Please help out and give us a donation however small, thank you !!!
  This document last updated 8/25/2008

My name is Dan Hyman. The following is my personal editorial comments on this issue...
These thoughts are my own. Take them for what you want.
I am not affiliated with the Cornucopia Institute, I do not speak for them and they have not reviewed
or approved / disapproved or made any comment on the following .

the following information is not the position or comments of anyone but myself:

The California Almond Industry is divided into basically three closely related groups.

First Group:  is that of Growers. In this group are folks, like myself, that own planted Orchards of Almond trees.

Second Group:  is that of  Handlers. They do not grow or have trees. They are just business men making a middle mans profit by buying Almonds from the Growers and re-selling to the third group the retail consumers. They are, however, commonly engaged in shipping and export operations to foreign countries. For purposes of this editorial it is important to understand that over the years, a very few Handlers (most notably Blue Diamond Inc & Paramount Farms Inc ) have achieved market domination over other many smaller Handlers. I refer hereafter to these few dominant Handlers as the "mega-handlers". In no way are all handlers responsible for the current state of affairs, just a select few. Some smaller handlers are in fact growers themselves, and have common interests with you and me, and in that regard they should be supported. It is interesting to note, however, the great numerical imbalance of "handlers" vs.. "growers". There are over 6,000 growers, and only 100 or so "handlers". Of the 100 handlers, about five or six have excessive market domination over the remaining handlers, and now are attempting to wrestle economic domination over the entire base of "growers".  Under certain conditions the great dream of the natural justice of a free market fails when the system becomes "imbalanced".  This has, historically, led to anti-trust legislation and enforcement action against "bullying" in the market place.

Third Group: The Retail Consumers. They may, in fact, be the actual people that eat the nuts themselves or they may be a small Grocery Store or large Chain operation, a food manufacturer,  a broker, or an indirect reseller. In any event they have no real stake in the Almond Industry as their sole business. Their business is not soley dependant on Almonds, they are just as likely to be buying soup to nuts and offering it to their customer base which may be here in the USA or may be in any foreign country in the world.

For over 150 years these three groups operated with a good deal of harmony and cooperation, Now there is an attempt by a small group of the Handlers to fully capture the operations of the Growers and to fully control the type of product that is permitted to be handed to the Retail Consumers.  Over the years, a number of Handlers (Blue Diamond Inc & Paramount Farms Inc ) have achieved market domination over other smaller Handlers. With that success comes problems. This document attempts to explain why and how those problems evolved.

The take over attempt by the mega handlers is being sold to the popular press as a "food safety issue". It has nothing to do with food safety, it has everything to do with money. Why do I say that? because:    If you, somehow,  ate your way through the 4.8 Billion pounds of the Almond Crop over 4 years in which there were only 150 reported illnesses One pound at a time You are more likely to hit your State Lotto  5 times  before you are likely to get sick from eating One pound of Almonds! Stated another way: You would have to eat 8 million pounds of Almonds each year for 4 years before you had any statistical probability of getting sick !   Does that sound like a 'Food Safety Issue' to You ?  The Center for Disease Control states that the reported number of Salmonella cases in the US is fairly consistent at about 40,000 a year. Since 2004 the number of illnesses according to the CDC attributed to Almonds is less than 0.072 % . That is less than three quarters of a tenth of one percent, a statistically insignificant number.

Additionally, if Food Safety is such a concern to the California Almond Board and to the mega handlers then why not pasteurize all the Almonds including the exported nuts to foreign countries? They were forced to comment on this question in the published ruling in the Federal Register. It is a little lengthy to quote here, but suffice to say that their response is the biggest load of crap ever written by an attorney! Somehow they have concluded that if even one person gets sick in the USA from an Almond that that event will kill the industry, but if a hundred thousand people actually were to die in Europe from eating Almonds (..don't worry it's not going to happen, this is just an example) then that event won't hurt the industry a bit. It's a damn lie and they need to be held accountable for it !

