. Even if you're a
pleather-clad vegan sitting perfectly still in an open field, you are implicated
-- used -- as an ostensible statistic, who by virtue of belonging to Homo
sapiens can still be considered a potential eventual customer for countless
cosmetics, comestibles, clothes, drugs and other future products whose marketing
schemes are already under way. The macular degeneration, diabetes or fondness
for fur-trimmed jackets that you might or might not someday develop is reason
enough for wealthy powerful companies to justify inflicting untold things on
untold creatures: "Even with all of our laws," Williams and DeMello muse, "and
even with a nation of caring people, we still tolerate -- and many of us
unwittingly participate in -- an unprecedented degree of animal cruelty. How can
this be so?

"Perhaps the biggest reason why society tolerates routine abuse of animals is
that for the most part, these abuses are hidden."

It's as if a huge mill is in perpetual motion, grinding away behind the scenes,
a constant stream of creatures being fed nonstop into its maw.

Rather than "engage in complicated philosophical arguments," the authors stake a
claim instead on our "common sense and common decency":


   "While we can purchase cheaper meat from animals who never experienced sun or
air," they venture (and by using the pronoun "who" in reference to nonhumans
they make a deliberate political choice), "while we can buy virtually any animal
we want as a pet, while scientists can create mice with human genes and even
with human tissue, and while rich hunters can pay thousands of dollars to shoot
an endangered, tranquilized animal, most of us, if we knew the realities behind
those choices, would take a step back and reconsider . just because we can do
all these things, should we?"
Dispensing with analysis, they're all about disgorging details: shock after
shock, yuck after yuck, scare after scare in what amounts to a collective elegy
for a century-plus' worth of sick, injured and dead animals. Which among the
thousands of details in these pages will stick in your mind, as opposed to my
mind or that guy's over there, depends Rorschach-like on your personal history,
sensitivities and quirks. Because I happen to be a hypochondriac -- don't cough
anywhere near me on the bus -- it's the ailments, human and animal, that I
imagine oozing and throbbing long after shutting this book. Fur-farmed minks,
for example, are susceptible to gastric lesions, tumors, botulism, diarrhea,
cysts and eye disease. Egg-farmed hens get osteoporosis, liver hemorrhagic
syndrome, and uterine prolapse, in which the womb distends outside the body.
From constant contact with feces, dairy-factory cows get a painful and
potentially lethal udder infection called mastitis. Marine mammals confined in
concrete tanks tend toward pneumonia, bacterial infections, and abscesses. For
pet-industry rabbits, it's reproductive cancers.

When animals "defecate or vomit on the workers" in factory farms, "they can
spread diseases such as E. coli, campylobacter, and listeria." In case you're
curious, campylobacter causes bleeding gums, oral bone-loss and dysentery.
"Factory farm workers are also exposed to infectious diseases such as anthrax,
psittacosis, brucellosis, leptospirocis, swine influenza A, and avian influenza
A," the authors write.

Good to know. And we can only guess at the pathogenic legacy of industrial
accidents such as the 1995 spill that sent 25 million gallons of hog waste into
a North Carolina river. For you it might not be the diseases that resonate but
rather the photographs, say, or the pain: Fur-farmed foxes are killed, for
instance, by having metal rods jammed into their anuses and being induced to
bite electrodes. Or it might be the pathos: Hunters collecting live specimens
for early zoos, for example, "boasted in excruciating detail of . the baby
animals who mourned at the sides of their dead mothers until they were snatched
away, put into cages or tied or chained up, and transported to Europe. Because
most social animals like gorillas, chimpanzees, elephants and hippos guard their
young, collectors had to kill the adults (sometimes the females, but often the
entire herd) when capturing their babies." This is no longer standard practice,
although it's too late for Shamu's mother and the rest.


Or it might be the sheer numbers that get you: over 3.8 million kangaroos killed
for their skins every year in Australia. Some 265,000 rabbits and 65,000 dogs
used in US laboratories in 2004 alone for toxicity tests, medical-school surgery
instruction, dental and heart experiments and more. Sixty billion pounds of sea
animals killed and discarded annually by industrial fishing operations worldwide
as "bycatch" after being caught in deepwater trawls and purse seines set out for
other species. Tens of thousands of dolphins at a time corralled into coves and
slaughtered en masse for their meat during Japanese "dolphin drives." Tens of
thousands of pet dogs seized from their owners and clubbed, hanged and shot
during that 2006 anti-rabies campaign staged by the Chinese government.
Thirty-five thousand miles of US rivers in 22 states and groundwater in
seventeen states contaminated by factory-farm runoff, according to the EPA.



