ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 provided a discussion of two Latin American expressions of Empire. I now wish to explore further the nature and dynamics of newly emerging food empires, focusing, in particular, on the patterns they create, which increasingly order significant segments of the world’s food industries. Central to the analysis here is the case of Parmalat – the Italian multinational that crashed at the end of 2003 when it became clear that more than 14 billion Euros had been ‘lost’. I will also make occasional reference to other cases, such as that of Ahold, the world supermarket chain that almost collapsed at the beginning of the same year.
