CONTROL BY THE FOOD CARTEL COMPANIES

PROFILES AND HISTORIES

Although much of the information presented here might be a tad dated, the underlying principles are the same.  You can be sure that if, in that dating, the names have changed, not enough to make things well in the world.  One thing that stuck out to me was the great amount of "switching hats" by the people who lead these businesses.  Many move with relative ease from political top guns and advisors to banking cartel heads to running these huge food conglomerates. Or they own large shares in each others' businesses. As I say, in the past 16 years since this article was written, only the names will have changed somewhat.

By Richard Freeman

EXECUTIVE INTELLIGENCE REVIEW

Original posting: December 1995

Reposted by Noor

September 3, 2011

Here are strategic profiles of 11 of the principal companies that constitute the Anglo-Dutch-Swiss food cartel. The profiles confirm that through multiple forms of concentration, these companies dominate grain, meat, dairy, and other food production, and the processing and distribution system of food, all the way to the supermarket. Very little food moves on the face of the earth without the food cartel having a hand in it.

#1 U.S. grain trader/exporter (25% of market, which is equivalent to Cargill exporting 25.1 million tons or 1.0 billion bushels of grain); #1 world grain trader/exporter (25% of market, which is equivalent to Cargill exporting 52.9 million tons, or 2.11 billion bushels of grain); #1 U.S. owner of grain elevators (340 elevators); #1 world cotton trader; #1 U.S. manufacturer of corn-based high-protein animal feeds (through subsidiary Nutrena Mills); #2 U.S. wet corn miller; #2 U.S. soybean crusher; #2 Argentine grain exporter (10% of market); #3 U.S. flour miller (18% of market); #3 U.S. meatpacker, through Excel division (18% of market); #3 U.S. pork packer/slaughterer; #3 U.S. commercial animal feeder; #3 French grain exporter (15-18% of market); #6 U.S. turkey producer.

Cargill raises 350,000 hogs, 12 million turkeys, and 312 million broiler chickens. In the United States, it owns 420 barges, 11 towboats, 2 huge vessels that sail the Great Lakes, 12 ocean-going ships, 2,000 railroad hopper cars, and 2,000 tank cars.

Cargill and its subsidiaries operate 800 plants. It has 500 U.S. offices, 300 foreign offices. It operates in 60 countries.

HISTORY: Shortly after the Civil War, William Cargill, a Scottish immigrant sea merchant, bought his first grain elevator in Conover, Iowa. In 1870, with his brother Sam, William Cargill bought grain elevators all along the Southern Minnesota Railroad, at a time when Minnesota was becoming an important shipping route. But Cargill's biggest break came when he bought elevators along the line of James J. Hill's Great Northern railroad line, which went west of Minneapolis, and into the Red River Valley as far as North Dakota, and also into South Dakota. Hill was the business partner of Ned Harriman (father of Averell Harriman), who became the business agent for England's Queen Victoria's son, Prince Edward, later King Edward VII. Through a preferential rebate system, and other arrangements, Hill's rail line helped build the Cargill operation.

Twice during the twentieth century, the Cargill firm nearly went under. William Cargill, Jr., the son of company founder Will Cargill, made some bad investments in Montana during the first decade of the twentieth century, and between 1909 and 1917, Cargill hovered on the brink of bankruptcy. Some British capital came in to rescue the company. William Cargill, Sr. had a daughter, Edna, who married John MacMillan. The financiers designated John MacMillan and the MacMillan family to come in and reorganize Cargill. This was the period in which the MacMillan family started running Cargill.

Cargill also nearly went under following the 1929 U.S. stock market crash, and ensuing Great Depression. There is not a word of what happened to Cargill Co. during the depression in the History of Cargill, 1865-1945. But two forces came to the rescue: John D. Rockefeller's Chase National Bank, which sent its officer John Peterson to help run Cargill. Peterson became Cargill's top officer. The other force was a Byelorussian Jewish grain merchant, Julius Hendel, who joined the company in the late 1920s. It would seem odd at first that a European, and a Jew at that, would be admitted into the inner councils of a rock-ribbed Scottish-American firm, but this indicates the international scope of forces that shape the grain trade. Hendel would later also school Dwayne Andreas, when Andreas worked for Cargill after World War II.

During the mid-1930s, Cargill used cut-throat tactics. In September 1937, corn was a scarce commodity. The 1936 American crop had been a failure, and the new crop would not be harvested until October. Cargill bought up every available corn future, to the tune of several millions of dollars, and created a squeeze on the market. The Chicago Board of Trade ordered Cargill to sell some of its futures to relieve the squeeze. Cargill refused. The CBOT expelled Cargill from the Board of Trade. The U.S. secretary of agriculture accused Cargill of trying to destroy the American corn market.