At the end of each chapter, the authors offer helpful, practical pointers.
Report poachers, they suggest. Buy a vegetarian cookbook. Watch animal-friendly
TV shows such as Animal Cops and Emergency Vets. Spay or neuter your pet. Buy
cruelty-free products. Vote. These tips are peaceful little polyps in what is
otherwise an unflinching indictment of human appetites, of our ridiculous
desires. It's an indictment of our behaviors and ourselves. They are not named
in this book, but it is flesh-and-blood individuals -- mothers and fathers, sons
and daughters, friends, husbands and wives -- who flay those live 'gators. And
who insist, via groups such as the National Alternative Pet Association, that
they are entitled to own skunks, wallabies, hedgehogs, and exotic cats, even to
buy tiger cubs online for a few thousand bucks each.

It is mothers and fathers, husbands and wives who Internet-hunt, paying to
really shoot real animals in real time via a gun and webcam connected via remote
control to their computer mice. And somebody loves them.

By Anneli Rufus, AlterNet.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/77543/


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Looking for a cheap used laptop?

Visit the website to get a sleek and trendy used laptop for you at
throw away prices: http://www.laptopnet.info

........

..:: TAKE ACTION - HELP STOP THE SEAL SLAUGHTER ::..
300.000 seals and baby seals are right now being brutally killed for the fur
industry

ACT NOW TO HELP STOP THE SEAL SLAUGHTER
http://www.stopthesealhunt.ca    |    http://www.hsus.org
(See below for more on what you can do to help stop this and facts about the
seal hunt)



A very cruel hunt for their fur

The Canadian government claims the commercial seal hunt is humane and well
regulated. But experts disagree. In 2001, an international team of five
independent veterinarians observed the seal hunt. The veterinarians found that
79% of the sealers did not check to see if an animal was dead before skinning
it. In 40% of the kills a sealer had to strike the seal a second time,
presumably because it was still conscious after the first blow or shot. And when
the veterinarians examined the skulls of killed seals, 42% were found to have
minimal or no fractures, suggesting a high probability that these seals were
conscious when skinned.

The veterinarian team concluded that the existing regulations were neither being
respected nor enforced, and that the seal hunt is resulting in considerable and
unacceptable suffering.

Furthermore, each year, animal welfare investigators and journalists document
routine abuses at the hunt. IFAW has submitted video evidence of more than 660
probable violations of Canada's Marine Mammal Regulations to the Department of
Fisheries and Oceans. These abuses include skinning or bleeding live seals,
stockpiling dead and dying animals, dragging live seals across the ice with
sharpened steel hooks and shooting seals and leaving them to suffer. To date,
not a single charge has been laid in response.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans says it is committed to proposing new
regulations to address what it sees as the critical hunt issues. The
International Fund for Animal Welfare stresses, however, that it is impossible
to effectively regulate any commercial hunt. Unpredictable weather and ice
conditions, combined with the difficulties inherent in killing a large number of
wild animals very quickly, will always add up to cruelty.



VIDEOS OF THE CRUEL HUNT (2008)

http://www.hsus.org/index-seals.html



PHOTOS OF THE CRUEL HUNT


















--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



ACTION TOOLKIT:


      Boycott Canadian Seafood

      a.. Sign the Pledge
         b.. Ask a friend to join the boycott
         c.. Urge your grocer to join the boycott
         d.. Ask these businesses to join the boycott
         e.. Give the pledge to restaurants and stores [PDF]
         f.. Download the Pocket Guide [PDF]
         g.. Download the Restaurant Card [PDF]
         h.. Find restaurants participating in the boycott
         i.. Download the informational brochure [PDF]

      Contact Canada's Government
      a.. Email Minister of International Trade Emerson
         b.. Ask a friend to email Emerson
         c.. Email Prime Minister Harper
         d.. Ask a friend to email Harper

      Contact U.S. and EU Officials
      a.. Ask your senators to support the Levin Resolution condemning the seal
hunt
         b.. Sign the petition to ban seal product trade in the European Union

      Download Cool Stuff and Get Creative
      a.. Web badges and banners
         b.. MySpace layout
         c.. Videos
         d.. Desktop wallpaper
         e.. Make a LOLseal

      Gear Up with Seal Merchandise
      a.. Nigel Barker's Save Me Seal Tee
         b.. Club Sandwiches Not Seals Hoodie
         c.. Save Our Seals Heart Tee
         d.. ProtectSeals Sticker
         e.. ProtectSeals Ringer Tee
         f.. Stop the Seal Hunt Henley
         g.. Stop the Seal Hunt Baseball Cap
         h.. No Fur Heart Buttons

      Get the Facts
      a.. Fast Facts (html | PDF)
         b.. Myths and Facts (html | PDF)
         c.. Seals and Cod (html | PDF)
         d.. Hunt Economics (html | PDF)
         e.. Why Canada's Government Supports the Hunt (html | PDF)
         f.. Harp Seal Populations in the Northwest Atlantic (PDF)






         Fur-Free Campaign
         Restaurants, Chefs, and Companies Taking Action in Support of the
ProtectSeals Campaign
         What You Can Do to Make the Canadian Seafood Boycott a Success




      Boycott Canada: A Respect for Animals Campaign
      The Fur Free Alliance





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Facts About the Canadian Seal Hunt





       ©2005 Brian Skerry/HSUS
Canada's annual commercial seal hunt is the largest commercial hunt of marine
mammals on the planet. Facing harsh criticism the world over because of the
hunt's cruelty and unsustainability, the Canadian government and fishing
industry have spread much misinformation. Here are the basic facts about the
hunt.

