Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Food & Water Watch analysis of university grant records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests of
online databases.
See Food & Water Watch report “Public Research, Private Gain” at
www.foodandwaterwatch.org
for more informa-
tion.
Kraft's origin dates to 1903, when James Kraft started a cheese-delivery business that merged with a lar-
ger cheese manufacturer and was eventually acquired by National Dairy Products (NDP) in 1930. Thomas
McInnerney, a Chicago pharmacist, had formed NDP by persuading a consortium of investment bankers,
including Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, to invest in a scheme to consolidate the ice cream in-
dustry. By 1930 it was the largest dairy company in the country, demonstrating that the parasitic relation-
ship between the financial services industry and merger mania is not a recent invention. Philip Morris,
known best for its tobacco business, purchased Kraft in 1988 and merged it with another of its subsidiaries,
General Foods, in 1989. During the last twenty years, Kraft has acquired and sold off various parts of the
business. By 2007, Philip Morris—euphemistically renamed Altria in 2003—had completely spun Kraft
off as a public company, and today institutional investors own more than 30 percent of Kraft.
In August 2011, eighteen months after buying European candy giant Cadbury, Kraft announced that it
would spin off its North American grocery business from its global snacks group. Like PepsiCo and Nestlé,
this snack food business would focus on “fast-growing developing markets and instant consumption chan-
nels,” while the North American business would continue to focus on the grocery sales.
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No matter what happens with the Kraft split, the food giant will remain one of the largest and most
powerful of the food processors. Along with the other behemoths of food processing, it will play a major
role in dictating what Americans eat, unless we are able to make major reforms in the areas of agriculture,
food, advertising, and labeling.
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