Food Corruption News Stories

Excerpts of Key Food Corruption News Stories in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

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A new study found the amount of pesticides used on farms was strongly associated with the incidence of many cancers – not only for farmers and their families, but for entire communities. The just-released analysis showed that "agricultural pesticides can increase your risk for some cancers just as much as smoking," says co-author Isain Zapata. Living in places with high pesticide use increased the risk of colon and pancreatic cancers by more than 80 percent. Pesticides are currently an integral part of the country's industrialized agricultural system. About a million pounds of pesticides are used each year, across nearly every state in the country. These chemicals make their way through the food system: a pesticide linked to infertility, for example, is widely found in household staples like Cheerios. When a pesticide is first registered with federal regulators, the vast majority of the information available about it is science conducted by the company who made it. "The presumption in the U.S. is in favor of the safety of the chemical," Burd says. Elsewhere, like the European Union, "chemicals are not presumed safe, they adopt a much more precautionary approach." There's also a revolving door between the [Environmental Protection Agency] and the industry it regulates. Alexandra Dunn, the former assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, for example, is now running CropLife America, the pesticide industry's leading lobbying group. She's only the latest; since 1974, all of the office's directors went on to work for pesticide companies.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on toxic chemicals and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.

Being overweight or obese is a serious, common, and costly chronic disease. More than two in five U.S. adults have obesity. By 2030, nearly one of two adults in the U.S. are projected to be obese. More than 108 million U.S. adults live with obesity and more than 1 billion people are obese around the world. Obesity accounted for nearly $173 billion in medical expenditures in 2019. Recent news that weight loss medications, including GLP-1 receptor agonists like Ozempic and others, are revolutionizing obesity medicine. Some patients lose up to 20 percent of their initial body weight in a year or two on these drugs. Yet a recent lawsuit challenging a top brand heightens concerns about this relatively new class of drugs. More than half of graduating medical students report that the time dedicated to clinical nutrition instruction is insufficient. In a striking study of 115 medical doctors, the majority of participants (65.2 percent) demonstrated inadequate nutrition knowledge, with 30.4 percent of those scoring low having a high self-perception of their nutrition knowledge. The important role of medical doctors in addressing nutrition in clinical practice has been acknowledged by multiple authoritative professional bodies. Ironically, most doctors often lack the knowledge to help a patient eat healthy and to realize the importance of food to wellness. In a contested space filled with commercial interests and influencers, it is critical for a doctor to be a reliable source of evidence-based nutrition.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.

Across the world, over 800 million people spend their days hungry. More than 2 billion have limited access to food. Yet today's global food system produces enough to feed every person on the planet. To account for these trends, we need to look at market concentration, and how a small number of very big companies have come to dominate the production and supply of the food we all eat. The global food system has become much more concentrated in recent years, partly through an increase in mergers and acquisitions, where large firms buy up rival companies until they completely dominate key areas. High levels of market concentration mean less transparency, weaker competition, and more power in the hands of fewer firms. And our research reveals that a rise in the number of mergers and acquisitions is taking place at all stages of the global food system – from seeds and fertilisers to machinery and manufacturing. This is all part of food being increasingly seen as a source not only of human sustenance, but as a profitable investment – or what is known as the "financialisation of food". Just four firms control 44% of the global farm machinery market, two companies control 40% of the global seed market, and four businesses control 62% of the global agrochemicals market. This trend is matched in food retail, with four firms – Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, and Morrisons – estimated to control over 64% of the UK grocery market.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the food system and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.

