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Americans represent 05 percent of the global population, but consume some 24 percent of all resources. In many areas of the world, the U.S. is known as the "Consumption Empire," and many people in the Third World believe that we sustain and support the world's largest military force, with hundreds of overseas bases, to guarantee U.S. access to many critical resources. In the last five decades, I have worked in 42 developing nations, and during that time I had many people ask why we send our young men and women to die just to protect a foreign resource we could more easily produce at home. Most recently, such questions are related to the U.S. attack on Iraq, for what seems to many to be an effort to guarantee U.S. access to petroleum resources there. Many of these same people argue that the U.S. could have developed alternative energy sources for far less than the cost of the War in Iraq. I know that all of this is not on the subject of individual consumer choices, but our government's actions do limit options for the individual.

While over 800 million people live on the brink of starvation, worldwide, we use over 80 percent of our corn crop to feed livestock. Over half this corn could be used to help feed people if we all consumed grass-fed beef generally having the same taste and quality as corn-fed beef. Even more corn would have been available if the "Corn Growers Lobby" had not persuaded Congress to push for corn-based ethanol rather than giving priority to cellulosic-based ethanol made from wood chips and crop waste, such as corn stalks and bagasse (the waste from sugar cane). I provide this latter example because the actions of special interest can cause the U.S. Congress to force poor choices upon all consumers.

Lobbyists representing factory farms and giant food companies have persuaded Congress to reduce essential support needed for small farmers to safely, efficiently, and economically grow the local, fresh, more healtful, and organic foods they might produce in sufficient quantities to meet current demand. By creating legislation to help keep organic foods in short supply, and also keep organic food prices very high, the factory farms can continue to make huge profits by selling less healthful more easily produced foods containing hormones, steroids, antibiotics, assorted chemical, heavy metals, and fecal materials in the case of poultry. Once again, individual consumers are not given the best option because a powerful special interest can

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