In 1922, Cargill had opened up a New York office; in 1929, it opened an Argentine office, and it continued to expand, especially after the Second World War, as the United States exported large quantities of grain to Europe and other parts of the globe. In 1953, Cargill established Tradax International in Panama to run its global grain trade. In 1956, it set up Tradax Genève in Geneva, Switzerland, as the coordinating arm of Tradax. Tradax subsidiaries were set up in Germany (Deutsche Tradax, GmbH), England (Tradax Limited), Japan (Tradax Limited), Australia (Tradax Limited), France (Compagnie Cargill S.A.), and so forth. Thirty percent of ownership of Tradax is held by old-line Venetian-Burgundian-Lombard banking families, principally the Swiss-based Lombard, Odier, and Pictet banks. The financier for Tradax is the Geneva-based Crédit Suisse, which has been cited repeatedly for drug-money laundering. On Feb. 7, 1985, the U.S. government caught Crédit Suisse and other large banks laundering $1.2 billion in illegal money ~ much of it suspected drug money ~ to the First National Bank of Boston.

In 1977, Cargill's involvement in a "black peseta"-laundering operation at Cargill's offices in Spain was revealed.

Cargill has been repeatedly cited for "blending" ~ that is, adding foreign matter to its grain. For example, an export contract may allow for 8% of the grain volume that a company is exporting to be foreign matter. If Cargill's grain load is only 6% foreign matter, it will mix in dirt and gravel. A Cargill superintendent told the Kansas City Times in July 1982,

"If we've got a real clean load, we'll make sure we hold it until we can mix it with something dirtier. Otherwise, we'd be throwing away money."

Cargill has expanded into every major crop and livestock on the face of the earth, in over 60 countries. It has also expanded into coal, steel (it is America's seventh largest steel producer, owning LTV), waste disposal, and metals. Today, Cargill runs one of the 20 largest commodity brokerage firms in the United States, trading on the Chicago and world markets, which is larger than those of most Wall Street brokerage houses. Another division, Cargill Investor Services, has offices throughout the United States, as well as in London, Geneva, and Zurich.

KEY PERSONNEL AND POLICY: The combined Cargill and MacMillan families of Cargill own 90% of the company's stock (the rest is owned by company executives). They are one of the ten richest families in America: According to the July 17, 1995 Forbes magazine, the combined Cargill/MacMillan families are worth $5.1 billion, making them richer than the Mellons. Whitney MacMillan, W. Duncan MacMillan, John Hugh MacMillan III, and Cargill MacMillan, Jr., are each worth $570 million.

The British connections of the MacMillan family are evident. John Hugh MacMillan II (1895-1960) was the president of Cargill from 1936 until 1957, and was chairman from 1957 until 1960. He was a hereditary Knight Commander of Justice of the Sovereign Order of St. John, the chivalric order run by the international oligarchy grouped around the Anglo-Dutch monarchy. Whitney MacMillan, chairman of Cargill from 1976 until 1994, was educated at the exclusive British-modeled Blake School (where the chairman of General Mills was also educated), and then Yale University.

Showing the link with the gangster-ridden Democratic Party of Minnesota, Walter Mondale was elected a director of Cargill.

In 1983-84, the family-controlled Cargill Foundation contributed $50,000 to the University of Chicago's monetarist Economics Department.

#2 U.S. grain trader/exporter (20% of market), and #2 world grain trader/exporter (20% of market) (according to official Continental documents). #1 U.S. exporter of soybean products and derivatives (through joint venture called Conti-Quincy Export Co.); #1 world cattle feedlot operator (7 feedlots in southwestern and plains states of United States); #1 shrimp farm in Ecuador; reportedly #2 French grain exporter; #3 owner of U.S. grain elevators; #3 or #4 U.S. animal feed manufacturer (through subsidiary Wayne Feed Division); #3 or #4 world cotton exporter; #8 Argentine grain exporter (7% of market).

Continental processes and markets 2 billion pounds of poultry, beef, pork, and seafood, along with 5 million tons of animal feeds and wheat flour. The company transports nearly 75 million tons of grains, oilseeds, rice, cotton, and energy products annually, an amount that exceeds the annual production of almost every country in the world.

Continental owns a fleet of towboats and 500 river barges. It owns over 1,500 hopper cars. It has offices and plants in 50 countries, on 6 continents.

HISTORY: Simon Fribourg founded the predecessor organization as a commodity-trading company in Arlon, Belgium in 1813. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Fribourg family went into milling, building mills in Luxembourg and Belgium, especially Antwerp, which, with its deep harbors and connections to the Rhine River, transported Fribourg flour and wheat to and from the rest of Europe. 

