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Thread: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

  1. #1
    Gigantus's Avatar I am not special - I am a limited edition.
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    Default Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    First thing: I am reasonable sure how the shortage in the US came about - that's not what this is about.

    Rather it's me being stomped that the US is so totally dependent on baby formula that it justifies the invoking of the defense production act.
    Was there an epidemic I haven't heard of that robbed women in the US of their lactating abilities? I understand that's it's not exactly the 'in' thing for working mothers to nurse their kids at work, either by choice (not that there is much choice to speak of) or by work rules. But theoretically pregnancy related leave should cover a certain post natal period in which baby formula would not be needed.

    So why the massive extent of baby formula dependencies? And no, this is not me trolling. Some factual back ground info is appreciated.
    Last edited by Gigantus; May 21, 2022 at 02:34 AM.










  2. #2

    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    Not much of a story here. Just big government “solving” a problem it caused and scapegoating whichever business interests that presumably failed to pay enough protection money to the right people. Same different day.

    Politicians are scrambling to pacify mothers angry about the baby formula shortage, but the one thing they won’t do is look in the mirror. Fixing the shortage requires fixing the government policies that helped to create it.

    The shortage began after Abbott Laboratories shut down a plant in Michigan after four infants who consumed formula made at the facility fell seriously ill. Abbott controls about 42% of the U.S. market, and the other three large manufacturers (Perrigo, Nestle and Mead Johnson) haven’t been able to increase production fast enough to compensate. Ergo, empty shelves.

    Enter President Biden, who on Wednesday invoked the Defense Production Act. The Cold War-era law lets the federal government conscript private businesses to produce goods for national defense and to reorder supply chains, putting some customers ahead of others. Progressives think government is the solution to every problem, which is why the law has become their household remedy to every product shortage.


    Solution: Suspend tariffs and ease labeling and ingredient requirements for trusted partners. The FDA now says it will use enforcement discretion on product labeling and provide a streamlined import entry review process for products from foreign facilities with positive inspection records. But these trade barriers shouldn’t exist in the first place.

    Exclusive state contracts effectively give formula providers a monopoly. WIC makes up about half of the U.S. formula market, and Abbott and Mead Johnson have program contracts covering 87% of infants. Many supermarkets only stock shelves with the exclusive state-contractor, and doctors at hospitals are more likely to recommend them.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/governm...ts-11652996346
    Murica: Psh get a load of communist China and their SOEs they’re so stupid that is obviously unsustainable and inefficient and then they blame the private sector for their problems. Collapsing any day now!

    Also Murica: I’m gonna give my golf buddies control of the entire baby formula industry and act like I never knew them when it all goes to hell.
    Of these facts there cannot be any shadow of doubt: for instance, that civil society was renovated in every part by Christian institutions; that in the strength of that renewal the human race was lifted up to better things-nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to so excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been known before, or will come to be known in the ages that have yet to be. - Pope Leo XIII

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    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    I am guessing you missed the point I raised: "So why the massive extent of baby formula dependencies?"

    And: "I am reasonable sure how the shortage in the US came about - that's not what this is about."
    Last edited by Gigantus; May 20, 2022 at 11:25 PM.










  4. #4

    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    Ok. I was addressing the political aspects of systemic dependence on a handful of producers and use of the DPA, since “why do people use baby formula” is a rather silly and mostly medical question, the answer to which begins with “when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much…” But let’s give it a quick Google:

    I’m a scholar of the history of feeding infants and children in early America, and my research is full of stories of hungry babies like this one. Hanson, and the Wabanaki woman who saved her baby’s life, lived in an era when many babies who could not have breast milk died. In the 18th century, as in our time, some birthing parents and babies struggled to breastfeed. Milk supply lagged, nipples cracked and split, ducts blocked, abscesses and mastitis took hold (and, before the invention of antibiotics, could be deadly)—that is, if the mother hadn’t died in childbirth. Prematurity, tongue-tie, cleft palate, or other physiological problems kept infants from latching on.