Which Seals Are Targeted by Canada's Seal Hunt?

Harp seals are the primary target of the commercial seal hunt, and to a much
smaller extent, hooded seals are also killed. In 2006, 98 percent of the harp
seals killed were pups under just three months of age.

Where Are the Seals Killed?

Canada's commercial seal hunt occurs on the ice floes off Canada's East Coast in
two areas: the Gulf of St. Lawrence (west of Newfoundland and east of the
Magdalen Islands) and the "Front" (northeast of Newfoundland).

Who Kills Seals and Why?

Sealing is an off-season activity conducted by fishermen from Canada's East
Coast. They make, on average, a small fraction of their annual incomes from
sealing-and the rest from commercial fisheries. Even in Newfoundland, where 90
percent of sealers live, the government estimates there are less than 6,000
fishermen who actively participate in the seal hunt each year.

How Are the Seals Killed?

The Canadian Marine Mammal Regulations, which govern the hunt, stipulate sealers
may kill seals with wooden clubs, hakapiks (large ice-pick-like clubs) and guns.
In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, clubs and hakapiks are the killing implement of
choice, and in the Front, guns are more widely used.



It is important to note that each killing method is demonstrably cruel. Because
sealers shoot at seals from moving boats, the pups are often only wounded. The
main sealskin processing plant in Canada deducts $2 from the price they pay for
the skins for each bullet hole they find-therefore sealers are loath to shoot
seals more than once. As a result, wounded seals are often left to suffer in
agony-many slip beneath the surface of the water where they die slowly and are
never recovered.

Is the Seal Hunt Cruel?

Yes. In 2001, a report by an independent team of veterinarians who studied the
hunt concluded that governmental regulations regarding humane killing were
neither being respected nor enforced, and that the seal hunt failed to comply
with Canada's basic animal welfare standards. Shockingly, the veterinarians
found that in 42 percent of the cases they studied, the seals had likely been
skinned alive while conscious.

Parliamentarians, journalists, and scientists who observe Canada's commercial
seal hunt each year continue to report unacceptable levels of cruelty, including
sealers dragging conscious seals across the ice floes with boat hooks, shooting
seals and leaving them to suffer in agony, stockpiling dead and dying animals,
and even skinning seals alive.

How Many Seals Are Killed Each Year?

Hundreds of thousands. In fact, over the past three years, nearly one million
seals have been killed. The current kill levels are higher than they have been
in half a century. During the 2006 hunt, the Canadian government allowed
fishermen to club and shoot at least 354,344 seals. The last time seals were
killed at this rate-in the 1950s and '60s-the harp seal population was reduced
by nearly two thirds.

And the actual number of seals killed is probably far higher than the number
reported. Many seals are shot at and injured in the course of the hunt, and
studies suggest that a significant number of these animals slip beneath the
surface of the water, where they die slowly and are never recovered.

Are There Any Penalties When Hunters Exceed the Government's Quota?

No. In 2002, the Canadian government knowingly allowed sealers to exceed the
quota by more than 37,000 animals. Sealers had already killed substantially more
than the quota allowed by May 15 (the regulated closing date of the seal hunt),
and yet the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans chose to extend the sealing season
until June. In 2004, sealers killed close to 16,000 seals more than the
permitted quota. Again, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans extended the
sealing season until well into June.

What Products Are Made from Seals?

Seals are killed primarily for their fur, which is used to produce fashion
garments and other items. There is a small market for seal oil (both for
industrial purposes and for human consumption), and seal penises have been sold
in Asian markets as an aphrodisiac. There is almost no market for the meat, so
seal carcasses are normally left to rot on the ice.

Is the Seal Hunt Economically Important?

No. Sealing is an off-season activity conducted by fishermen from Canada's East
Coast. They make, on average, one twentieth of their incomes from seal hunting
and the rest from commercial fisheries. Even in Newfoundland, where 90 percent
of sealers live, revenues from the hunt account for less than 1 percent of the
province's economy and only 2 percent of the landed value of the fishery.
According to the Newfoundland government, out of a population of half a million
people, less than 6,000 fishermen participate in the seal hunt each year.

The commercial seal hunt is an activity that Canada's federal government could
easily replace with economic alternatives, should it choose to do so.

Does the Government Subsidize the Hunt?

