by sussurus2 » Wed May 24, 2006 10:54 pm
Don't have time for more than a quick note, with apologies for that. Something struck me as I was listening to coverage on the radio regarding the quarantine in Romania re: Avian Flu outbreak. Romania is undergoing the same system-stressing vertical integration of their livestock industries including pork and I assume chicken. Seek the relatively recent history of the US SouthEast for what that does to the individual/family farmers. <br><br>The only thing is, this time around, the Romanian farmers have plenty of data on what verticalization would do to them--no matter what the official propaganda is in their local region. They also have viable alternatives to taking the industry buck--for instance have a fantastic EU-wide black market for their free range pork and other livestock which is markedly superior (and gets commensurately more money at market) than the hyper-industrialized pork farms' products. Smithfield, et. al. would prefer them not to have such alternatives, which is why things like universal registration of livestock have been proposed there and in other countries.<br><br>One could assume, as I just realized, that the hammer has come down on those independent farmers, and this crisis, real or manufactured, including massive chicken slaughter and 48-72 hour quarentines of human communities will be used to bludgeon them into submission to the all one corporate way. <br><br>I pray that's not the case, but now that I've started looking at things in a certain way, I start seeing those types of patterns in lots of such events.<br><br>S. <p></p><i></i>
