The consequences of an unregulated meat industry

[Something completely different]

Germany slaughters 58 million pigs a year and has built an efficient meat industry second only to the US in pork exports. Its optimized breeding, feeding and killing system churns out wondrously cheap cutlets -- but at a hidden cost to the environment and our health.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germ...29251.html


This was this weeks title story in my favority weekly journal and it is one that I have been really looking forward too.
Germany was one of the first countries in Europe to industrialise it`s argicultural sector on an American scale, especialy in the meat production. This has created a vast meat and breeding industry in Germany that produces enought pork to feed all of Europe. I have often read and heard about this economic development and the impact it has had. One of it`s impacts is that small scale farmers and meat producers in France, Spain and elsewhere in Europe are starting to go bankrupt due to the dumping price at which the German industrial meat production sells it`s meat.
Europe has for a very long time resisted the development of industrialising it`s food production, but it seems as if this development is becoming unaviodable.

This article however focuses on the negative sideeffect of this massive meat industry on public health and the enviorment. And I believe it to be an interesting read.

I am wondering if, when encountered with this new big scale industrialisation of the European agricultural sector we will see social developments taking place in European nations similar to those that took place in the US when their agricultural sector was industrialised and which lead to the Federal Meat Inspection Act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Mea...ection_Act

[Minimalist]

Big business always drives out small business.

Its the Wal-Mart business model.