Corporate giants dominate food indust

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The high price you pay for the
food you buy has little if anything
to do with alleged shortages.
Nowadays most of these alleged

shortages (if they are real, and most

of them are not), are deliberately
created to serve as an excuse. for
raising prices still further. Nor has
the actual cost of food much to do
with the price that you pay. The
price you pay is at all times the max-
imum the market will bear.

Price competition in food (as in

most other goods and services that
you buy) has long ago ceased to bea
reality in Canada. Price fixing has
now become the way of life of the
big corporations that dominate our
economy. They compete for
customers, but rarely by cutting
prices.
This price-fixing, this complete
* absence of. price competition, is
possible and has come about
because every branch of the food
industry in Canada is today
dominated by a few big corpora-
tions, most of them U.S. owned.
The result is that Canadians pay ex-
cessively high prices, higher in most
cases than in the U.S., and that pro-
fits in the food industry are higher
than average.

The big corporations that control
the food industry in Canada are in-
tegrated both horizontally (big
chains across the country) and ver-
tically (controlling the whole pro-
cess of food from the time it is
grown till it is retailed to the
public). <i

Let me give a few examples:

Three firms — Canada Packers,
Burns Food and Swift Canada,
completely dominate the meat in-
dustry.

Kentucky Fried Chicken (which

PROFIT HUNGRY, by John
Warnock, New Star Books,
Vancouver, 1979, paper $6.50.
Available at the Co-Op
Bookstore.

Canada and in 1976 30 percent of
all chickens sold in Canada) and
White Spot Restaurants in B.C. are
both owned by the U.S. food giant,
General Foods. (Chickens are fed
arsenic to promote fast growth and
their feed is deliberately deficient in
calcium and Vitamin D to keep
their bones small. The birds are also
fed artificial colouring. All this is
the result of corporate control of
the industry).

The flour industry is dominated
by Maple Leaf Mills, Ogilvie and
Hood and Quaker. Oats. Only
Ogilvie is Canadian owned.

The baking industry is controlled
by Maple Leaf Mills. Ogilvie and
the huge George Weston Empire.

Weston and Christie Brown con-
trol the biscuit industry; Kelloggs
the breakfast cereal industry, Kraft
totally controls the cheese market,
Hunt and Heinz dominate the
tomato industry, Heinz has a near
monopoly on the babyfood market,
while Green Giant, Libby and Del
Monte dominate canned vegetables.

Seagrams, owned by the Bronf-
man family and Hiram Walker con-
trol-the distilling industry. Labatts
(owned by Brascan) Carling
O’Keefe (owned by Rothman’s of
South Africa), and Molson run the
brewing industry, and the wine in-
dustry is run by T.G. Bright,
Labatts, Andres and Calona.
Calona is now owned by Standard
Brands.

IN 1974

VAS 5-77

Od

majors — George Weston (which

- owns Loblaws), Dominion Stores.

(owned by Argus Corporation),
Canada Safeway (which also owns
Empress Jams and McDonald’s
Consolidated), Steinberg and A & P
of Canada. Safeway is accepted as
the price leader in this field.

The big food corporations are all
conglomerates:

General Foods owns Maxwell
House Coffee, Bakers Cocoanut,
Postum, Grapenuts, White Spot
Restaurants in B.C. and Kentucky
Fried Chicken and scores of other
firms.

Standard Brands controls
Fleischmann’s, Chase & Sanborn,
Gillette, Royal Baking Powder, Dr.
Ballard’s pet foods, Planters
Peanuts, Lowney chocolates,
Guiness liquor and Calona Wines,
to mention a few.

Unilever owns Vancouver Fancy
Meats, A & W Food Service and

John Labatt owns Ogilvie Flour
Mills and Laura Secord chocolates.

B.C. Sugar has a complete
monopoly on sugar in all the four
western provinces.

The Weston Empire, the biggest
food conglomerate in Canada,
owns literally hundreds of food
firms. Canada Packers, Kelly-
Douglas, Shop-Easy, O K Economy
and William Neilson are just a few
of them.

The above are just a small frac-
tion of the facts you will find in a
book recently published by John
W. Warnock called ‘‘Profit
Hungry’’. I recommend it highly.
Here are some of his conclusions:

“Clearly, this is the era of the
large food corporations, operating
as a conglomerate. There.is no such
thing as ‘price competition’ as is
described in the traditional neo-
classical economics textbooks used

“In no advanced capitalist stal®
does the government act as a pl

tector of the farmer and the col

sumer against the rise 9%
monopolistic corporations. In fat

the record everywhere is cleat)

governments in the capital)

economy acts as partners tom

large corporations.