Corporations across the food system increasingly have the power, by virtue of their size, market domination, political connections, and deep pockets, to set prices, meddle with science, evade regulation, and write the rules to benefit themselves. "Big Ag" and "Big Food" are shorthand for a sprawling collection of giant, often multinational corporations that wield enormous market power throughout our food system. Some of these companies are household names–for example, Tyson Foods, John Deere, and General Mills–while others are virtually unknown to consumers. Those lesser-known companies tend to operate up the supply chain, and include Bayer and Syngenta, which sell the seeds farmers need and the pesticides they've come to rely on, and Nutrien and CF Industries Holdings, which manufacture synthetic fertilizers. The consequences of extreme agriculture and food industry concentration ... include supply chain instability, unsafe working conditions and downward pressure on wages, and higher food prices for consumers. Some 40% of farmland nationally is owned, in ever-larger tracts, by absentee landlords who don't farm but rent to others (in the Corn Belt bullseye of Iowa, it's more than half). Billionaires, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, are among the largest private owners of US farmland. And corporations and investment funds like Nuveen and Manulife are buying up farmland at a rate that should alarm you.

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Every five years or so, Congress reauthorizes a comprehensive, multibillion-dollar law that has a major impact not only on farmers and ranchers–who make up less than 2 percent of the US population–but also on the environment, public health, and the economy. Generically called the "farm" bill, it is actually a farm and food bill that supports a wide range of programs, including ones that cover crop insurance, financial credit, and export subsidies for farmers, as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. SNAP, which eats up 80 percent of the bills' total budget, currently serves 41 million low-income Americans. A major ... reason farm and food bills routinely fail to live up to their original intent is the undue influence the agribusiness sector has over Congress, which it exerts via campaign contributions and lobbying. The sector includes commodity crop traders, meat and poultry processors, fertilizer and pesticide makers, multinational food and beverage companies, giant supermarket chains, and all of their related trade associations. The agribusiness sector spent more than $793 million on lobbying on a range of issues between 2019 and 2023. Top spenders included the American Crystal Sugar Company, the American Farm Bureau Federation, Koch Industries, and the US Chamber of Commerce. Agribusiness's influence peddling is largely overlooked by the mainstream news media.

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Food costs have skyrocketed. Americans paid roughly 25 percent more on groceries and dining out this March than they paid in January 2020, outpacing the rate of general inflation. Over that same period, the companies behind the country's 10 largest grocery and restaurant brands have together returned or pledged to return more than $77 billion to shareholders. The Department of Agriculture calculates that the average American spent 11 percent of their disposable income on food in 2022, the highest amount in nearly four decades. Grocery prices rose over 10 percent that year alone, the largest annual increase since the 1970s. According to an analysis by Food and Water Watch, a corporate watchdog group, food costs for an average family of four living on a "thrifty" budget increased 50 percent from January 2020 to January 2024, from $654 to $976 a month. The number of households facing food insecurity grew by 3.5 million between 2020 and 2022. Some 28 million adults in America lack constant access to enough food to lead an active and healthy life, forcing them to eat unbalanced diets, cut portion sizes, and skip meals. The nation's biggest food processors and retailers [are] spending billions of their record profits buying back their own shares on the open market to inflate stock value and issuing generous dividends. The main purpose of buybacks is to enrich senior corporate executives and hedge-fund managers.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and financial inequality from reliable major media sources.

The Grab [is] a riveting new documentary which outlines the move by national governments, financial investors and private security forces to snap up food and water resources. What oil was to the 20th century, food and water will be to the 21st – precious, geopolitically powerful and contested. "The 20th century had Opec," says [Nate] Halverson ... a journalist with the Center for Investigative Reporting. "In the future, we're going to have Food Pec. [In] rural La Paz county, Arizona, a Saudi company bought about 15 square miles of farmland [and] drained the region's aquifers beyond a generation's worth of rain. Residents describe going without water, discovering empty wells, their houses cracked and sinking, with little recourse. The film connects their confusion to the despair of Zambian farmers displaced, via a complicated and westernized deeds system, by mercenary militias to make way for commercial farmland controlled by outside actors from various countries – China, Gulf states, the US. The culprit is not one country or company but a shadowy network of mercenary interests. Halverson and his team [obtained] ... a year's worth of emails within the private equity firm Frontier Resource Group, founded by Erik Prince, who also founded and was the CEO of the military contracting company Blackwater – a notorious mercenary group during the US invasion of Iraq. The emails, from 2012, reveal a clear plan to obtain, by whatever means necessary, land in Africa to fulfill competing national interests. "I just want people to have great information ... because right now the people that have this information are the CIA, and Wall Street, and foreign governments and very wealthy people."