    In response to the infant-feeding crisis, as Wolf relates, public-health officials spent the first decades of the 20th century cleaning up the milk supply. Pediatricians advised complicated “scientific” approaches to breastfeeding, such as scheduled feedings that inhibited milk supply. Rather than increasing breastfeeding rates, these innovations drove even more parents to bottle-feed. By the late 1960s, notes the historian Amy Bentley, only 20 to 25 percent of babies in the U.S. began their lives breastfeeding. The rest consumed formula, whether mixed at home from ingredients such as condensed milk and corn syrup or in the premixed forms that became commercially available in the 1950s.

    Today in the United States, 84 percent of babies start breastfeeding at birth, though only 25.8 percent continue to exclusively breastfeed through six months of age as the CDC recommends. Disparities in breastfeeding rates reflect larger race and class disparities, with higher breastfeeding rates among wealthy white women.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...istory/629889/
    In short, there’s a dependency on formula for the same reason there’s a dependency on fertilizers for food production that’s being disrupted by the Ukraine war, risking widespread famine and shortages in various places. People don’t technically “need” it, but life really sucks without it, especially in a sudden way like this. Not sure what what that has to do with politics, but thus concludes my Ted Talk for today.
    Last edited by Lord Thesaurian; May 21, 2022 at 12:17 AM.
    Of these facts there cannot be any shadow of doubt: for instance, that civil society was renovated in every part by Christian institutions; that in the strength of that renewal the human race was lifted up to better things-nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to so excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been known before, or will come to be known in the ages that have yet to be. - Pope Leo XIII

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    conon394's Avatar hoi polloi
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    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    Formula is not a luxury, it a necessity. Because men don't breast feed nobody really cares. You have to keep feeding or pumping to keep lactating. Second cheap breast pumps are well cheap and basically shaat and slowly fail to keep you lactating. Third sorry JC Penny and McDonald's and the gas station don't have place where women can relax and pump during the day so they than can store and bring home milk - they have to pump all the time or biology will say well guess were done with that - so enjoy the bathroom or broom closet.. Forth some women are just not good at breast feeding and some babies are not good at being breast feeders. Fifth in a lot places like America people have a tizzy panic if a mother pops out a tit to feed a kid. And expect her to proceed to put a blanket burka or something.

    Also sorry LT modern fertilizer is not a luxury. Unless you want to eat a lot less and pay a lot more for it. I take it you have not worked on a farm?
    Last edited by conon394; May 21, 2022 at 12:28 AM.
    IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites

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    But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

    Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.

  6. #6
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    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    Quote Originally Posted by conon394 View Post
    Formula is not a luxury, it a necessity. Because men don't breast feed nobody really cares. You have to keep feeding or pumping to keep lactating. Second cheap breast pumps are well cheap and basically shaat and slowly fail to keep you lactating. Third sorry JC Penny and McDonald's and the gas station don't have place where women can relax and pump during the day so they than can store and bring home milk - they have to pump all the time or biology will say well guess were done with that - so enjoy the bathroom or broom closet.. Forth some women are just not good at breast feeding and some babies are not good at being breast feeders. Fifth in a lot places like America people have a tizzy panic if a mother pops out a tit to feed a kid. And expect her to proceed to put a blanket burka or something.
    Appreciate the points raised - I can see where a combination of the 'pump & store' plus the 'pops out a tit' points can lead to a need to completely fall back on baby formula given the impact on lactating ability. And that it comes back to 'men don't breast feed so nobody really cares' when it comes to addressing the actual, underlying issues. Still the scope is pretty baffling.

    So in other words it boils down to: "no baby formula means a drastically reduced female workforce"? That at least would explain the DPA. Seems like a case of 'ignore until it's too late' given the reasons for the dependency. I mean there are national stock piles for all sorts of shortfalls - this seems a fairly important one as long as the reasons are not addressed.

    Edit: the last two paragraphs in LT's quote indicate that the percentage of formula use has been fairly steady since the 60's - so it's not a recent trend.
    Last edited by Gigantus; May 21, 2022 at 01:49 AM.