“The large and growing firms lf |

the food processing industry if
Canada are primarily foreign OW!) ©
ed firms,
American,

“Canada is not an independel|

country in the matter of produ
tion, manufacturing, distributiol
or even eating of food . . . Canaé
is a_ political, economic an
cultural teas of the Unité
States . . . This country has alway’)
been a mere extension of
American market.

“But all Canadians suffer from
the quality of food that we eat,
reflected in the growing rate of
Iness due to poor diet. We are 4
victims of the fact that our govel!

f

ments do such an inadequate job

policing the food industry to ens!
the quality of food. Every day
are ingesting accidental and
deliberate food additives which 4%

known to produce long term )

Inesses . . . our governments do
really protect our interests, but
dominated by the corporat

ideology which has a strangleho®

on our country.

“In our country food is produ!
at every level according to the pro
motive. The concept of provid

‘food as a service or on the basis
quality first, is in fundamental col
tradiction to the present system)

Food is distributed according ©
ability to pay. i
“The indications are that

and most of these af —

4

owns 600 fast food outlets in

t could hardly be called public demand, but
there are evidently enough local business executives willing
sign up as students in the union busting courses offered by
Advanced Management Research (AMR), to bring the anti-

labor school back to Vancouver for the third
time in only a year.

As with the previous AMR ‘‘seminars’’noted in this col-
umn, ‘‘Strategies for Preserving Non-Union Status”’ in June
of 1978 and ‘‘Strategies to Stay Union Free’ in January of
this year, the latest seminar is ‘‘strictly limited to manage-
ment and supervisory personnel”’ and costs upwards of $500
for the two day session, October 16-17 at the Hotel Van-
couver.

But while the first two seminars were largely orientated
towards non-union firms to-resist union organizing drives,
this seminar is offered for the’mainstream of big business in
B.C. ‘‘Defending Management Rights in a Union Environ-
ment,””
straight-forward as its titke — to inform you how to defend,
preserve and enhance management’s rights’? vis a vis
established trade unions.

With the usual assurance that the seminar is ‘‘unequivocal-
ly pro-management’” AMR proposes to show executives not
only how to “‘assert your present rights, but also to initiate
steps to regain those lost.’’ The final assertion of ‘‘manage-
ment rights’’ is last in the course outline: a detailed outline of
decertification procedures initiated either by employees or by
the employer.

The virulent language and embarassing secrecy that
shrouded the first AMR seminars lent an air of eccentricity to
the proceedings. But the packed seminar room including
numerous important management officials from both in-
dustry and government quickly dispelled that image. Now it
is clear that the AMR seminars are part of a massive anti-
labor compaign sweeping the entire continent.

The campaign is particularly agressive in the U.S. where
literally hundreds of law firms and consultant firms are doing
a booming business advising employers of modern methods
of union busting. Closely associated to the ‘‘right to work’’
movement, many are involved not only in education but in
actual campaigns at the plant or factory level. The successful
methods employed by these firms, says the American Federa-
tion of Labor, is a chief reason for the 400 percent rise in
union decertifications in the U.S. over the past decade.

A Financial Times story out of Toronto last week reported
that ‘*Canadian businessmen are welcoming with open
arms’’ the anti-union consultants to the extent that an AMR-
type seminar in Toronto was oversubscribed and had to be
held on two consecutive days.

The Ontario Federation of Labor has protested the anti-
union seminars in that province claiming that they violate the
Ontario Labor Relations Act which states in its preamble

PACIFIC TRIBUNE— AUGUST 31, 1979—Page 2

In the retailing field there are five

the promotional blurb emphasizes, has a ‘‘goal as

Canada Lipton, among others.

PEOPLE AND ISSUES

that it is in the public interest to encourage collective bargain-

ing.

B.C.’s Labor Code doesn’t have a pre-amble, but the spirit
of the Code is clear enough. Section 3(2) of the Code states:
“No employer, and no person acting on behalf of an
employer shall . . . seek by intimidation . . . or by altering
any other terms of employment to compel or to induce an
employee to refrain from becoming or continuing to be a
member . . . of a trade union.”’

As protector of the Code, labor minister Alan Williams
should be pressed to speak out now in defense of its spirit,

before AMR and its friends make a sham out of labor legisla- ©

tion in this province. As for the AMR, a close watch should
be kept for the first sign that their ‘‘positive, forceful
tactics’’ are carried into any actual labor matter.