Note: Why is the founder of Blackwater, a US defense contractor tied to countless scandals and criminal activities, buying up land in Africa? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.

More than a dozen countries require that companies print nutritional labels on the front of food packages – a move that's come as the rate of diet-related diseases, like hypertension, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and obesity, increases worldwide. So far, the United States does not require any front-of-package nutrition labels. But that could soon change. The US Food and Drug Administration is currently developing front-of-package labels that it could require corporations to begin printing as early as 2027. Despite significant opposition from food companies ... the FDA is evaluating different mandatory label designs to determine which is most effective at informing consumers, but also which is legal under US corporate free speech laws. The labels under consideration by the FDA ... mark only "nutrients of concern", like sugar and sodium – not-ultra processed foods. But many advocates say that should change. UPFs are industrially formulated products made out of substances extracted from foods, like sugars, salts, hydrogenated fats, bulking agents and starches. Today, UPFs make up 73% of the US food supply, according to Northeastern University's Network Science Institute, and provide the average US adult with more than 60% of their daily calories. But research is increasingly linking UPFs to a whole host of health issues: from cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes to colorectal cancer and depression.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.

Unhealthy foods are becoming a silent epidemic, with one in seven adults and one in eight children globally now effectively addicted to ultra-processed foods. It's time to address this issue at its source: advertising. Consumption of junk food begins not with what goes in our mouths but with the messaging into our brains via advertising. UK junk food advertising is an industry worth tens of millions of pounds working to glamorise unhealthy diets. My own work looks at outdoor advertising, such as on billboards and bus stops. In 2022, among the biggest spenders on outdoor advertising were the likes of Coca-Cola, McDonald's, KFC, Subway and MĂĽller. They spent Ł195m filling public spaces with monuments to fat, salt and sugar. Advertisers will say this is simply a question of choice, and that junk food ads respond to consumer demand. But do any of us feel deprived of choice by the absence of ads touting the supposed health benefits of smoking? Of course not. Society would be better off without ads for junk food on street corners. The good news? We can take action. Local authorities can introduce ethical ad policies that ban junk food ads on council-owned sites. Somerset council recently took this step, following in the footsteps of Bristol and Transport for London, whose junk food ad ban was predicted to save the NHS more than Ł200m. Outdoor advertising offers a poorly regulated platform for big corporations to push unhealthy diets on an unassuming public.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.

Epigenetics refers to shifts in gene expression that occur without changes to the DNA sequence. Some epigenetic changes are an aspect of cell function, such as those associated with aging. However, environmental factors also affect the functions of genes, meaning people's behaviors affect their genetics. For instance, identical twins develop from a single fertilized egg, and as a result, they share the same genetic makeup. However, as the twins age, their appearances may differ due to distinct environmental exposures. One twin may eat a healthy balanced diet, whereas the other may eat an unhealthy diet, resulting in differences in the expression of their genes that play a role in obesity. Nutritional epigenetics is the study of how your diet, and the diet of your parents and grandparents, affects your genes. The dietary choices a person makes today affects the genetics of their future children. A ... study in sheep showed that a paternal diet supplemented with the amino acid methionine given from birth to weaning affected the growth and reproductive traits of the next three generations. Methionine is an essential amino acid involved in DNA methylation, an example of an epigenetic change. These studies underscore the enduring impact parents' diets have on their children. They also serve as a powerful motivator for would-be parents and current parents to make more healthy dietary choices, as the dietary choices parents make affect their children's diets.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.

