Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Procter & Gamble was advised by Morgan Stanley and the law
firm Jones Day.
Kellogg's chief executive officer, John Bryant, says, “This is a great business that helps us create
an even better global snacks business. This is an irresistible asset at a good price. So we moved very
quickly.”
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Like most mergers in the food industry, Kellogg's acquisition has very little to do with the economic
efficiency that the Reagan administration championed, or with providing nourishment to the public. It has
everything to do with a multinational processed-food company vying to increase the size of its vast junk
food monopoly. It is about the avaricious financial service companies earning millions of dollars in fees
and interest on the loans. It's about high finance and profit, not feeding people.
Changing the dysfunctional food system and reclaiming our political system means that we must also
fight for the reinvigoration of antitrust law. Lynn makes the case that we have no choice but to fight.
[I]f we choose to ensure the health and flexibility of our economy and our industrial systems and our society; if
we choose to protect our republican way of government . . . [w]e must restore antitrust law to its central role in
protecting the economic rights, properties, and liberties of the American citizen, and first of all use that power
to break Wal-Mart into pieces. We can devise no magic formula or scientific plan for doing so—all antitrust
decisions are inherently subjective in nature. But when we do so, we should be confident that we act squarely
in the American tradition. . . . We should act knowing that the ultimate fault lies not with Wal-Mart but with our
last generation of representatives, who have abjectly failed to enforce laws refined over the course of two cen-
turies. We should act knowing that much similar work lies ahead, against many other giant oligopolies, in many
other sectors. We should act knowing that to falter is to guarantee political and perhaps economic disaster.
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