When the public interest is threatened by scandal or privilege, activists often assert that "if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention!" Given the complexities of the domestic policy-making and legislative processes, not to mention the opaque ways of the multilateral trade and finance bodies, it is not surprising that few people are aware of the degree to which food companies influence key decisions governing everything from food safety to subsidies to competition policy.
For that reason, among the most important contributions of public interest groups challenging corporate power in the policy realm is to track the development of important debates on regulatory or food issues, then to document how companies use their lobbyists, "revolving door" connections and campaign contributions to achieve outcomes that safeguard their profits, often at the expense of the common good.
Useful examples of this type of work include Alan Guebert's untangling of industry efforts to block Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) requirements, despite evidence that consumers want to know where their food is coming from, and are willing to pay a substantial premium for food that is appropriately labeled. Similarly, among many other groups, the Center for Rural Affairs showed how far the meat industry was willing to go to overturn a prospective ban on packing firms' ownership of livestock in the 2002 Farm Bill.
Policy advocacy requires such efforts at documentation and public education, leading to mobilization and pressure campaigns that highlight the gulfs which often exist between industry interests and the common good. What follows is a brief summary of social movements that expose and challenge food companies' manipulation of the global trading system; those that address the corporate influence on legislative and regulatory policy; and those that emphasize the need for rigorous enforcement of antitrust laws to rein in the oligopoly power of international food cartels.
Trade & Investment: "Seventy per cent of international trade is between TNCs. It is corporations that trade rather than countries, and it is TNCs that have a large say in setting the terms under which they trade. They had a major influence in the talks that led up to the setting up of the WTO, both through lobbying and, especially in the case of the United States, through membership of national delegations. In some cases it was TNCs that provided the wording of agreements. Despite their influence, the activities of TNCs remain unregulated."
Given the situation John Madeley summarizes in Food for All (p.121), it is easy to understand why a massive global campaign has evolved to challenge the proliferation of "free" trade agreements. Though the protests became most public at the 1999 Seattle Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization, they had been building throughout the debate over the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and continue now as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is negotiated. Ongoing negotiations at the WTO have bogged down over disputes between developed and developing countries over food policy and the controversial Agreement on Agriculture.
Civil society advocacy groups perform a vital service by cutting through the rhetoric about the benefits of "free" trade to demonstrate that all trade agreements are essentially managed, and must be understood in terms of who benefits and who loses. "Free" trade theory stipulates that the overall gains to society from trade liberalization will always outweigh the losses to those whose sector of the economy is eliminated by foreign competition.
However, the example of agriculture demonstrates the fallacy of that argument: the gains from trade are privatized, not used by the "winners" to compensate the "losers." The profits from the global trade in food products stay with the multinational agribusinesses that trade among and within their own networks, while farmers in developing countries are driven off the land by two harsh contradictions in the application of "free" trade theory: the dumping of subsidized northern products on southern markets, and the failure of northern "free trade" proponents to open their own markets to southern products.
The organizations and coalitions listed at right provide excellent background on how food companies shape trade agreements to maximize their own interests, and how concerned citizens can mobilize to challenge the so-called "free" trade agenda and replace the paradigm with fair trade rules that share the benefits of international commerce more equally among and within the societies of the world.
Legislation & Regulation: The food industry has been very successful in shaping food policy and limiting regulatory oversight through generous campaign contributions, expensive lobbying efforts, high-level industry appointees at the USDA and other official bodies, and participation on government advisory committees. But the more people learn about how key decisions on food safety and farm policy are manipulated by corporate interests, the more likely they are to demand democratic reforms to bring public policy back in line with the common good.
For that reason, many of the organizations listed on the right side of this page perform a major service by gathering and publicizing information about the influence of corporate money on policy, including sectoral analyses that allow voters to see how much the food industry has spent on lobbying and campaign contributions.
Their data in turn helps fuel the efforts of farmers, environmentalists and consumer advocates who challenge the legislative and regulatory agenda of the food industry and propose more balanced alternatives.
You can learn more about civil society efforts to challenge agribusiness influence on legislation and regulatory policy by following the coalitions that came together around the 2002 Farm Bill and its Country of Origin Labeling requirement, and efforts to block the dilution of official USDA organic standards. You can also follow the links on the right side of the page to learn more about the groups promoting transparency and democratic reform of the lobbying process.
Antitrust Enforcement: One hundred years ago a populist revolt against concentrated economic power spread from the farmlands and cities of the United States all the way to the halls of Congress and the White House. Sweeping anti-trust laws were passed to break up the empires of the "robber barons" who dominated industries from railroads to banking. Despite a perceived weakening in the enforcement of those rules since the administration of President Ronald Reagan, a growing number of organizations now use the court system to demand oligopoly reform in the food system that the executive and legislative branches are not willing to advance.
The following quotation from an Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) press release captures why the victims of monopoly and monopsony power are forced to seek legal redress in the absence of effective public policy to limit monopoly power:
“The packers have succeeded in convincing USDA and the Congress that captive supplies are merely a natural change in the industry,†said Korley Sears, CCMP steering committee member and co-owner of Ainsworth Feedyards in Ainsworth, Nebraska. “They will not be able to use campaign contributions and K Street lobbyists to influence the decision of the jury that will hear this case. If the jury rules for cattlemen, it will be the most significant event in the cattle industry since the federal government broke up the packer-cartel in the early 1920’s.â€
In order to promote similar challenges to corporate power in the food system, OCM has also established a litigation clearinghouse to help gather the expert materials needed for anti-trust lawsuits. The other organizations listed on the right side of this page also provide excellent resources for legal challenges to the food system oligopoly.