It is now against the law to purchase unpasteurized Almonds within the USA and the "Almond Police" threaten to investigate and prosecute violators. I think it is time to consider the question: "How the hell has this happened, and what on earth can we do about it ?" To people in the Agri Businesses of California much of the answers are self evident. But not everyone is in that business. I will try to explain, as best I can, in laymen's terms how we got ourselves in a situation where you can no longer buy the Almonds of your choice from a Grower in California.

To figure all this out lets start with two things that I would like you to think about. One is a riddle and one is a question.

1.)..riddle.. What is the one commonality that all living things on the planet earth have in common?

2.) ..question...  What started the Almond Board and the largest Corporations of multi million dollar handlers and exporters of those Almonds on the path to take whole raw natural living fruit off the market?

My answer to the riddle is that all living things have a striking commonality that controls and affects their whole lives from the minute of birth to the day of death. It is common from the smallest one cell protozoan, the tiniest single virus, to the largest oak tree, from the smallest fish in the ocean to the largest elephant in the plains of Africa, and it is certainly common to all human beings.  That common trait is the overpowering will and desire to keep on living no mater what the adversity, no matter what the threat. If you are alive, you fight to survive, you fight for your life.

The answer to question number two has everything to do with riddle number one.  The Almond Board and the multi million dollars handlers are, yes, living creatures!  Many people do not think of businesses and regulatory government agencies as living creatures, but if you have a friend that is a lawyer, just ask him/her. The answer will surprise you. In fact under the eyes of the courts corporations are treated, in many ways, as living entitles because, in fact they are. Think about it. Most groups, the business that you work for, your family when it pulls together in times of need, the police force in your local town, the Army when it goes to battle, all understand themselves to be something more than just a collection of parts and pieces. They begin to act as a complete creature, a living thing. And, they begin to act solely in their own interests, They will not tolerate a threat to them, they want to live on to tomorrow, and their identities, their understanding of who they are is tied to the fight for life.  They are only comfortable and secure when they have made the habitat around them become a safe place where they feel that they have a reasonable chance to survive !

OK, so if we take, for purposes of this narrative the largest Handlers of California Almonds (Paramount Farms Inc, and Blue Diamond Inc, and several others that I do not want to mention now, I will explain why I refrain from naming them later on..) to be living creatures and paramountly (no pun intended) interested in their own survival, we can easily see why they are doing what they are, if we try for a minute, to walk a mile in their shoes. From their point of view they have a couple of problems that are beginning to threaten them and their survival.

One is that the world is a changing place, it is changing around everyone large business included, and eCommerce has threatened brick and mortar stores in a big way. Also the cost of obtaining raw product (the food that they the "big animal" eats, if you will allow the comparison) has become harder and more expensive to obtain. Their food supply is being diverted to others, not them.  What was once handy, easy, just take for the picking, cheap food for the "big animal at the top of the food chain" is now being direct marketed by local growers to others. What is worse is that, in the process of direct marketing , these growers are actually educating a buying public that used to be pretty naive about what they were consuming ! Now the public sees that fresher is better, raw and natural is better, real Almonds lower cholesterol and may have powerful anti cancer actions (the USDA Food and Nutritional Research Labs under grants from NSF and the USDA itself now has large well funded projects to scientifically look at this) .  Where does that leave our cute and cuddly "big animal"?  Threatened, that's where it leaves him !

The other major problem the big fuzzy cute cuddly guy has is that he is now also threatened by actions from others for his sins of the past. Like a big brown bear that swaggers through the forest and passes a hive of bees, the bees have learned, the big cute bear is not such a nice player in the sport of life. He is a ruthless predator, a short term opportunist that will cut corners and destroys more than he takes for no good reason. Now when he passes by the hives the bees that circle constantly around the hive do their job. They go after him and teach him a lesson. They are sending him a message: "Yesterday you destroyed our brood chambers when all you really wanted was a little honey." The bear quickly realizes that the payback hurts ! Same with our big players in the Almond Handler Industry. Yesterday Paramount Farms took too many short cuts and may have shipped contaminated Almonds (but maybe not, more on this later..). They took more money than they deserved for no good reason and are accused of delivering bad product.  Today the swarm of bees (plaintiffs attorneys) are stinging them. It hurts, and again, as it drains the big guys capital and the investors run for cover, the animal is, yet again, threatened.

