Private Executives in Public Offices

The corruption that is pervasive throughout the USDA is making agricultural reform extremely difficult. There is a beneficial marriage between agricultural executives and high level public offices. In a segment in Food, Inc, when they show all the connections between fertilizer, meat processing, and transportation companies with high level government positions such as the director of the USDA and many advisors to the President. The American public is completely ignorant to all the back door deals between the government and the agricultural businesses. Many corporation executives slide into government positions to push their agenda through the government. Even more unfortunate, is that these agricultural businesses do not even have followers in government, they simply hire well connected lobbyist to make their agendas possible.

The U.S. Democracy is actually an oligarchy consisting of affluent executives from many different corporations. The U.S. government is supposed to be reflect the values and desires of the American people. But these executive/government officials are literally controlling every aspect of agricultural behind a legion of lawyers. If a major agricultural company needs a chemical that is harmful to people, they can push it through congress by investing billions of dollars into lobbying, and by using insider politicians. As Joel says in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, “The USDA is being used by the global corporate complex to impede the clean-food movement. They aim to close down all but the biggest meat processors, and to do it in the name of biosecurity. Every government study to date has shown that the reasons we’re having an epidemic of food-borne illnesses in this country is centralized production, centralized processing, and long-distance transportation of food.”