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Michel Fribourg, a great-grandson of founder Simon, went with bags of gold to Bessarabia (today Moldova and Romania) to buy grain. This was a large grain-producing region. By 1914, the heirs of the family, under the name Fribourg Frères, moved operations to London, to capitalize on the ability to trade grain internationally. In 1920, the headquarters moved again, this time to Paris, and the company's name changed to Compagnie Continentale. Thus, 100 years after its founding in 1813, the Continental Company had established firm links into the cities and channels of the European grain trade, as well as to Australia, through London.

In 1921, the Continental Company opened an office in Chicago, and another in New York. In 1930, it leased a terminal in Galveston, Texas. During the Depression of the 1930s, the Continental Company made out like bandits. As reported in one history, the head of the family, Jules Fribourg, instructed his New York agent to buy Midwest grain elevators, which were at depressed prices, with the instructions, "Don't bother to look at them ~ just buy them." The Fribourgs lived very, very well. René Fribourg, the co-head of the company, lived like a Medici prince, collected gold snuff boxes and Louis XV and Louis XVI furniture, and dined off eighteenth-century china. But when the Nazi Army invaded France in June 1940, the Fribourgs fled to America.

In 1968-69, the Fribourgs, working with the Cargill company, and through an agent of the grain cartel in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Clarence Palmby, helped destroy the American merchant fleet, by convincing President Nixon that the "50-50" provision, by which half of all American grain exports had to be carried on American vessels, should be abolished, in order to land a large Russian grain deal. Almost all of the grain went on Russian-bottom boats. 

Various favors paid off, for, in 1973, the Russians rewarded Continental by making an unprecedented purchase from the company of 6 million tons of grain and soybeans. The head of Continental was and remains Michel Fribourg. His personal financial adviser, Sasha Maximov, was the son of the last czarist ambassador to Constantinople, a post usually held by a Venetian agent.

In 1976, Continental was fined $500,000 for short-weighting ships. In the late 1970s, when Zaire, which was very poor, was unable to pay its bills, Continental cut off food shipments to that starving nation. In the 1970s, Continental became the first grain company to sell grain to China.

KEY PERSONNEL AND POLICY: The heir apparent of the company is Michel Fribourg's son, Paul, who, at the age of 41, is president of Continental. Michel Fribourg, great-great-grandson of Continental's founder, and his immediate family, own 90% of Continental's stock (other members of the Fribourg family own the rest). The Oct. 17, 1994 issue of Forbes magazine lists the worth of Michel Fribourg alone at $1 billion.

#1 French grain exporter; #3 world grain exporter; #4 U.S. grain exporter; #5 Argentine grain exporter (8% of market); #1 world exporter of grain to Russia.

Louis Dreyfus operates 47 vessels ~ bulk carriers, lakers, panamaxes, and chemical and natural gas carriers ~ worldwide.

HISTORY: Léopold Louis Dreyfus, who was born in Sierentz, France, set up his wheat trading operations in Basel, Switzerland, at the age of 19, in 1852. He bought wheat from Vojvodina plain, which went to Budapest, Hungary, for milling, then the milling capital of the world. He also purchased grain from Moldova and Wallachia (present-day Romania) and shipped it to Liverpool for milling. In the process, he became close friends with King Carol I of Romania, whom he charmed so much that he was appointed a councilor at the king's court. In the first decade of the 1900s, Léopold Louis Dreyfus was appointed Romania's consul to Paris.

Léopold Dreyfus also invested heavily in grain elevators and the grain trade in Odessa, Ukraine. He began importing Russian wheat into Marseilles, France. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, he was marketing grain through a network of offices in Hamburg, Bremen, Berlin, Mannheim, Duisburg, in Germany, and Paris, thus having a healthy share of the German market. Léopold Louis Dreyfus expanded into corn, barley, and other crops, and as a wholesaler of grain, dealt with Canada, Australia, and the United States. He moved to Paris, married a Florentine baroness, and ran a newspaper, L'Intransigent.

In the 1940s, the company was run by Jean, François, and Pierre Louis Dreyfus. After the Nazis liquidated France's Vichy government in 1942, Jean and François left for Argentina and Pierre for London.

Louis Dreyfus, although privately owned, is also a cooperative under French law. It owns 49% of the shares of the co-op Union Française des Céréales (UFC, better known as La Cooperative Lafayette). 

Under this arrangement, UFC sells French grain exclusively for itself and Dreyfus, both within the European Union and to third markets. This allows Dreyfus to obtain credit at low interest rates from the quasi-official French banking institution Crédit Agricole, which terms are not available to purely private corporations.

Louis Dreyfus also has a bank bearing its name, which in the 1970s rose to become the fifth largest private bank in France.

KEY PERSONNEL AND POLICY: The current head of the company is Gerard Louis Dreyfus. Gerard is the son of Pierre Louis Dreyfus and Pierre's first wife, who was the daughter of an American industrialist. Gerard was educated in the United States, attended Duke University, attended law school, and worked for a while at the organized crime-connected law firm Dewey Ballantine. Gerard now resides in France, and by conservative estimates, he and his immediate family are worth $0.5-1 billion.