To survive and counter these life threatening issues the big players concoct an elaborate game plan. They know that it will take several years and good deals of money will have to be invested, but they are not stupid, the board of directors are loaded with well trained MBAs, attorneys, and they can hire expert consultants, take what they need to accomplish the goal and pay-off the rest if things get rough and tumble.

Here's how the plan works:

The expert businessmen running the show at the mega handlers know all about the history of Agri-Business in the State of California. In fact some of them come to the Almond Industry from another closely related Agri-Business in the  Central San Joaquin Valley. That being the raisin industry.

Some years ago the consortium of E&J Gallo Inc. and the RAC (Raisin Advisory Committee) pulled off the market cornering scheme of all time. It made the now historical attempts to corner the Silver market by the Hunt Brothers look like the small time. But, unlike the Hunt Brother scheme which failed, the Gallo/RAC plan worked !   It still works, and is very much in place to this day!  After convincing all that the Raisin Industry needed something called "market stabilization" (whatever the hell that is..) the Board of Directors of the RAC which controls the Federal Raisin Marketing Order promulgated regulation that required all raisin producers to sell only to licensed raisin handlers, and authorized those handlers to "hold back" (a euphemism for "stealing") a percentage of payment to the grower. The end result of all this was that hundreds of small family owned vineyards were forced out of business.  As the raisin processors/handlers pinched off the spot market cash price for the raisins and held back 17% percent of the payment under the new Marketing Order, E&J Gallo Inc, the largest and only buyer of the Thompson Grapes that the grower could sell to lowered the spot market price for the green fruit. The Grower was caught smack in the middle. If he made sun dried raisins from the grapes he got nothing for them, if he did not make raisins and tried to sell the green fruit to Gallo the offering price point from Gallo was lowered to the growers cost of production. Growers went broke right and left. Gallo eventually got what they wanted. It took several years, but now E&J Gallo Inc actually fully controls the spot market price for Thompson Seedless Grape production in the State of California. So many years have passed, and so many have forgotten what horrible corruption started the scheme that the situation has now a twisted air of respectability. In a sort of bizarre black humor, Gallo now actually has an "announcement date" every year where they publish the "set price" for this years Thompson crop. The industry waits with baited breath every year for the announcement. Not a pound is bought or sold throughout the industry until Gallo announces "the price".

All the above is not lost on the Almond mega handlers. They understand what the key is to the doors of the magic kingdom. It is a Federal Marketing Order !

Recall that our beloved big fuzzy cuddly bear has more than one problem. It's not just that he needs to reliably and fully control a cheap food source that only he has access to. He needs to do something about those pesky bees that are guarding the hive. He needs to get rid of the attorneys and the expensive, draining law suits that they sting with. Well here is the real beauty of "the plan". I have to give credit where credit is due. We have one smart and crafty bear here. He will not just be satisfied with controlling the spot cash price for Almonds, he has other fish to fry as well.

By stating in the marketing order (marketing orders have the force of law, all must comply) that nuts for sale in the United States or shipped to  Canada or Mexico must be pasteurized  the industry as a whole will have established a legal defense barrier to the stinging bees.  They suppose, but I am not sure that they have this exactly right in the long term, that the "pasteurization" of all Almonds will convince a jury, the next time paramount farms ships more contaminated product, (which they will, I will explain why later..) that the bees will never make it to first base in court, that the stingers will be removed.  Additionally one of the plans basic hidden inner concepts is that it will knock out most minor handlers and all direct sales by growers. Here's why: Growers that try to Direct Sell will be forced to become handlers under the new provisions of the order and a pasteurization plant, which is required of all handlers,  is between 1.5 and over 2 million dollars to install. No one but Paramount Farms and Blue Diamond (and a very few select others) have the capitalization to install such machinery.  Beginning to understand how the plan works?  Not only does the big fuzzy bear now have a legal defense theory he also has a way to make it virtually impossible for others to compete with him for his food supply in the handler and direct sales marketing of California Almonds. It simply costs too much to play the game, so the smaller players fold up their tent and head for home. This leaves the playing field open only to those that initiated the scheme in the first place. Like the successful E&J Gallo/RAC scheme the California Almond Board/Mega-Handlers hope their scheme will work as well.  It is a proven business plan of operation and it will work unless you and me stop them.