Yes. According to reports from the Canadian Institute for Business and the
Environment, more than $20 million in subsidies were provided to the sealing
industry between 1995 and 2001. Those subsidies came from entities such as the
Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Human Resources Development Council, and
Canada Economic Development-Quebec. These subsidies take a variety of forms,
including funding the salaries for seal processing plant workers, market
research and development trips, and capital acquisitions for processing plants.
In 2004, more than $400,000 was provided by the Canadian government to companies
for the development of seal products, and as recently as April 2007, the
Canadian Coast Guard-at the taxpayer's expense-broke through the ice for the
sealing vessels as it does each year. In 2007, the Canadian Coast Guard
estimates that it spent an additional $3.5 million rescuing sealing vessels.

Moreover, Canada's commercial seal hunt is also indirectly subsidized by the
Norwegian government. A Norwegian company purchases close to 80% of the
sealskins produced in Canada in any given year through its Canadian subsidiary.
These skins are shipped in an unprocessed state directly to Norway, where they
are tanned and re-exported. The Norwegian government provides significant
financial assistance to this company each year.

Is It True Seals Are Jeopardizing the Canadian Cod Fishery?

There is no evidence to support this contention. Some fishing industry lobby
groups try to claim that seals must be culled to protect fish stocks, but
nothing could be further from the truth.

The scientific community agrees that the true cause of the depletion of fish
stocks off Canada's East Coast is human over-fishing. Blaming seals for
disappearing fish is a convenient way for the fishing industry to divert
attention from its irresponsible and environmentally destructive practices that
continue today.

In truth, seals, like all marine mammals, are a vital part of the ecosystem of
the Northwest Atlantic. Harp seals, which are the primary target of the hunt,
are opportunistic feeders, meaning they eat many different species. So while
approximately 3 percent of a harp seal's diet may be commercially fished cod,
harp seals also eat many significant predators of cod, such as squid. That is
why some scientists are concerned that culling harp seals could further inhibit
recovery of commercially valuable fish stocks in the Northwest Atlantic.

Are Seals Overpopulated?

No. The Canadian government and sealing industry have, at various times, tried
to claim that the harp seal population has "tripled" over the past three
decades, or that the harp seal population is "exploding," or that seals are
overpopulated.

This is misleading at best. The harp seal population in the Northwest Atlantic
is the world's largest; it is a migratory population that spans the distance
between Canada and Greenland, and is supposed to number in the many millions.

In the 1950s and '60s, over-hunting wiped out close to two-thirds of the harp
seal population. By 1974, the population was considered to be in serious
trouble, and senior government scientists recommended suspending the commercial
hunt  for at least 10 years.

In the early 1980s, the European Union banned the import of whitecoat seal
skins, effectively removing the principal market for the hunt at the time. For
the next decade, the numbers of seals killed in the hunt dramatically declined,
and the harp seal population began to recover.

But in the 1990s, the Canadian government rejuvenated the commercial seal hunt
through massive subsidies. And with nearly one million seal pups killed in the
past three years alone, we can only wonder what the impact will be on the harp
seal population in coming years. Scientists have already sounded the alarm
regarding the poor science used by the Canadian government to set quotas for the
number of seals killed.

http://www.hsus.org/marine_mammals/protect_seals/about_the_canadian_seal_hunt/


         Canadians Give a Thumbs Up to the Protect Seals Campaign
         Designers Who Use Seal Fur and Skin
         Dispatches: Reporting from the 2006 Canadian Seal Hunt
         Give Seals a Chance: An Interview with Paul McCartney
         Heather and Paul McCartney Bring Hope, and a Media Spotlight, to
Canada's Seals
         International Day of Action Against the Canadian Seal Hunt
         Levin Leads Congressional Opposition to Canada's Seal Hunt
         News Reports from the 2005 Seal Hunt
         Playing a Deadly Numbers Game: Canada Announces the 2006 Seal Hunt Quota
         Protect Seals: What You Can Do
         Rally for the Seals Statement by Naomi Rose (March 3, 2004)
         Rebecca Aldworth's Journal for the 2005 Seal Hunt
         Senator Carl Levin's Statement on the Canadian Seal Hunt
         The Protect Seals Network
         The Rally for the Seals Statement by IFAW's Rebecca Aldworth (November
5, 2003)
         The Rally for the Seals Statement by The HSUS's Naomi Rose (November 5,
2003)
         The Truth
         Want to Help End the Seal Hunt? Boycott Canadian Seafood.
         Witness to the Hunt


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

GREENPEACE



URGENT - TAKE ACTION AND SAY NO TO GMO "FOOD"
GMOs are a severe danger to our health and to the environment
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/

FUTURE OF FOOD - Know the facts about the dangers of GMOs:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1421685194187478421



                  ACTION ALERT
                   Historic Vote on GMOs

             Dear friends,

             An important vote on GMOs is due to take place on 7 May in Brussels.

             The agro-chemical industry wants to get EU permission to grow
pesticide-producing maize plants and a GM potato that contains an antibiotic
resistant gene. We want EU Commissioners to say NO when they discuss the
applications on 7 May. Our petitions, postcards, emails, blog comments and
actions have helped bring the EU to this historic moment. Now, this is it!
             Can you join us in writing directly to all the European
Commissioners this week?