 

#1 U.S. dry corn miller (through its subsidiary, Lauhoff Grain) (18% of the market); reportedly #1 Brazilian grain exporter; #2 U.S. soybean products (soymeal and soy oil) exporter; #3 U.S. grain exporter; #3 U.S. soybean processor; #4 world grain exporter; #4 U.S. grain elevator capacity; #7 Argentine grain exporter.

Bunge operates 50 grain elevators in the United States, most of them located along the Mississippi River from St. Louis to New Orleans. It also has a giant grain export elevator in Quebec City, Canada.

HISTORY: In 1750, in Amsterdam, the Bunge family had started trading hides, spices, and rubber from Dutch overseas colonies. After a century of lucrative trade in this area, in 1850, Charles Bunge moved the family business to Antwerp, Belgium. Charles's two sons established a merchant monarchy straddling the Atlantic Ocean. Edouard Bunge stayed in Antwerp, and Ernest Bunge immigrated to Argentina in 1876. With his brother-in-law George Born, Ernest established the firm Bunge and Born. In 1897, a Mannheim Jewish grain trader by the name of Alfred Hirsch joined the firm in Buenos Aires. In 1927, Hirsch became president of Bunge and Born, and held that position for 30 years.

Hirsch and others at Bunge and Born accumulated estancias ~ plantations of hundreds of thousands and even millions of acres of land, many in the rich soil region of the Pampas plains. The extent of Bunge and Born domination of the Argentine economy was revealed in 1974, when the Montoneros terrorists kidnapped the heirs to the firm, Jorge and Juan Born, and held them for many months. During the time that the brothers were held in captivity, they revealed that Bunge and Born not only dominated Argentina's agriculture, but also that Bunge companies produced 40% of Argentina's paint, one-third of its tin cans, 20% of its textiles, etc.

Argentine President Juan Perón attempted to suppress the power of Bunge and Born and other grain cartel companies in Argentina. When Perón became President for the first time in 1946, he moved to have the government buy the grain from the Argentine farmer and export it. The profits were used to finance the industrialization of Argentina. In 1948, he established the Institute for the Promotion of Trade (IAPI) to achieve this purpose. However, the grain cartel companies, weakened by Perón's reforms, wanted him out of power. In 1955, Perón was deposed and the IAPI system he had set up was disbanded. 

When Perón returned to power in 1973, he established a National Grain Board for the same purpose. Again, Perón was fiercely opposed by the grain cartel companies. He died in 1974, and was succeeded by his wife, Evita. In 1976, Evita Perón was overthrown. The National Grain Board was dismantled, and control of grain and meat exports was returned to the private grain companies.

In the meantime, Bunge diversified a large share of its capital into Brazil and the United States. However, the power of Bunge and Born is still strong in Argentina. The first two ministers of economy in the government of President Carlos Menem, were executives of Bunge and Born, first Mor Roig, and Nestor Rapanelli.

KEY PERSONNEL AND POLICY: The Born and Hirsch families, which run Bunge and Born today, are each conservatively estimated to be worth half a billion dollars.

#1 South African grain exporter; #5 world grain trader; #5 or #6 U.S. grain exporter.

HISTORY: Founded in 1877 by George André in Nyon, Switzerland. He imported hard durum wheat for pasta from Russia. The grain was unloaded at Marseilles and railed up to Switzerland. In 1937, Frederic Hediger, also Swiss, came to the United States and founded Garnac, using money from George André. Garnac became a subsidiary of the André Holding Company. In the 1970s, André was accused, along with Bunge Company, of wrecking the Spanish corn growers by importing corn at low prices into Spain from the United States. During the 1970s, after an embargo had been placed on the commercial activities of what was then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), André helped sell Rhodesian grain on the world market through illegal channels.

KEY PERSONNEL AND POLICY: Georges André, a member of a very strict Calvinist sect, lived, until he died in 1942 at the age of 86, in an Alping chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland. His neighbor was Axel Springer, the German publishing mogul. André's three sons, Henri, Pierre, and Eric, inherited the company. The André family is conservatively estimated to be worth more than $0.5 billion.

 

#1 U.S. soybean crusher (between 30 and 35% of market); #1 U.S. wet corn miller (approximately 50% of market); #1 world processor of combined grain and oil seed; #1 world producer of ethanol; #1 U.S. producer of corn-based additive (60% of market); #2 U.S. flour miller (23% of market); #2 in U.S. grain elevator capacity; #3 U.S. dry corn miller, through subsidiary Krause Milling (10% of market); #5 or #6 world grain export trader (combined ADM and Töpfer) (9% of market).

ADM/Töpfer makes enough flour every year to bake 16 billion loaves of bread and enough soybean meal to feed 13 billion chickens ~ twice as many broilers as the United States produces.