Where does that leave the California Almond Board in all this?  Why do they want to go along with all this?  Well, my theory is, again, survival. In the world of beaurocrasy and big bought and paid for lobbyist controlled Federal Politics, survival is, to a large extent, a matter of "empire building". What used to be the humble little California Almond Board is now seeing its chance to prosper and grow. It wants to be a permanent part of the landscape and a big tough immovable player in the realm of Federal Beaurocrasy. It sees the opportunity to move into the public eye using the issue of Food Safety as its spring board. From public high visibility, it hopes to receive funding, and garner a feeling in the society as "necessary". If it has those two items, funding and necessity, then it has what it needs to survive, food and a safe habitat.

There are other reasons that the California Almond Board wants to pursue this. One is, of course, that its Board Of Directors are largely members of the mega industry that it supposedly is watching.  It's the old fox guarding the hen house problem, only this time it ain't a bunch of chickens, it's more like 5 billion dollars in annual sales.  Hardly "chicken feed". 

The other issue is a problem that is pervading our society in general, and the California Almond Board has fallen victim to it as well. The concept of "police enforcement" has become very popular in our society in the last decade, and it has really taken root over the last few years. The techniques of police investigation are creeping into every element of the government.  The most popular shows on television are now "reality based cop shows".  The public is just licking it up, and loves it.  It is now commonly felt in the general society that there are few problems that can not be solved by a cop and a prosecutor.  In the Sate of California this reality is endemic in State Government. The California Fire Marshals Office has instructed all its personnel to treat all fire incidents as a "potential crime scene".  The California Air Resources Board and the Air districts within the State now have full time "investigators" and their primary focus is to find crimes against the public air and "prosecute the wrong doers".  The California Almond board is no exception to all this. I affectionately refer to them as the "Almond Police".  Full time investigators are now, running around all over the State in the taxpayers vehicles, on the lookout for those evil Almond Growers that are committing the crime of growing and selling almonds. Never mind that growers have been growing and selling almonds for over 150 years in the State of California as a honorable and noble profession.  Now it is a crime and it must be "investigated" and "prosecuted".  Again, all this is a form of "empire building" and a basic common trait of living organisms: the overpowering will and desire to keep on living. The Almond Board feels it must have it's tomorrow too. It's just that it lost the vision to get to tomorrow with honor and morality.

I mentioned previously that I would touch on two topics before I left. One is the nebulous reference I made to the Almond Boards directors. There is a whole stew brewing about understanding and revealing who has the necessary talents to use the Administrative Procedures Act in such a creative way to sneak by public comment periods in under 45 days and to circumvent proper notification to the industry as a whole and to the general public. I have specific information that has been relayed to me by reliable industry sources (remember I am a grower, I live and work here, I know many folks in the Almond Business) about how this happened, who advised who, where the necessary legal expertise came from to accomplish the goals. Whistle blowing is a tactic that is usually reserved until the end, if there is no other means of resolution possible. So we will do just that. We will leave the subject for now, but it may pop up again, you never know.

