The Ethicurean Blog always has some intriguing posts about the food we eat and how it is raised or shows up at our table. Maybe I’ve been reading them too much, ’cause this whole dependence on corn is beginning to remind me of something else. Are we planning to trade in a petroleum habit for something that is even worse.

Defending their corn: meatpackers, soft drink makers and food companies go after ethanol by Mental Masala – 16 June 2007.

The ethanol boom is inspiring some surprising behavior in the food and farming community. Philip Brasher, the Des Moines Register’s Washington Correspondent, wrote about pushback from the food and drink industry over ethanol in Thursday’s newspaper. The article illustrates how the ethanol boom is leading to some hypocritical demands and Machiavellian strategies.

Let’s start with makers of soft drinks. Brasher writes:

Coca-Cola, which relies on corn syrup to sweeten its soft drinks, has joined chief competitor PepsiCo Inc., food companies like Kellogg Co., and groups representing meatpackers and livestock producers in raising alarms about a Senate energy bill that would require the usage of 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022. Current law requires motorists to use 7.5 billion gallons of biofuels by 2012, a target that will be surpassed in coming months as dozens of new ethanol plants come on line.

Does anyone remember “new coke”? It took them a while to get the formula right didn’t it. So what, old coke was sugar, new coke was…something else, classic coke was/is corn syrup? Makes sense to me. After all of that tweaking and reformulating now they may have to do it again because the revenuer’s are changing the rules and taking their sweetener away from them. Do we still raise cane in these parts? I know they shut down the sugar plant in Sugarland just up the road here.

You know, in my part of the world they sell Mexican Coke in almost all of the stores. You know the stuff with the actual sugar in it…Seems the immigrants, legal or otherwise, don’t like the gringo cola…

It all goes back to the Food Bill…I mean, it all goes back to the Farm Bill and the way Industrial Agriculture has learned to game the system. Isn’t great to live the American Dream?