HISTORY: In 1878, John W. Daniels began crushing flaxseed to produce linseed oil and in 1902 formed Daniels Linseed Company in Minneapolis. George A. Archer, another experienced flaxseed crusher, joined the company in 1903. In 1923, the company bought Midland Products and adopted the name Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).

In the United States, the use of the soybean had been pushed by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, brother of the Battle Creek, Michigan cereal magnate and a leading exponent of the cultish health-food "wellness" movement. Dwayne Andreas, who was born into a Mennonite family in Decatur, Illinois in 1918, joined his father's R.P. Andreas firm in the mid-1930s. In 1936, the Andreas family changed the name of the firm to the Honeymead Company, and in 1939, Honeymead began to diversify from linseed crushing to soybean crushing. In 1945, when Dwayne Andreas thought he was about to be drafted ~ by this time he was chief executive officer of Honeymead ~ he sold 60% of the family's Honeymead to Cargill.

From 1946 through 1952, Dwayne Andreas worked for Cargill, learning how to hedge and speculate in commodities from Julius Hendel, a top European Jewish grain trader who came to the United States to help salvage Cargill from disaster in the 1930s. In 1945, Dwayne Andreas met Hubert Humphrey, who was tied into organized crime. Andreas contributed $1,000 to Humphrey's first senatorial campaign in 1948. Later, writing about this contribution, Humphrey called it a "spectacularly large amount." 

Humphrey and Andreas became intimate. Humphrey was godfather to Andreas's son. Former U.S. House Speaker Tip O'Neill said of Andreas, "Hubert was his first love." In 1977, Humphrey, then on the Senate Agricultural Committee, wrote legislation to establish government supports for sugar, which saved Andreas from huge losses. 

In the 1980s, Andreas funded a Hubert Humphrey Room at the Anti-Defamation League's new headquarters at U.N. Plaza in New York City. While Humphrey lived, Andreas and Humphrey took 85 trips together.

In 1974, ADM entered into a price-fixing scheme that overcharged the U.S. government $19 million in sales of soy-fortified food to the Food for Peace program. As one reporter commented, the money was stolen "either from the taxpayers or the starving poor, depending on which devout Mennonite perspective you prefer." ADM was convicted. In 1976, the company pleaded no contest to federal charges that it had systematically short-weighted and misgraded federally subsidized grain that was being shipped abroad.

Andreas's investment in high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) production prospered, when the soft-drink industry bought it. By 1983, HFCS accounted for 75% of sweeteners purchased by Coca-Cola and 50% of Pepsi's sweeteners.

Andreas became deeply involved in grain sales to Russia and was active in the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Trade and Economic Council, eventually becoming USTEC's chairman. In 1984, Andreas met Mikhail Gorbachov for the first time. In 1990, Andreas contributed $1 million to create a Gorbachov Institute in the United States and Russia.

ADM purchased a 50% stake in Alfred C. Töpfer International, one of the most powerful second-tier grain cartel companies. This purchase also works the other way, with the older, Hamburg-based Töpfer Company, with extensive roots in Europe, exercising an influence over ADM. The Töpfer Company has an over 70% equity position in two French firms ~ Compagnie Européene des Céréales and G. Muller. 

The remaining shares in these companies are held by the Rothschild Group in France. These two French companies and the Töpfer Company own at least ten large grain elevators in France and Germany. Also, before the Iron Curtain came down, Töpfer controlled 50% of the grain imports into East Germany.

Andreas was always close, as a result of his friendship with Hubert Humphrey, to the organized crime-linked Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith. During the 1980s, Andreas was persuaded by another major grain trader, Burton Joseph, of the Minneapolis-based S.I. Joseph Company, to contribute $1 million to the ADL. Andreas made the payments in amounts of $50,000 to $100,000 per year.

In 1995, the U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation into fraud and anti-competitive price-fixing in ADM's handling and marketing of corn sweeteners and lysine. The latter enhances growth in chickens and hogs, while making meat leaner.

KEY PERSONNEL AND POLICY: Board of directors: Howard Buffett, vice president of ADM and son of Berkshire Hathaway (men's clothing brand) owner Warren Buffett (at the beginning of the Justice Department's investigation, Howard Buffett resigned from ADM board); Robert Strauss, George Bush's ambassador to Russia, 1991-93, and a long-time friend of Andreas. Strauss is also a member of the board of British intelligence's chief propaganda mouthpiece, the Hollinger Corp.; Brian Mulroney, former prime minister of Canada, and associated with the Hollinger Corp.; several members of the Andreas family, including Dwayne's brother Lowell Andreas, and his son, Michael Andreas, who is also ADM's vice chairman and the heir apparent.