What Americans eat, how they diet and exercise, what nutritional supplements they take, the sugar content of their sodas, the high fructose corn syrup in their processed foods, and the price of their diabetes medication have long been objects of endless gambling on Wall Street. Now, with drugs like Mounjaro, Wegovy, and Ozempic in the mix, new vistas of corporate exploitation have opened up. It's not a conspiracy theory that food addiction is a tool of corporate profiteering. Consider that tobacco companies, upon being regulated out of the business of addictive smoking, turned their sights onto addictive eating. Health columnist Anahad O'Connor wrote, "In America, the steepest increase in the prevalence of hyper-palatable foods occurred between 1988 and 2001–the era when Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds owned the world's leading food companies." Many of these ultra-processed foods are specially marketed to children, which in turn can change their brain chemistry to desire those foods for life. Alongside the aggressive marketing of hyper-palatable foods is a massively profitable weight-loss industry that preys upon individual shame to the tune of more than $60 billion a year. In fact, some of the same companies pushing high-calorie foods are in the business of weight loss. The ultra-processed food industry is becoming symbiotic with the weight-loss drug industry. The former ensures we eat poorly and the latter is there to feed off our shame.

Note: This is strangely comparable to when pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma LP secretly pursued a plan to become "an end-to-end pain provider" by selling both opioids and drugs to treat opioid addiction. It is now estimated that 1 in 8 adults in the US have taken Ozempic or another weight-loss drug. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.

Kevin, a sixth grader at P.S. 146 in Queens who hopes to one day work as a doctor, said he's always tried to study nutrition. But it wasn't until he participated in the Hip Hop H.E.A.L.S., or Healthy Eating and Living in Schools, after-school program last year that he found an engaging way to learn about it at school. The program, developed in partnership between Columbia University neurologist Olajide Williams and hip hop artist Doug E. Fresh, relies on music to help teach students about healthy eating. What Kevin participated in was one of two after-school healthy eating programs that are being studied as part of a partnership between the after-school provider New York Edge and Columbia University. About 300 students across 20 school sites were provided with either the Hip Hop H.E.A.L.S. program, or NY Edge's Food Explorers program, with their nutritional choices tracked over the course of 10 or more weeks. Through the partnership, researchers aim to learn if the educational interventions from these programs can help kids make healthier choices, particularly at chain restaurants. The focus on teaching students to navigate settings like chain restaurants is especially important as many kids in the programs live in "food swamps," or areas with few healthy food options, Williams said. "We'd love to have community gardens everywhere," he added. "But the reality is many people live in food swamps. It's about how we get them to make better decisions within those swamps."

Note: Explore more positive stories on healing our bodies and the power of art.

"People think that Bali is a paradise, but if you come inside you see it's a different story," said Ni Nyoman Sri Wahyuni. For 12 years she has been caring for orphans, autistic children and children with Down Syndrome. "Many Balinese believe that these children are cursed, due to bad karma." children with very low IQs are not received by Sekolah Luar Biasa (Special Needs Schools). Such children, many with autism and Down Syndrome, have little to no support. This is what inspired Sri Wahyuni and her husband, I Ketut Sadia, to open the Yayasan Widya Guna school 10 years ago. Today Yayasan Widya Guna provides daily schooling to over 100 students, both disabled and non-disabled. Besides providing English, exercise and art classes to the children, it also teaches organic farming and promotes a healthy diet among students. "We've received lots of information suggesting that poor nutrition is a factor in developing autism," said Sri Wahyuni. The foundation serves meals with lots of vegetables, and tries to not include too many fried foods. Sri Wahyuni says that kids who used to catch colds and the flu rarely fall sick these days. A student with epilepsy, whose parents complained was having three seizures a day, has stopped having seizures completely since he started attending the yayasan. The Yayasan Widya Guna ... also offers English classes for local children attending regular schools.