             The agro-chemical industry is already bombarding the Commission with
lobbyists and messages. Greenpeace activists and campaigners are on the ground
in Brussels, too. But with your voice, and your network of friends, we can
deliver a louder, more direct message to Europe's top politicians.

             We have contact details for all 27 European Commissioners, talking
points you can use in your message to them, and links to further reading. The
vast majority of EU citizens are opposed to GMOs, and emails direct from people
who care ? in Europe, around the world ? can really work.

             Please click here to take action.

             http://www.email.greenpeace.org/wrdddppw_zpvswnb.html?RECIPID=815790

             Thank you for taking action before 7 May and for campaigning this
far with us already.

             We will keep you informed!

             Everyone at Greenpeace International











[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

:: Making a killing from hunger ::

The production of Meat, Biofuels, chemicals, the lack of oil, use of the car,
the economy and selfish politics are the problem to world hunger

How to help stop world hunger:
Go vegetarian, travel only by bicycle / foot / public transports, boycott GMOs
stop using chemical products, save energy, make donations and do volunteer work






We need to overturn food policy, now!

BY GRAIN

For some time now the rising cost of food all over the world has taken
households, governments and the media by storm. The price of wheat has gone up
by 130% over the last year.[1] Rice has doubled in price in Asia in the first
three months of 2008 alone,[2] and just last week it hit record highs on the
Chicago futures market.[3] For most of 2007 the spiralling cost of cooking oil,
fruit and vegetables, as well as of dairy and meat, led to a fall in the
consumption of these items. From Haiti to Cameroon to Bangladesh, people have
been taking to the streets in anger at being unable to afford the food they
need. In fear of political turmoil, world leaders have been calling for more
food aid, as well as for more funds and technology to boost agricultural
production. Cereal exporting countries, meanwhile, are closing their borders to
protect their domestic markets, while other countries have been forced into
panic buying. Is this a price blip? No. A food shortage? Not that either. We are
in a structural meltdown, the direct result of three decades of neoliberal
globalisation.

Farmers across the world produced a record 2.3 billion tons of grain in 2007, up
4% on the previous year. Since 1961 the world's cereal output has tripled, while
the population has doubled. Stocks are at their lowest level in 30 years, it's
true,[4] but the bottom line is that there is enough food produced in the world
to feed the population. The problem is that it doesn't get to all of those who
need it. Less than half of the world's grain production is directly eaten by
people. Most goes into animal feed and, increasingly, biofuels - massive
inflexible industrial chains. In fact, once you look behind the cold curtain of
statistics, you realise that something is fundamentally wrong with our food
system. We have allowed food to be transformed from something that nourishes
people and provides them with secure livelihoods into a commodity for
speculation and bargaining. The perverse logic of this system has come to a
head. Today it is staring us in the face that this system puts the profits of
investors before the food needs of people.

Market realities

The policy makers who have shaped today's world food system - and who are
supposed to be responsible for averting such catastrophes - have come out with a
number of explanations for the current crisis that everyone has heard over and
over again: drought and other problems affecting harvests; rising demand in
China and India where people are supposedly eating more and better than in the
past; crops and lands being massively diverted into biofuel production; and so
on. All of these issues, of course, are contributing to the current food crisis.
But they do not account for the full depth of what is happening. There is
something more fundamental at work, something that brings all these issues
together, and which the world's finance and development chiefs are keeping out
of public discussion.

Nothing that the policy makers say should obscure the fact that today's food
crisis is the outcome of both an incessant push towards a "Green Revolution"
agricultural model since the 1950s and the trade liberalisation and structural
adjustment policies imposed on poor countries by the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund since the 1970s. These policy prescriptions were
reinforced with the establishment of the World Trade Organisation in the
mid-1990s and, more recently, through a barrage of bilateral free trade and
investment agreements. Together with a series of other measures, they have led
to the ruthless dismantling of tariffs and other tools that developing countries
had created to protect local agricultural production. These countries have been
forced to open their markets and lands to global agribusiness, speculators and
subsidised food exports from rich countries. In that process, fertile lands have
been diverted away from serving local food markets to the production of global
commodities or off-season and high-value crops for Western supermarkets. Today,
roughly 70% of all so-called developing countries are net importers of food.[5]
And of the estimated 845 million hungry people in the world, 80% are small
farmers.[6] Add to this the re-engineering of credit and financial markets to
create a massive debt industry, with no control on investors, and the depth of
the problem becomes clear.