#1 U.S. flour miller (24% of market); #1 U.S. sheep slaughterer (33% of market), through Sipco and Montfort meats; #2 U.S. beef slaughterer (20% of market); #2 U.S. pork slaughterer; #4 U.S. dry corn miller (8% of market);

HISTORY: ConAgra was founded in Omaha, Nebraska in 1919 as Consolidated Mills, a grain processor. (The name was changed to ConAgra in 1971.) In 1982, ConAgra bought the Peavey Company. Peavey, along with its Minneapolis confederates, the Pillsbury and Washburn families, dominated the milling of American flour, which came up the Mississippi River or along the railroads from the American Midwest to Minneapolis. This immediately made ConAgra America's largest flour miller. This was followed by a slew of purchases in the meatpacking industry, including Armour (1983), Northern States Beef (1985), E.A. Miller (1987), Montfort (1987), and Swift (1987).

The purchase of Montfort Meats typifies the takeovers in the meat industry. The Colorado-based Montfort Meats was America's third largest meatpacker, and an independent. In 1986, Cargill Meat Company made a bid for Spencer Beef. Montfort Meats took legal action to block the takeover, on the grounds that it would make Cargill too large in the meatpacking industry, and thus it clearly violated U.S. anti-trust laws. Even though a local court and a district court ruled in Montfort's favor, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the takeover. Fearing it was just a matter of time, and that it could not survive on its own, Montfort tendered itself for takeover to the giant ConAgra.

ConAgra also bought Elders, the largest beef producer/processor in Australia and the largest beef and lamb exporter in the world. ConAgra continued its takeover binge: Since the mid-1970s, ConAgra has acquired over 100 companies. It bought the Chung King line of foods; Beatrice Foods, including Butterball Turkeys; Peter Pan peanut butter, and others.

MAJOR BRANDS: Hunt's Tomato Sauce and Ketchup; Wesson Oil; Banquet TV dinners; Armour, Swift, Eckrich, and Hebrew National meats; Healthy Choice foods; Orville Redenbacher popcorn; Peter Pan peanut butter; LaChoy Chinese foods; Swiss Miss cocoa; Reddi-Whip whip cream.

KEY PERSONNEL AND POLICY: Board of directors: Dr. Ronald Roskens, president of Action International, former president of the University of Nebraska, reportedly dismissed for pedophilia, and George Bush's director of the State Department Agency for International Development; Marjorie Scardino, chief executive of the Economist Newspaper Ltd. and Economist magazine, which is jointly owned by Britain's Rothschild and Lazard Frères banking houses, both close to Britain's royal family; Charles Harper, chairman and chief executive of RJR Nabisco.

#1 U.S. beef slaughterer (26% of market); #1 U.S. pork slaughter (12% of market). IBP, the largest butcher in the world, accounts for 9 billion pounds of meat a year, or about 14% of U.S. total. Japan, which consumes half of all U.S. meat exports, is a major market for IBP.

IBP was bought in 1981 by Armand Hammer's Occidental Petroleum Corp. Occidental sold 49.5% of the company in 1987, and the remaining 50.5% of IBP in 1991. FMR Corp. is the holding company for Fidelity Mutual Funds, the largest family of mutual funds in the United States, with over $300 billion in investments. FMR Corp. is run by Boston Brahmin oligarchical families, and owns 13% of IBP's stock. FMR is also a large owner of raw material cartel companies, including shares of 5% or more in: Homestake Mining, Coeur D'Alene Mines, and Santa Fe Pacific Gold Corp., three of the largest gold-mining companies in the United States.

HISTORY: Formed in 1960 by A. Anderson and C. Holman, as Iowa Beef Processors; the first plant was in Denison, Iowa. IBP broke with tradition: It built the plant in a rural area where the cattle was raised. 

In 1967, it took another step: Its Dakota City, Nebraska plant cut the meat and shipped it, pre-cut, in vacuum packs to stores (called boxed beef). IBP reached a marketing agreement with Cactus Feeders, the nation's largest commercial feeder, to supply it with beef cattle. In the early 1990s, it purchased 40 hog-buying stations from Heinhold Hog, Inc. in Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Minnesota.

IBP makes money by driving down the wages of its workforce and the price of beef paid to farmers. 

IBP tried to ban union wages and the union. In 1965, a strike against this IBP policy became so violent that the governor of Iowa had to intervene to settle it. A 1969-70 strike, provoked by IBP, resulted in one death. A similar pattern prevailed in the 1980s. On Aug. 15, 1995, the Wall Street Journal reported: "In May, the Immigration and Naturalization Service arrested 24 illegal aliens, who worked for an IBP contractor, at the company's Council Bluffs plant: a month earlier, 35 illegals were arrested at an IBP plant in Minnesota."

For the third quarter of 1995, IBP's net income/profit rose to $85.4 million, an increase of 74% from its net income of $49.2 million during the third quarter of 1994. But IBP's quarterly sales, for the third quarter of 1995, were virtually the same as those of the third quarter of 1994, $3.3 billion and $3 billion, respectively.