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When a doctor told Susan Levin her 4-year-old son, Ben, was autistic, she was shocked. "Oh my God. What are we going to do?" Levin recalls. "Everyone knew autism was a lifelong disorder and couldn't be cured." Except that in Ben's case, it could be. And it was. The family's journey ... is detailed in her new memoir, "Unlocked: A Family Emerging From the Shadows of Autism." Levin is part of a growing group of people who are paying more attention to diet – organic, gluten- and casein-free among them – as a way to treat the symptoms of autism and other disorders. Now 12, Ben is studying for his bar mitzvah. Eight years after that chilling diagnosis, he's become more empathetic, frequently saying "I love you" to his mother, his father and sister. Levin says his newfound compassion is nothing short of a miracle. While the scientific verdict is still out on diet as a cure, statistics point to a definite link between gastrointestinal issues and autism. A 2012 study published by the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology found a direct link between GI issues and behavior. As many as 70 percent of children with autism have gastrointestinal issues at some point during childhood or adolescence. Kathleen DiChiara ... was diagnosed with sudden onset neuropathy, which left her unable to walk. When the doctors told her there was little to be done, she went back to school to study. She's now a nutrition educator, chef and speaker who credits an all-organic diet for healing not only herself, but her 11- year-old son, Steven, who'd been diagnosed as autistic but is no longer considered to be.

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In the 1979 murder trial of Dan White, his legal team seemed to attempt to blame his heinous actions on junk-food consumption. The press dubbed the tactic, the "Twinkie defense." Various studies have demonstrated that consuming nutritious, whole foods rather than processed, high-fat, high-sugar foods improves mental health, mood, and academic outcomes. All heavily factor into one's likelihood of committing crime. In the 1980s. Under the direction of a nutritionist, food staff secretly altered the diet at a juvenile detention facility in Virginia to reduce the amount of refined sugar fed to inmates. Social scientist and criminologist Dr. Stephen J. Schoenthaler oversaw the trial. He found that prisoners on the better diet had a 45% lower incidence of documented disciplinary actions. This preliminary success led to a dozen trials at other correctional facilities. "In the twelve correctional institutions that we studied, through 1985, we found that there was a 47% reduction in documented offenses, infractions, and other indicators of antisocial behavior," Schoenthaler said. Is it possible that investing in better prison nutrition would save money overall? Schoenthaler thinks so. "A single preventable infraction that leads to four months of additional jail or prison time might cost us $10,000 or more. If you look at this through the larger lens of prevention and treatment along the entire criminal justice continuum, then the financial savings would be incalculable," he said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.

Seventeen major food manufacturers earned an average grade of F for their lack of progress in reducing pesticides in the products they sell, according to a new analysis by As You Sow, a nonprofit specializing in shareholder advocacy. "It's disheartening to see so many bad grades across the board for these major food production companies," said Jane Houlihan, research director for Healthy Babies, Bright Futures. "Studies find the highest amounts of pesticides in some of the most popular foods children eat – berries and apples, for example," said Houlihan. "Pesticides are also found in breast milk and umbilical cord blood, meaning that exposures start before birth and continue through infancy and beyond." Long-term exposure to pesticides has been linked to cancer, asthma, anxiety, Parkinson's disease, depression, and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, according to the report. Kale, collard and mustard greens contained the largest number of pesticides – 103 types – while nearly 90% of blueberry and green bean samples had concerning findings, according to the analysis. Green bean samples contained extremely high levels of acephate, an insecticide banned for use in the vegetable in 2011. Blueberry samples contained acephate, phosmet and malathion – organophosphates which interfere with the normal function of the nervous system. What can consumers do? Choosing organic foods is a surefire way to reduce pesticide exposure.

Note: Read the complete study, titled, "Pesticides in the Pantry: Transparency & Risk in Food Supply Chains." A groundbreaking study found that eating a completely organic diet (even just for a week) can dramatically reduce the presence of pesticide levels in our bodies. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.

The Environmental Protection Agency must ban the toxic weedkiller paraquat – a step more than 60 other countries have taken because of its threats to human health. Paraquat has been linked to Parkinson's disease, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, childhood leukemia and more. While the EPA says paraquat is too toxic for use on U.S. golf courses, it still allows use of the herbicide on farms. This threatens the health of the people who apply it, other farmworkers and those who live or work near crop fields where it's used. More than 10 million pounds of paraquat were sprayed in 2018 alone, twice as much as has been sprayed since 2014. While much of the paraquat applied winds up in the soil for years, the chemical can also drift through the air or linger in dust. Syngenta makes paraquat in China and the United Kingdom. The Swiss-based company, which was acquired by a Chinese state-owned chemical conglomerate, has long understood the chemical's health risks. But it spent decades hiding this knowledge from the public and the EPA. Ironically, Chinese, U.K. and Swiss farmers are prohibited by their respective governments from using paraquat due to potential health risks from exposure. But the weedkiller isn't prohibited in the U.S. Ingesting even tiny amounts of paraquat can be lethal. Recently, findings from researchers at UCLA show paraquat sprayed within 500 meters ... of where people lived and worked could more than double a person's odds of developing Parkinson's.