The other subject had to do with the concept of pasteurization as a legal defense, and the supposed "best intentions" of the Almond Industry as led by the California Almond Board to make contaminated Almonds safe for human consumption by pasteurizing them. In a previous life I was very near to scientists that worked day in and day out with ugly little bugs that needed to be controlled. My dear brother is, or was, he is now retired, a scientist at the Salk Institute in San Diego California. When I was younger I was around their world of micro-biology and I have discussed this plan of "pasteurization" that the Almond Board proposes with experts in the field.  Here's the short of the long of it from a scientific standpoint. The whole concept is scientifically flawed. Because of the way almonds are now boxed, stored and handled, the nuts will actually remain, and that is the keyword: remain pasteurized for only a few minutes after the process. The only way to achieve long term sterility is to nitrogen flush then vacuum pack in specialized plastic containers.  Additionally all possibility of cross contamination must be eliminated in the entire "end to end" journey of the nuts until the moment of consumption. This pretty much means that someone will have to find a way to convince, supervise and control, folks at Fleming Foods and Costco, and others to keep the kid on the warehouse fork lift from picking up the pallet of fresh chicken fryers, before he moves the pallet of California Almonds ! Cross contamination is a 100% reality in the food industry like it or not. The lawyers for the Almond Board are going to find themselves in every court in the land trying to dream up an argument to answer the question: "Weren't your efforts at pasteurization really a sham to avoid responsibility because you knew that the issues was not with the almonds but with the packing storing and handling later. You knew that was the source of the contamination, but you chose to do nothing about it"

As long as we are on the subject of pseudo-science masquerading as fact I want to touch briefly on the flawed "science" that implicated Almonds as a source of Salmonella illness in the first place. This entire house of cards is all built on the total nonsense that the "statistical model" used by the CDC and the USDA is, indeed, valid.  What it is, sorry but there is no nice way to say it, it's junk science and anyone with a degree in the scientific disciplines that would even try to say that it has any merit is just plain lying. The truth is that even the most sophisticated numerical computer models regularly fail when the data is at the ends of what the model knows how to deal with. This model is not even mathematical, it is statistical ! It takes a  huge sampling base to get anywhere near a meaningful result out of such models. Just to put the "statistics" in perspective, Do you fully realize what they mean?   If you, somehow,  ate your way through the 4.8 Billion pounds of the Almond Crop over 4 years in which there were only 150 reported illnesses One pound at a time You are more likely to hit your State Lotto  5 times  before you are likely to get sick from eating One pound of Almonds! Stated another way: You would have to eat 8 million pounds of Almonds each year for 4 years before you had any statistical probability of getting sick !  Actually these are not really models, just guesses. A 12 year old high school student could see the stupidity of it. All the victims of the paramount Salmonella outbreak went shopping at Costco within two weeks of the illness (150 total "interviews" by the investigators). They bought various food products including almonds. In the same year over a billion pounds of California Almonds were sent though the same or similar hulling and shelling plants without one reported incidence of illness anywhere else. So, students, I ask you: Where was the point of contamination????? COSTCO of course!  Whew, it just boggles the mind ! Your government at work !

Before I close this page I want to return for a moment to the riddle I proposed at first. I have spent a good deal of words here attempting to explain the will to survive on the part of the Almond Board and the mega handlers.  But what of the other players here? What about the living fruit of the Almond, who will speak for it?  If you pasteurize it you kill it. It is that simple. What becomes of the now sterile environment on the skin of the processed nut, what opportunistic bacteria with a will to survive will take up residence there? What will be its nature, its character, is it friend or foe? Good question..  And what of the consumers and the growers. Some consumers of Almonds need whole raw nuts as a part of a diet on which their health and perhaps their very lives depend. What of growers that have entire family fortunes invested in sophisticated Organic Farming enterprises.  What of their desires and their will to survive? Good questions all...   The world is a competitive place. Sometimes hubris, greed, and ambition gets all of us, even big bears, into situations where do not fully realize the nature what we are about at the moment.  Sometimes, like our friend the bear, who either accidentally or purposefully threatens others, he finds later that he painfully underestimated his opponents will to survive.

Please help us fight the Almond Board of California and the mega handlers.. The Cornucopia Institute's Authentic Almond Project is taking this issue into Federal District Court where it can all be sorted out.  They are a dedicated group of hard working folks that understand these issues and are willing to fight for you. But they need your support and help.  

please help now! Donation Link (anyone donating to the almond legal fund should mention it along with their donation as a comment)  https://app.etapestry.com/hosted/TheCornucopiaInstitute/OnlineGiving.html

Please help out and give us a donation however small, thank you !!!