So how did IBP nearly double profits on the same sales volume? By driving down the price of beef paid to the farmer. 

It is now $60 per hundredweight of beef, when a price of $75 to $80 is needed for cattle ranchers to break even. Cattle ranchers are not selling, because they can't afford to accept the low price.

IBP attempted to get its meat into the New York market by forming ties with the Mafia, which was exposed in trials in the 1980s.

KEY PERSONNEL AND POLICY: Board of directors: Wendy Graham, wife of the budget-cutting lunatic Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.). From 1988 to 1993, Wendy Gramm was George Bush's chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, during which time derivatives holdings at large U.S. financial institutions exploded from $2.5 billion to over $20 billion. 

In August of this year, IBP offered free tickets and bus transportation to its employees (paid for by the Gramm campaign), if they would go to the Iowa Republican Party Presidential straw poll and vote for candidate Phil Gramm, whom IBP backs, over local favorite, Kansan Bob Dole. 

Also on IBP's board is Alec Courtelis, a Florida real estate developer and the nation's largest Arabian horse breeder. Courtelis was National Finance co-chairman of the 1992 Bush-Quayle campaign, and is now Finance Committee head of the Gramm for President campaign and chairman of the Armand Hammer United World College.

#1 world food company; #1 world trader in dry milk powder; #1 world trader of condensed milk; #1 seller of chocolate and confectionary products; #1 world seller of mineral water; #3 U.S. coffee firm.

In 1994, there were 13 countries in which Nestlé had 1 billion Swiss francs or more in sales; the countries (with sales in billions of Swiss francs in parenthesis): U.S. (SF 12.2); France (SF 6.5); Germany (SF 6.1); U.K. (SF 3.3); Italy (SF 3.2); Japan (SF 3.1); Brazil (SF 2.9); Mexico (SF 1.8); Spain (SF 1.8); Australia (SF 1.1); Switzerland (SF 1.1); the Philippines (SF 1.1); Canada (SF 1.0). Nestlé's has 400 manufacturing facilities on 5 continents.

HISTORY: In 1866 in Cham, Switzerland, Charles Page founded the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company. In 1867, in nearby Vevey, Henri Nestlé founded Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé. In 1905, Nestlé and the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company merged.

In 1922, a banker, Louis Dapples, took over management of the company, and eventually became chairman of Nestlé. Over the next 70-odd years, Nestlé made one takeover after another, especially during the past ten years. It controls the export of powdered milk to the developing sector.

BRAND NAMES: Nestlé's chocolate mix and chocolate milk; Nestlé's candy bars, including Crunch, Butterfinger, Kit-Kat, After Eight dinner mints; Peter-Cailler-Kohler Chocolats; Perrier, Vittel, Fuerst Bismarck, Spring, Arrowhead, and other brands of bottled mineral water; Libby fruit juices; Hills Brothers, Zoega, and Dallmayr roasted coffee; Carnation sweetened condensed milk and Carnation breakfast bars; Coffee-Mate creamer; Stouffer's restaurants, frozen foods, and other products; Findus and Surgela frozen products in Europe; Nescafe instant coffee; Taster's Choice coffee; Nestea instant tea; Buitoni spaghetti and Contadina tomato paste, sauce, and Italian food products; Friskies cat food; and Alpo dog food.

Nestlé's also owns Alcon eye products, such as Opti-Free, and 26.3% of L'Oreal, the world's largest shampoo and cosmetics company.

KEY PERSONNEL AND POLICY: Board of directors: Nestlé chairman Helmut Maucher is also on the board of J.P. Morgan Bank, British intelligence's leading bank in the United States, and Allianz Versicherung of Munich, an insurance firm; Fritz Leutwiller, who was also chairman of Swiss National Bank and, in 1982-84, of the Bank for International Settlements, the central bank of the central banks; Paul Volcker, chairman of U.S. Federal Reserve Board of Governors 1978-85, currently chairman of Blackstone Group, a Wall Street investment firm.

 

#1 world producer of ice cream; #1 world producer of margarine; one of the top five world exporters of dry milk powder; #1 European tea seller; #2 or #3 world producer of soaps and detergents; one of the top five world crushers of palm oil and palm kernel; one of world's largest producers of olive oil.

HISTORY: In 1885, Englishman William Lever and his brother James formed Lever Brothers. It produces Lux, Lifebuoy, Rinso, and Sunlight soaps. In the Netherlands, rival buttermakers Jurgens and Van den Berghs were pioneers in margarine production. In 1927, they created the Margarine Union, a cartel that owned the European market. In 1930, the Margarine Union and Lever Brothers merged, forming Unilever. This paralleled the merger of Royal Dutch Oil Company and Britain's Shell Transport Company at the turn of the century, to form the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company, the world's largest. Both Unilever and Royal Dutch Shell are corporate entities that express the joint interests of the Anglo-Dutch monarchies.

