Fifty of the 32,000 fodd manufacturing firms in the U.S. make � of the industry's profits. Shortweighting may cost each consumer as much as $150 anually. Eighty percent of the supermarkets checked in one city were shortweighting: the damage to consumers on meat alone was about $250,000 per day. One corporate price-fixing conspiracy stole more money each year it continued than all of the thousands of burglaries, larcenies or thefts in the entire nation during those same years. These are very large �profits�; they are clearly on a far greater scale than employee and consumer �theft�.
The supermarket system rips us off economically. The supermarket experience rips us off emotionally. Instead of human beings, we become isolated consumers, moving through an antiseptic environment, collecting plastic bags, cans, styrofoam trays, and doses of music and ventilated air. There is no need to speak to anyone. Everything is under control.
Remember, only rip off the big supermarkets that rip us off.
Statistics: Hightower, Eat Your Heart Out, How Food Profiteers Victimize the Consumer; Cross, the Supermarket Trap; Clark, Crime in America. 1977