Agricultural policy has completely lost touch with its most basic goal of
feeding people. Hunger hurts and people are desperate. The UN World Food
Programme estimates that recent price hikes have meant that an additional 100
million people can no longer afford to eat adequately.[7] Governments are
frantically seeking shelter from the system. The fortunate ones, with export
stocks, are pulling out of the global market to cut their domestic prices off
from the skyrocketing world prices. With wheat, export bans or restrictions in
Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and Argentina mean that a third of the global market
has now been closed off. The situation with rice is even worse: China,
Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, India and Cambodia have banned or severely restricted
exports, leaving just a few sources of export supply, mainly Thailand and the
US. Countries like Bangladesh can't buy the rice they need now because the
prices are so high. For years the World Bank and the IMF have told countries
that a liberalised market would provide the most efficient system for producing
and distributing food, yet today the world's poorest countries are forced into
an intense bidding war against speculators and traders, who are having a field
day. Hedge funds and other sources of hot money are pouring billions of dollars
into commodities to escape sliding stock markets and the credit crunch, putting
food stocks further out of poor people's reach.[8] According to some estimates,
investment funds now control 50-60% of the wheat traded on the world's biggest
commodity markets.[9] One firm calculates that the amount of speculative money
in commodities futures - markets where investors do not buy or sell a physical
commodity, like rice or wheat, but merely bet on price movements - has ballooned
from US$5 billion in 2000 to US$175 billion to 2007.[10]

The situation today is untenable. Look at Haiti. A few decades ago it was
self-sufficient in rice. But conditions on foreign loans, particularly a 1994
package from the IMF, forced it to liberalise its market. Cheap rice flooded in
from the US, backed by subsidies and corruption, and local production was wiped
out.[11] Now prices for rice have risen 50% since last year and the average
Haitian can't afford to eat. So people are taking to the streets or risking
their lives to journey by boat to the US. Food protests have also erupted in
West Africa, from Mauritania to Burkina Faso. There, too, structural adjustment
programmes and food-aid dumping have destroyed the region's own rice production,
leaving people at the mercy of the international market. In Asia, the World Bank
constantly assured the Philippines, even as recently as last year, that
self-sufficiency in rice was unnecessary and that the world market would take
care of its needs.[12] Now the government is in a desperate plight: its domestic
supply of subsidised rice is nearly exhausted and it cannot import all it needs
because traders' asking prices are too high.

Making a killing from hunger

The truth about who profits and who loses from our global food system has never
been more obvious. Take the most basic element of food production: soil. The
industrial food system is a chemical-fertiliser junkie. It needs more and more
of the stuff just to keep alive, eroding soils and their potential to support
crop yields in the process. In the current context of tight food supplies, the
small clique of corporations that control the world's fertiliser market can
charge what they want - and that's exactly what they are doing. Profits at
Cargill's Mosaic Corporation, which controls much of the world's potash and
phosphate supply, more than doubled last year.[13] The world's largest potash
producer, Canada's Potash Corp, made more than US$1 billion in profit, up more
than 70% from 2006.[14] Panicking now about future supplies, governments are
becoming desperate to boost their harvests, giving these corporations additional
leverage. In April 2008, the joint offshore trading arm for Mosaic and Potash
hiked the price of its potash by 40% for buyers from Southeast Asia and by 85%
for those from Latin American. India had to pay 130% more than last year, and
China 227% more.[15]







Table 1. Profit increase for some of the world's largest fertiliser corporations


       Company  Profits 2007 (US$ million)
      Increase from 2006
       (%)

       Potash Corp (Canada)
      1,100
      72%

       Yara (Norway)
      1,116
      44%

       Sinochem (China)
      1,100
      95%

       Mosaic (US)
      708
      141%

       ICL (Israel)
      535
      43%

       K + S (Germany)
      420
      2.8%


Source: Compiled from corporate reports

While big money is being made from fertilisers, it is just a sideline for
Cargill. Its biggest profits come from global trading in agricultural
commodities, which, together with a few other big traders, it pretty much
monopolises. On 14 April 2008, Cargill announced that its profits from commodity
trading for the first quarter of 2008 were 86% higher than the same period in
2007. "Demand for food in developing economies and for energy worldwide is
boosting demand for agricultural goods, at the same time that investment monies
have streamed into commodity markets," said Greg Page, Cargill's chairman and
chief executive officer. "Prices are setting new highs and markets are
extraordinarily volatile. In this environment, Cargill's team has done an
exceptional job measuring and assessing price risk, and managing the large
volume of grains, oilseeds and other commodities moving through our supply
chains for customers globally."[16]

Table 2. Profit increase for some of the world's largest grain traders


       Company  Profits 2007 (US$ million)
      Increase from 2006 (%)

       Cargill (US)
      2,340
      36%

       ADM (US)
      2,200
      67%

       ConAgra (US)
      764
      30%

       Bunge (US)
      738
      49%

       Noble Group (Singapore)
      258
      92%

       Marubeni (Japan)
      90*
      43%*


Source: Compiled from corporate reports
*Data is for Marubeni's Agri-Marine division only.
Absent from this list is Louis Dreyfus (France), a private agricultural
commodities trader with annual sales in excess of US$22 billion, which does not
report its profits.