BRAND NAMES: Breyers, Good Humor, Klondike, Magnum, Carte D'Or, and Popsicle brands ice cream; Bird's Eye and Iglo frozen foods; Ragú and Chicken Tonight pasta and meal sauces; Lipton Tea and Brooke Bond Tea (leading European tea company); Lipton soups; Continental Cup-a-Soup; Country Crock, Blue Bonnett, Flora, Becel and Rama margarines; Bertoli and La Masia olive oil; Wishbone salad dressing; Boursin and Milkana cheeses; Bon Vivant cookies; Pepsodent, Close-Up, and Mentadent tooth pastes; Dove, Lux, and Lever soaps; Wisk and Surf laundry detergents; Vaseline Intensive Care, Pond's Cold Cream, Elizabeth Arden, Fabergé (Brut, Chloe) and Calvin Klein skin care cosmetics.

KEY PERSONNEL AND POLICY: Board of directors: Lord Wright of Richmond, GCMG, from 1986-91, permanent undersecretary of state at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and head of the Diplomatic Service, also a director of Barclay's Bank; Sir Derek Birkin, from 1985-91, chairman of London-based RTZ (Rio Tinto Zinc), the world's second largest mining company, in which the Queen of England has a substantial investment; Frits Fentener Van Vlissingen, from 1974 through 1991, member of the Supervisory Board of the giant Rotterdam Bank of the Netherlands; Sir Brian Hayes, former permanent secretary of Britain's Ministry of Agriculture; Viscount Leverhulme, KGTD, grandson of William Lever, largest stockholder in Unilever, and funder and builder of Prince Philip's World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the coordinating arm for British intelligence.

#2 world food company; #1 U.S. food company (10¢ of every $1 Americans spend on branded food items in the United States is for a Philip Morris/Kraft food product); #1 world processed cheese seller; #1 world cream cheese seller; #1 U.S. seller of luncheon meats; #1 U.S. seller of powdered soft drinks; #1 world cigarette producer; #1 U.S. and Japan cigarette producer (44.8% of U.S. market); #2 U.S. beer brewer, through Miller Brewing; #3 world beer brewer; #3 world confectionery business; #3 U.S. breakfast cereal company (Post cereals).

HISTORY: In 1847, Philip Morris opened a London tobacco store, and by 1854 he was making his own cigarettes. In 1919, U.S. financier George Whelan purchased the rights to market Philip Morris brands such as Marlboro, Ovals, Players, and Cambridge. Ten years later, Whelan's successor began manufacturing the cigarettes in Richmond, Virginia.

In 1985, Philip Morris bought General Foods, producer of Jello brand gelatin and Post cereals, for $5.75 billion. In 1988, Philip Morris spent $12.9 billion to acquire Kraft Foods.

BRAND NAMES: Kraft Products, such as Kraft Mayonnaise and Miracle Whip and Kraft cheese; Velveeta; Philadelphia Cream Cheese; Dairylea; Cool Whip; Post cereals; Entenmann's Cookies; Jello; Kool-Aid, Country Time, Crystal Light and Tang powdered drinks; Maxwell House, Sanka, Maxim, Gevalia, Jacobs, Kaffe Hag, and Carte Noire coffees; Milka and Toberlone confectionery chocolates and candies; Jacobs Suchard, a Swiss maker of chocolate and coffee (Philip Morris bought it in 1990; Jacobs Suchard is one of the ten largest European food companies); Tombstone Pizza; Miller, Miller Lite, Molson, Lowenbrau, Red Dog beers; Oscar Mayer, Louis Rich, Simmenthal and Negroni lunch meats; Lender's Bagels; Budget Gourmet frozen dinners; Shake N' Bake; Stove Top Stuffing; Log Cabin syrup; Good Seasons salad dressing; Marlboro, Lark, Philip Morris, Benson and Hedges, Chesterfield, Virginia Slims, Merit cigarettes.

KEY PERSONNEL AND POLICY: Board of directors: Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the News Corporation. The Australian-born Murdoch runs major propaganda organs for the British, including his company's flagship newspapers, the Times and Sunday Times of London; Richard Parsons, president of Time Warner. The publisher of Time magazine and of Warner records, Time Warner is partially owned by the mob Bronfman family of Seagram's Liquor, which family is reputedly a major force in the world's illegal narcotic trade; Stephen Wolf, senior adviser of Lazard Frères investment bank.

Philip Morris is one of the largest corporate sponsors of Prince Philip's WWF. It is one of the largest smugglers of illegal cigarettes, both for sale and as barter for other illegal goods.  

It has been cited repeatedly in the Italian press as one of the world's largest marijuana dealers.