  7. #7
    EmperorBatman999's Avatar I say, what, what?
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    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    There are several factors to the dependency of sorts on baby formula in the modern West, many of which Thesaurian noted. In addition to the medical issues for mother and child, and the problem that the economy requires both parents to work just to survive, I can see the decline in communality and the value of extended family also playin a problematic role. A new mother may find it difficult to find other women in her immediate circle or among her relatives who are also at a similar stage with a new child, and whom they could trust enough to allow them to serve as a wet-nurse. Motherhood, once an aspect of communal life, was atomized to being a thing between only the mother and child, and seldom the father.

    Now for the issue of why there is the shortage: it is a product of the US economy's ruthless drive towards consolidation and its focus on a "lean" model of production and distribution. I doubt we'd have such a large-scale problem if there were more than four major companies in the business of producing such an essential good. The federal government has slacked off for over a century on preventing the consolidation of industry in such a manner, so now we suffer from bottlenecks.

  8. #8

    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    Quote Originally Posted by EmperorBatman999 View Post
    and the problem that the economy requires both parents to work just to survive
    I agree with the rest of your post, but I have to object to this characterization (as pedantic as that might be). I've learned from my experience living in, and traveling to, other developed countries (along with delving into the statistics), that the amount of material wealth that the typical American household believe that they need in order to survive, is greater than the middle class standard of living in most OECD countries. That said, my objection is somewhat irrelevant, because it is a woman's choice to return working early after childbirth, after which continued lactation quickly becomes less and less feasible, in addition to the fact that there are very low income working single mothers. Likewise, once a household has committed themselves to what they believe constitutes a (ridiculously exaggerated in my opinion) bare minimum standard of living, which tends to involve a fair amount of debt accumulation and/or monthly expense obligations, it becomes very difficult to extricate themselves prior to having children.
    Quote Originally Posted by Enros View Post
    You don't seem to be familiar with how the burden of proof works in when discussing social justice. It's not like science where it lies on the one making the claim. If someone claims to be oppressed, they don't have to prove it.


  9. #9

    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    Quote Originally Posted by Gigantus View Post
    First thing: I am reasonable sure how the shortage in the US came about - that's not what this is about.

    Rather it's me being stomped that the US is so totally dependent on baby formula that it justifies the invoking of the defense production act.
    Was there an epidemic I haven't heard of that robbed women in the US of their lactating abilities? I understand that's it's not exactly the 'in' thing for working mothers to nurse their kids at work, either by choice (not that there is much choice to speak of) or by work rules. But theoretically pregnancy related leave should cover a certain post natal period in which baby formula would not be needed.

    So why the massive extent of baby formula dependencies? And no, this is not me trolling. Some factual back ground info is appreciated.
    The conservative view: "Something something Biden=bad, something something everyone I don't like is a communist, something something muh great replacement."

    The real reason: Since the at least the 90's the baby formula industry has conducted a massive advertising campaign that holds that formula is somehow better than breast milk because vitamins or special proteins or whatever to drum up sales. And this has succeeded to a degree that surprised even them. However, they failed to keep up with the demand because they never dared dream it would get so high.

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    conon394's Avatar hoi polloi
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    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    A few more thoughts.

    Edit: the last two paragraphs in LT's quote indicate that the percentage of formula use has been fairly steady since the 60's - so it's not a recent trend.
    Well breast feeding has its draw backs (more and more so when teeth become a thing in your kid) for women. The chance to skip it or stop it at teething should not be underestimated as something a women might want to do.

    I don't notice if its been raised but the got quite comfortable basically being completely self sustaining on meeting the demand for formula. Thus Canada and Europe are kinda regulated and by tariff out of the US market. But In doing that we also went all invisible and nobody stopped to consed what would happen if production was efficiently consolidated into just a couple plants/producers. The flag wavers for the free market seem to easily forget the benefits of the market fade fast in an oligarchical market or near monopoly.

    edit: opps sorry EmperorBatman999 I see made the point on consolidation already - its a tad early and I just skimmed over that.
    IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites

    'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'

    But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

    Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.