Managing and assessing are not so difficult for a company like Cargill, with its
near monopoly position and a global team of analysts the size of a UN agency.
Indeed, all of the big grain traders are making record profits. Bunge, another
big food trader, saw its profits of the last fiscal quarter of 2007 increase by
US$245 million, or 77%, compared with the same period of the previous year. The
2007 profits registered by ADM, the second largest grain trader in the world,
rose by 65% to a record US$2.2 billion. Thailand's Charoen Pokphand Foods, a
major player in Asia, is forecasting revenue growth of 237% this year.

The world's big food processors, some of which are commodity traders themselves,
are also cashing in. Nestlé's global sales grew 7% last year. "We saw this
coming, so we hedged by forward-buying raw materials", says François-Xavier
Perroud, Nestlé's spokesman.[17] Margins are up at Unilever, too. "Commodity
pressures have increased sharply, but we have successfully offset these through
timely pricing action and continued delivery from our savings programmes", says
Patrick Cescau, Group CEO of Unilever. "We will not sacrifice our margins and
market share."[18] The food corporations don't seem to be making these profits
off the back of the retailers. UK supermarket Tesco reports profits up 12.3%
from last year, a record rise. Other major retailers, such as France's Carrefour
and the US's Wal-Mart, say that food sales are the main factor sustaining their
profit increases.[19] Wal-Mart's Mexican division, Wal-Mex, which handles a
third of overall food sales in Mexico, reported an 11% increase in profits for
the first quarter of 2008. (At the same time Mexicans are demonstrating in the
streets because they can no longer afford to make tortillas.[20])

It seems that nearly every corporate player in the global food chain is making a
killing from the food crisis. The seed and agrochemical companies are doing well
too. Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, reported a 44% increase in
overall profits in 2007.[21] DuPont, the second-largest, said that its 2007
profits from seeds increased by 19%, while Syngenta, the top pesticide
manufacturer and third-largest company for seeds, saw profits rise 28% in the
first quarter of 2008.[22]

Such record profits have nothing to do with any new value that these
corporations are producing and they are not one-off windfalls from a sudden
shift in supply and demand. Instead, they are a reflection of the extreme power
that these middlemen have accrued through the globalisation of the food system.
Intimately involved with the shaping of the trade rules that govern today's food
system and tightly in control of markets and the ever more complex financial
systems through which global trade operates, these companies are in perfect
position to turn food scarcity into immense profits. People have to eat,
whatever the cost.

The urgent need for a policy rethink

The larger backdrop to this perverse food market situation is the global
financial system, which is now teetering on its flimsy axis. What began as a
localised housing loan collapse in the US in 2007 has unravelled into something
far more serious, as people realise that the emperors of the global financial
system have no clothes. The world economy is living on debt that no one can pay.
While central bankers and Lear jet executives try to patch the holes and restore
confidence, the underlying truth is that the system is close to bankruptcy and
no one in power wants to take the necessary tough measures: not the IMF, nor the
World Bank, nor the leaders of the world's most powerful nations. Not much more
than public relations glitter can be expected from the G8 meeting in June.

Similar problems lie at the heart of the food crisis: an ideologically driven
elite has forced countries to wrench open markets and let the free market run,
so that a few megacorporations, investors and speculators can take huge payoffs.
Many countries have lost that most basic power: the ability to feed themselves.
This loss, coupled with the corruption that plagues our countries and trading
systems, shows that neoliberalism has lost any legitimacy that it might once
have had. It is a measure of how out of touch these ideologues are that many now
openly call for more trade liberalisation as a solution to the food crisis, with
some even proposing that the rules of the WTO be changed to prevent countries
from imposing export restrictions on food.[23]

The World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, has tried to win the world over with
his call for a "New Deal" to solve the hunger crisis, but there is nothing new
about it: he calls for more trade liberalisation, more technology and more aid.
Today's food crisis is the direct result of decades of these policies, which
must now be rejected. While immediate action is necessary to lower food prices
and to get food to those who need it, we also need radical changes in
agricultural policy so that small farmers around the world gain access to land
and can make a living from it. We need policies that support and protect
farmers, fishers and others to produce food for their families, for the local
markets and for people in cities, rather than money for an abstract
international commodity market and a tiny clan of corporate boardroom
executives. And we need to strengthen and promote the use of technologies based
on the knowledge and in the control of those who know how to grow food. To put
it another way, we need food sovereignty, now - the kind that is defined and
driven by small farmers and fisherfolk themselves.

Social movements around the globe have been struggling to promote such a
reversal of strategy, only to be dismissed as unrealistic and backward by those
in power, and often violently repressed. The glimmer of hope in this crisis is
that the situation can be reversed. Peasant organisations have concrete
proposals about what needs to be done to resolve the crisis in their countries,
and governments should listen to what they are saying. Already some governments
are talking of a policy change towards food self-reliance.[24] Others are
starting to question the fundamental rationale of pushing for more free trade.
Neoliberal hawks at the top of the global food policy pyramid have lost whatever
credibility they may think they once had. It is time for them to move out of the
way so that the visions of food sovereignty and agrarian reform that come from
the grassroots can take their place and get us out of this hellish mess.

