Stephan: In North Carolina gerrymandering, and voter suppression have skewed voting to emphasize White voters, and racism is a chronic problem. As a result Republican christofascist governance holds sway.
The social outcome as this report lays out, has been to turn the rural parts of the state into a kind of third world plantation economy where a child born in a rural county has less chance of seeing their first birthday than a child born in Botswana, Africa, and industrial agriculture, due to lack of regulatory oversight, is literally poisoning the population, Black, White and Hispanic, in those counties due to the runoff of animal feces, glyphosates, and hormones.
China seeing the situation, as the report describes, is taking advantage of these Republican policies to outsource its pork production, and the problems attendant to industrial animal husbandry. It is just another example of why Republicans cannot govern effectively, if by effectively one means that social policies are designed for the wellbeing of the population being governed.
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In July 2013, Larry Pope, the CEO of Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in America, was called to testify before a U.S. Senate committee about the pending sale of his company to a Chinese conglomerate now known as WH Group. The $7.1 billion purchase, the largest-ever foreign takeover of its kind, had attracted concerns. The Chinese pork manufacturer had a checkered health record, allegedly feeding its hogs illegal chemicals, and Smithfield had a long history of environmental problems at its farms, including a $12 million fine for several thousand clean-water violations. But the worries did not stop there. The Chinese government had a track record of using nominally private entities as proxies for state power. “To have a Chinese food company controlling a major U.S. meat supplier, without shareholder accountability, is a bit concerning,” said Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley. “A safe and sustainable food supply is critical to national security. How might this deal impact our national security?”