- * *

Or many-it has been over 40 years since they last

saw Brunete, Belchite or Fuentes de Ebro. And with the’
veterans of those battles in 1937 and 1938 now approaching -

or past 70, about 42 members of the Mackenzie Papineau
Batallion from across Canada have taken a very special trip
back to Spain.

Len Norris, Johnny Johnson, Gerry Delaney, Fred Mat-
tisdoffer and Lionel Edwards are among those from B.C.
who left Sunday for the two week tour of Spain. While there,
the Mac Paps will visit the battle sites where many of their
comrades remain, and hold meetings with representatives of
Spain’s trade unions and Socialist and Communist Parties.

On their return, Ontario’s Ross Russell said this week, the
Mac Paps will petition the new Conservative government for
official recognition as war veterans. The medical and social
benefits for the handful of remaining veterans would be
‘‘peanuts’’ for the government, Russell said, and the Mac
Paps themselves have made out without those benefits for 40
years.

More important is the principle, the recognition of the
outstanding heroism of 1,200 Canadians who volunteered to
fight fascism at a time when the appeasement policies of the
British, U.S. and Canadian governments allowed Hitler and
Mussolini to trample democracy in Spain and eventually in
all of Europe. * * Fs

f you were looking for the Downtown Eastside

Residents Association in their Gore St. office and couldn’t
find eee it is because DERA has moved a block west to the
corner of Main and Hastings St.

DERA’s new offices at Mezzanine 4 of the Ford Building,
193 East Hastings, are in a familiar setting to many Tribune
readers, next door to our former offices at Mezzanine 3.

With DERA’s majong playing Chinese senior citizen’s club

set up in Mezzanine 2, and Bruce Eriksen at the top of his
form in Mezzanine 4, we can only wish our successors in
Mezzanine 3 well and be thankful for our present peaceful
location on Commercial Dr.

in our colleges and universities.

time is right for popular action.” |

In spite of financial problems caused by lack of gover

ment funding for DERA’s numerous services, its office

remain open with volunteer workers to assist Downto

Eastside Residents. DERA will be calling on its friends al

supporters to help keep the office open in a financial drivé

this fall. :
* * *

H' name is ‘‘Oscar McFoisy,’’ the federal a
ernment tells us, and he is a ‘‘born loser in all matters
taining to the outdoors and the environment. No matte!

what Oscar does, it is usually illegal. ee

a

McFoisy is the central caricature in the new compel of |

the federal fisheries department, the provincial mar? ck
resources branch and the B.C. Wildlife Association to cr

down on those who would violate fish and wildlife lam ye 1

pollute the environment. The campaign consists of S$
200,000 wallet sized cards bearing the picture of mero
which are to be used as report cards by the public if th
witness someone breaking the law. People-are asked to fill
details of the’violation, a description of the offender and
state if they are prepared to testify i in court.

As the volume of tourists using B.C.’s national’ and pro" wii
vincial parks and vast recreational areas increases, P
education and vigilance to protect the environment is cet
ly necessary. With Oscar McFoisy, however, that object!
has been compromised by a distasteful bias all too familitt

with. its sponsors. .

To begin with, the unshaven, ragged clothed, obvi
unemployed McFoisy is a slight on poor people. He h fn
could afford to drive a gas guzzling Winnebago trailer fro"
Southern California to Jasper, depositing his garbage .
route. Nor is he a likely customer of the massive tourist }
dustry who are reaping incredible profits selling our envir
ment to those who may or may not respect it.

McFoisy also reflects the one sided approach of the jeder! ;

fisheries-department which promises a big crackdown on if
dividuals, but turns a blind eye to industrial pollutio®-
would be a justified twist on the campaign if British Col
bians used the report cards in the interests of our enviro®
ment, but identified the real Oscar McFoisy’s — like Co!

co Ltd. in Trail and Kimberly, the forest industry’s slash

ging operations in our river estuaries, the CPR which du 410

2,4-D and other herbicides along rail lines, or B.C. H
whose proposed Hat Creek power project threatens
poison lakes ae rivers in eoutney B.C. with acid rain.

e * * * of
Fo Irene Foulks comes word that UBC ae

essor of education Roland Gray, recently returned fr ‘io!
the Soviet Union where he studied the Soviet educal! os
system, has some interesting and informative things t° ”.

t

. about what Canadian educators can learn from the soviet

You can tune into Gray on a radio talk show September
10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on CFUN.