Source: http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=39


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Going further:

   a.. Overview: FAO, World Food Situation: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation
   b.. Overview: Financial Times, "The global food crisis", interactive map, last
updated 21 April 2008: http://tinyurl.com/6knmy8
   c.. Overview: Stefan Steinberg, "Financial speculators reap profits from
global hunger", Global Research, Centre for Research on Globalisation, Montreal,
24 April 2008.
   http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8794
   d.. Overview: Confédération Paysanne, "Les révoltes de la faim dans les pays
du Sud : l'aboutissement logique de choix économiques et politiques désastreux",
Press release, 18 April 2008: http://tinyurl.com/5glx8u (French only)
   e.. Structural Adjustment Programmes: "UNCTAD official blames food crisis on
structural adjustment programme," This Day, Lagos, 23 April 2008:
http://allafrica.com/stories/200804230375.html
   f.. Food sovereignty: http://www.viacampesina.org and
http://www.nyeleni2007.org
   g.. Agrofuels: GRAIN, Agrofuels special issues, Seedling, July 2007,
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?type=68
   h.. Rice in the Philippines: GRAIN, Philippines and beyond: rice crisis -
reaping the 'fruit' of market capitalism, Hybrid rice blog, 22 April 2008,
http://www.grain.org/hybridrice/?lid=201

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

References

1      Bloomberg, quoted by the BBC, London, 14 April 2008,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7344892.stm

2      BBC, "Action to meet Asian rice crisis", London, 17 April 2008,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7352038.stm

3       See http://www.riceonline.com for daily reports. With many Asian rice
exporters out of the game, needy countries from Asia and Africa are turning to
the US market where prices are going through the roof.

4       Brian Halweil, "Grain harvest sets record, but supplies still tight",
Worldwatch Institute, Washington DC, http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5539

5      Katarina Wahlberg, "Are we approaching a global food crisis?", World
Economy & Development in Brief, Global Policy Forum, 3 March 2008,

6      Food policy expert interviewed on Radio France International, Paris, 20
April 2008.

7      "UN food chief urges crisis action," BBC, London, 22 April 2008,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7360485.stm

8      Sinclair Stewart and Paul Waldie, "U.S. food producers, speculators
square off", Globe and Mail, Toronto, 23 April 2008,

9      Ibid. and Paul Waldie, "Why grocery prices are set to soar", Globe and
Mail, Toronto, 24 April 2008,

10     Paul Waldie, "Why grocery prices are set to soar", op cit.

11    Bill Quigley, "USA role in Haiti hunger riots", ZNet, US, 23 April 2008,

12    World Bank, "Can the world market for rice be trusted", Box 1 on p. 52 of
"Philippines: Agriculture Public Expenditure Review," Technical Paper, World
Bank, Washington DC, 2007, http://go.worldbank.org/TGRSK19300

13    Potash and phosphates are two of the main ingredients in chemical
fertiliser.

14    David Ebner, "Saskatchewan: A lot more than wheat" Globe and Mail,
Toronto, 11 April 2008,

15    John Partridge and Andy Hoffman, "China deal sends Potash soaring" Globe
and Mail, Toronto, 17 April 2008,

16    "Cargill income up sharply in third quarter", World Grain, Kansas City, 14
April 2008,


17    "Tightening belts," The Economist, London, 10 April 2008,

18    Jonathan Sibun, "Unilever profits surge despite price pressures," Daily
Telegraph, London, 3 November 2007, http://tinyurl.com/6p8tcx; and, "Get set for
more price hikes: Unilever chief," Business Standard, India, 16 March 2008,
http://tinyurl.com/694cqn

19    Foo Yun Chee, "Major European retailers post higher profits for 2007,"
Reuters, 6 March 2008, www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/06/business/RETAIL.php

20    Associated Press, "Wal-Mart de Mexico's 1Q profits rise 11 percent on
higher sales, cost controls," 8 April 2008,

21    Monsanto, Annual Report, 2007.

22    DuPont, Annual Report 2007, and "Syngenta anuncia cifra negocio en
progresión 28 por ciento primer trimestre", EFE, 22 de abril 2008,

23    Isabel Reynolds, "WTO should pressure food exporters - Mandelson",
Reuters, 23 April 2008,

24    See, for example, recent comments from West African farmers and officials:
Noel Tadégnon, "Le ROPPA préconise une pression sur les autorités politiques
pour soutenir l'agriculture africaine," APA, 23 April 2008,
http://www.apanews.net/apa.php?article61599; and, "Réunion extraordinaire du
Conseil des ministres de l`UEMOA, hier : 200 milliards pour freiner la flambée
des prix," Le Nouveau  Réveil, Abidjan, 24 April 2008,
http://www.lenouveaureveil.com/a.asp?n=290011&p=1903



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------





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