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    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    Vox has a pretty sarcastic take on just breast feed its free

    https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23...rmula-shortage
    IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites

    'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'

    But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

    Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.

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    Roma_Victrix's Avatar Call me Ishmael
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    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    Well, Gigantus, America is an incredibly prude society that frowns upon mothers breastfeeding in public, and the vast majority of employers would never allow a woman to do that sort of grotesque human thing while on the clock and on the company's dime. Couple that with aforementioned company's threat to fire women who dare to ask for two seconds of maternity leave and you have a situation where mother's need baby formula or their child will suffer and die. In sane countries that actually have maternity leave and proper postnatal care this sort of thing probably sounds not only foreign but also old-timey like the 19th century, which is funny because there were plenty of wet nurses to handle breastfeeding in the 18th century (and would you look at that, the decline of wet nurses in the 19th century who could administer old-school medicinal abortions just so happened to coincide with anti-abortion laws).

    Hope that clears everything up.
    I'm not a big fan of Biden, but his invocation of the DPA is entirely warranted. It doesn't solve the systemic problem, though, of having a few monopolies control the market. That's the absolute worst manifestation of crony-capitalism, when society shoots itself in the foot in order to enrich a tiny, tiny handful of corrupt idiots who buy politicians in DC like cheap whores at the brothel.

  13. #13

    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    And for anyone interested in a more fact based recounting of:
    Breastfeeding State Laws
    https://www.ncsl.org/research/health...tate-laws.aspx
    Last edited by Infidel144; May 23, 2022 at 09:48 AM.

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    Gigantus's Avatar I am not special - I am a limited edition.
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    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    According to the link that Infidel provides there are enough regulations (see: "Federal Health Reform and Nursing Mothers" section) in place to counteract the apparent grim reality that Roma paints.

    So what's going wrong here?










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    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    So what's going wrong here?
    A couple things.

    First the regulations are fine and all but R_V is right in the US stigma of pooping out a tit to feed or pump is high. You are likely met with either shock or leers.
    Second business may be required to have a non bathroom but that is a low bar and even say a university with sprawling campus can read that as not a lot and often and really long walk to get to it.
    Third lack of maturity leave (with pay). Without the comfort of paid maturity leave it can be tough on women who end being not good at breast feeding or just frustrated that it some supper nature you don't need to think about thing. And once it goes poorly w/o support or simply time to figure it it can become a negative emotional issue.
    IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites

    'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'

    But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

    Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.

  16. #16
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    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    So I am guessing the remaining 15% have to be the babies of stay at home moms. Because that seems to be the only scenario where continued breast feeding is possible, which is needed to keep lactating 'going'.










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    conon394's Avatar hoi polloi
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    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    More or less and the luck to have kids with later rather than early teeth or a really good pain tolerance.
    IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites

    'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'

    But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

    Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.

  18. #18

    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    Quote Originally Posted by Coughdrop addict View Post
    The real reason: Since the at least the 90's the baby formula industry has conducted a massive advertising campaign that holds that formula is somehow better than breast milk because...
    According to this video (and I verified some advert) way earlier than that. The '70. Also, a similar subject: I've read about the rise of M&A in the agricultural sector and his long effects (eg->corn syrup everywhere) on Gore Vidal "perpetual war for perpetual peace"
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  19. #19
    conon394's Avatar hoi polloi
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    Default Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    Also, a similar subject: I've read about the rise of M&A in the agricultural sector and his long effects (eg->corn syrup everywhere) on Gore Vidal "perpetual war for perpetual peace"
    You are a little obscure there care to flesh out what you mean.

    According to this video (and I verified some advert) way earlier than that
    Look I'm not going to defend Nestle's campaign in 70s or how they shill their products (*)..But it is still outrage that could only be delivered by a man. Sorry to say if you are working women in most of the world and thus likely not to have access to breaks and lactation rooms and be able to afford good pumps and have solid access to electricity... Brest feeding is not an easy option unless you are staying barefoot at home.

