Speech- Harrison Inocencio

A Dangerous Game of Monopoly

            Is everyone here familiar with the board game monopoly? You know, the one where you get to choose a funny piece like a hat or a thimble and then take turns going around the colored board to make your fortune? Well anyway, for those of you who are not, the basic concept of the game is to make as much money as possible so that you can buy out the different tiles, or businesses, on the board, invest in them so to speak. The overall goal is to gain control of the entire board, making it more likely for an opponent to land on a tile owned by you and be forced to pay the heavy cost of staying there, which prevents them from investing in more tiles, allowing you, the owner of that tile, to buy out even more of the board, eventually driving the opposition into bankruptcy. Elizabeth Magie, the inventor of the game, originally intended for it to be a way to teach younger children about how our economy actually works and the danger of letting one or even a few corporations gain to much control over their products market, and for the most part, America has listened to her. Today we have economic competition, thousands of small businesses, and while it isn't perfect there isn't any one field in which we could relate to the final stages of a game of monopoly, one where the car and the hat of been forced up against the wall, with the all powerful thimble controlling over 90% of the board. Not one field represents this, except for one. The American food industry.

          Now, you might be wondering to yourselves, what in the heck is this crazy man talking about? Is there not thousands of different restaurants both chain and private that flood the food market with competition every year? The answer is yes, if I tried to stand up here and list off every single restaurant and food chain in America, I would be here all day. However, if we peel one more layer off the onion that is the American food system, and see the companies that these businesses are actually buying their ingredients from, what was once a list of thousands of names, can be reduced to a mere handful. The American food giants, Tyson Meats, Kraft Cheese, General Mills Yogurt and Cereal, Coca Cola Soft drinks, even Nestles Chocolate Milk, these are all companies that control the vast majority of their markets, to a point where all other competition is being stamped out, allowing this handful of companies to control both the quality and the means of production of what we eat. Last year according to the Chicago Sun-Times, in the meat industry alone, over 85% percent of the market is owned by just five companies. These giants continue to find ways to cut their production costs, using chemicals, factories, and cheap foreign labor, while the remaining small businesses who are trying to produce their product based off of quality and not quantity, are driven into bankruptcy. If it continues like this, these giants will literally eat up the entirety of their markets, and this game of monopoly will be over.

          Now what does that mean for us, the common consumer? To answer that question, I'm going to take you back to last summer. It was a bright and beautiful day outside, the birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and of course I was sitting on my couch watching Netflix. Now before you criticize me for being a coach potato, I have to tell you about the interesting documentary I watched titled Food Inc. While the thumbnail for the film seemed innocent enough, with its picture of rolling green hills and a single cow staring back at me, this documentary revealed to me in terrifying hd, the ugly truths behind the food we eat. The pictures of farms, and green grass, that these companies paste of the front of their products, are no more than a lie. In reality chickens live out their lives in complete darkness by the thousands in small huts no bigger than your garage. Genetically modified to the point where their breasts and thighs are so massive that their bodily organs cannot take the stress. Walking through one of the houses, the cameramen had to be careful not to trip over the dead birds that littered the floor of the pen. This film also revealed the horrible practice of the CAFO, or concentrated animal feeding operation. where hundreds of cows can be seen packed into tiny pens, knee deep in their own waste. According to the book "Cafo: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories" by Daniel Imhoff it is not uncommon for a single feedlot to hold over 100,000 animals at a time, and when corn is unavailable, they are often fed additives including and I quote " hydrolyzed poultry feathers, by-products of slaughtered animals, inter-species waste, antibiotic drugs, cement dust, newspaper, and plastic roughage replacements."

          Robert Martin, Director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production said that "The present system of producing food animals in the United States is not sustainable, and presents an unprecedented level of risk to public health and damage to the environment; as well as unnecessary harm to animals we raise as food." so not only has this monopoly allowed food industries to practice such atrocities, these acts are also hurting out health directly. You see, this issue is not just about animal cruelty, as they are not the only ones suffering here. in the years of 2011-2012 the American CDC, or Center for Disease Control, reported almost 1,632 food related outbreaks, resulting in over 30,000 cases of illness, and 68 fatalities. That is up from the 2009-2010 report, which had 1,527 outbreaks, and only 23 deaths, and these costs will continue to rise, as the food industry gains more power, and continues to look for ways to earn more money, at the cost of human life, and these numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. According to the American Heart Association, on our current diet, by 2030 over 116 million Americans will suffer from a cardiovascular disease, which is directly connected to the kind of foods we are consuming. Heart disease is the biggest serial killer to ever set foot in America, and the root of the problem is in the high sugar and high cholesterol foods that are endorsed by these food giants, whose products are so cheap it is discouraging American families from buying healthier and more naturally grown foods, slowly strangling these healthy products from their markets. It's a chain reaction with the food companies being the only ones who come out on top.

          Even those who don't suffer from food related health problems are being impacted. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, last year's healthcare costs for heart disease alone amounted to almost $273 billion. That's money coming directly out of the pockets of American citizen's. This issue is also affecting small time farmers across the globe. According to National Geographic, the overproduction of staple crops by business giants have driven down prices by over 61% in the last 50 years, forcing many poor farmers in continents like Africa and South America into starvation. This problem has become a weed in the backyard of the world, and even if it seems at first glance that the only blades of grass being harmed are the ones directly underneath its leaves, who are unable to see the sun, we must look deeper to see that its roots have spread to every continent, and continue to suck up all the water beneath the surface.

                    While I have been comparing this crisis to a game of monopoly throughout my speech, monopoly is still just a game. Where the money is paper, the pieces are fake, and the many houses and hotels are plastic and empty. But the game of monopoly that America has found itself in today is against a formidable opponent, and has very real costs. This is a game where the money is real, the pieces are alive, and the many houses and hotels are filled with innocent life, and bright futures. We all are trapped in a dangerous game, and if we don't walk away, it's costs will be very real indeed.

Citations:

          Food, Inc. Dir. Robert Kenner. Perf. Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin. Movie One, 2008. Netflix.

          "CAFO - The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories :: The Issue." CAFO - The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories :: The Issue. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 June 2014. <http://www.cafothebook.org/theissue_5.htm#up>.

          Kendrick, Rob, and T. R. Reid. "Feeding the Planet." National Geographic: Population Millennium Series 4 (1998): 56-75. Print.

          Stillerman, Karen P. "Can Changes in Our Food System Help Make Americans Healthier." Union of Concerned Scientists. Union of Concerned Scientists, May 2013. Web. 14 Dec. 2014. <http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/ask/2013/healthy-food-system.html#.VI4eMivF-So>.

          "History of the Board Game Monopoly." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_board_game_Monopoly>.

          "Breaking America's Meat Monopoly - Chicago Sun-Times." Chicago Sun-Times. Chicago Sun-Times, 20 Mar. 2014. Web. 14 Dec. 2014. <http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/26315010-452/breaking-americas-meat-monopoly.html#.VI4eXyvF-Sp>.

          "New CDC Data on Foodborne Disease Outbreaks." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 02 June 2014. Web. 14 Dec. 2014. <http://www.cdc.gov/features/foodborne-diseases-data/>.