The folks at Food & Water Watch will be road-tripping through the Midwest this summer, meeting with farmers, citizens and local officials about why our food system is broken and how to fix it.
Cows graze on pasture on a sustainable ranch in Owyhee County, Idaho
As a kick-off to the road trip, Food & Water Watch is collecting signatures on a petition that will be submitted to the US Department of Justice. The petition asks DOJ to fully enforce pro-competition laws already on the books and break up the corporate monopolies that have hijacked our food system– destroying the livelihoods of farmers in the U.S. and abroad, bringing us the monstrosities we’ve come to know and despise as factory farms (or CAFOs), and making our food supply less safe and more prone to price spikes like those that ignited the 2008 global food crisis.
Cows stand ankle-deep in their own manure at an Owyhee County Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO)
Please take a moment to read the petition, and consider adding your name to the thousands already gathered.
For more information on why competition is important to keeping our food supply safe, sane, and equitable, check out Food & Water Watch’s fact sheet: “Why Antitrust Laws Matter for Agriculture and Food”.
For a clear picture of how this applies to Idaho’s particularly severe infestation of dairy and beef animal factories, read “Consolidation and Price Manipulation in the Dairy Industry”, and “Horizontal Consolidation and Buyer Power in the Beef Industry”.