    * I think critically they could have pointed out say the difference between a women working some industry job who likely has no ability breast feed vs say a a rural women on a farm who really should not be talked into not breast feeding.
    Last edited by conon394; June 11, 2022 at 10:55 AM.
    IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites

    'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'

    But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

    Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.

  20. #20

    Icon1 Re: Baby Formula and the Defense Production Act

    Quote Originally Posted by conon394 View Post
    You are a little obscure there care to flesh out what you mean.
    .
    Sorry for that, and the delayed answer. I'll let mr. Vidal speak, with some passages from that book:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    Ruby Ridge. Waco. Oklahoma City. Three warning bells from a heartland
    that most of us who are urban dwellers know little or nothing about. Cause of
    rural dwellers' rage? In 1996 there were 1,471 mergers of American corporations
    in the interest of "consolidation." This was the largest number of mergers in
    American history, and the peak of a trend that had been growing in the world of
    agriculture since the late 1970s...
    Currently, a handful of agro-conglomerates are
    working to drive America's remaining small farmers off their land by
    systematically paying them less for their produce than it costs to grow, thus
    forcing them to get loans from the conglomerates' banks, assume mortgages, and
    undergo foreclosures and the sale of land to corporate-controlled agribusiness.
    But is this really a conspiracy or just the Darwinian workings of an efficient
    marketplace? There is, for once, a smoking gun in the form of a blueprint
    describing how best to rid the nation of small farmers. Dyer writes: "In 1962, the
    Committee for Economic Development comprised approximately seventy-five
    of the nation's most powerful corporate executives. They represented not only
    the food industry but also oil and gas, insurance, investment and retail industries.
    Almost all groups that stood to gain from consolidation were represented on that
    committee. Their report [An Adaptive Program for Agriculture] outlined a plan. to eliminate farmers and farms. It was detailed and well thought out."
    Simultaneously, "as early as 1964, congressmen were being told by industry
    giants like Pillsbury, Swift, General Foods, and Campbell Soup that the biggest
    problem in agriculture was too many farmers." Good psychologists, the CEOs
    had noted that farm children, if sent to college, seldom return to the family farm.
    Or as one famous economist said to a famous senator who was complaining
    about jet lag on a night flight from New York to London, "Well, it sure beats
    farming." The committee got the government to send farm children to college.
    Predictably, most did not come back. Government then offered to help farmers
    relocate in other lines of work, allowing their land to be consolidated in ever
    vaster combines owned by fewer and fewer corporations...
    By 1982 "these companies controlled 96 percent of U.S. wheat exports, 95
    percent of U.S. corn exports" and so on through the busy aisles of chic Gristedes,
    homely Ralph's, sympathetic Piggly Wigglys.
    Has consolidation been good for the customers? By and large, no.
    Monopolies allow for no bargains, nor do they have to fuss too much about
    quality because we have no alternative to what they offer. Needless to say, they
    are hostile to labor unions and indifferent to working conditions for the once￾independent farmers, now ill-paid employees. For those of us who grew up in
    the prewar United States there was the genuine ham sandwich. Since
    consolidation, ham has been so rubberized that it tastes of nothing at all while its
    texture is like rosy plastic. Why? In the great hogariums a hog remains in one
    place, on its feet, for life. Since it does not root about—or even move—it builds
    up no natural resistance to disease. This means a great deal of drugs are pumped
    into the prisoner's body until its death and transfiguration as inedible ham.
    By and large, the Sherman antitrust laws are long since gone. Today three
    companies control 80 percent of the total beef-packing market. How does this
    happen? Why do dispossessed farmers have no congressional representatives to
    turn to? Why do consumers get stuck with mysterious pricings of products that
    in themselves are inferior to those of an earlier time? Dyer's answer is simple but
    compelling. Through their lobbyists, the corporate executives who drew up the
    "adaptive program" for agriculture now own or rent or simply intimidate
    Congresses and presidents while the courts are presided over by their former
    lobbyists, an endless supply of white-collar servants since two-thirds of all the
    lawyers on our small planet are Americans. Finally, the people at large are not
    represented in government while corporations are, lavishly.
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