Note: Read more about the dangers of paraquat. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.

A US court this week banned three weedkillers widely used in American agriculture, finding that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) broke the law in allowing them to be on the market. The ruling is specific to three dicamba-based weedkillers manufactured by Bayer, BASF and Syngenta, which have been blamed for millions of acres of crop damage and harm to endangered species and natural areas across the midwest and south. Discovery documents turned up in the litigation showed the companies knew that their dicamba weedkillers would probably lead to off-target crop damage. This is the second time a federal court has banned these weedkillers since they were introduced for the 2017 growing season. In 2020, the ninth circuit court of appeals issued its own ban, but months later the Trump administration reapproved the weedkilling products. But a federal judge in Arizona ruled on Monday that the EPA made a crucial error in reapproving dicamba, finding the agency did not post it for public notice and comment as required by law. US district judge David Bury wrote ... that it was a "very serious" violation and that if EPA had done a full analysis, it probably would not have made the same decision. Bury wrote that the EPA did not allow many people who are deeply affected by the weedkiller – including specialty farmers, conservation groups and more – to comment. "The evidence has shown that dicamba cannot be used without causing massive and unprecedented harm to farms as well as endangering plants and pollinators," said George Kimbrell [with] the Center for Food Safety, which litigated the case.

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A new EWG peer-reviewed study has found chlormequat, a little-known pesticide, in four out of five, or 80 percent, of people tested. The groundbreaking analysis of chlormequat in the bodies of people in the U.S. rings alarm bells, because the chemical is linked to reproductive and developmental problems in animal studies, suggesting the potential for similar harm to humans. EWG's research, published February 15 in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, tested for the presence of chlormequat in urine collected from 96 people between 2017 and 2023. The chemical was found in the urine of 77 of them. We detected the chemical in 92 percent of oat-based foods purchased in May 2023, including Quaker Oats and Cheerios. The fact that so many people are exposed raises concerns about its potential impact on public health, since animal studies link chlormequat to reduced fertility, harm to the reproductive system and altered fetal growth. Environmental Protection Agency regulations allow the chemical to be used on ornamental plants only – not food crops – grown in the U.S. But its use is permitted on imported oats and other foods sold here. Many oats and oat products consumed in the U.S. come from Canada. Chlormequat was not allowed on oats sold in the U.S. before 2018, when the Trump EPA gave first-time approval for some amount of the chemical on imported oats. The same administration in 2020 increased the allowable level.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.

Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all. They are among America's most vulnerable laborers. If they refuse to work, some can jeopardize their chances of parole or face punishment like being sent to solitary confinement. The goods ... prisoners produce wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products found in most American kitchens, from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour, Coca-Cola and Riceland rice. They are on the shelves of virtually every supermarket in the country, including Kroger, Target, Aldi and Whole Foods. It's completely legal. Enshrined in the Constitution by the 13th Amendment, slavery and involuntary servitude are banned – except as punishment for a crime. With about 2 million people locked up, U.S. prison labor from all sectors has morphed into a multibillion-dollar empire. Almost all of the country's state and federal adult prisons have some sort of work program, employing around 800,000 people. Altogether, labor tied specifically to goods and services produced through state prison industries brought in more than $2 billion in 2021. "Slavery has not been abolished," said Curtis Davis, who spent more than 25 years at [Louisiana's Angola] penitentiary. "It is still operating in present tense," he said. "Nothing has changed."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in prisons and in the food system from reliable major media sources.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.