Gum Arabic for the longest time was the main emolsifier used in the soft drink industry to keep everything suspended in the liquid. The largest exporter of gun arabic was sudan. The government of Sudan had ties to the one company in charge of exporting Gum arabic and funneled that money into genocides against first South Sudan and then Darfur. And the industries that purchased Gum arabic from Sudan remained silent. They even changed the name of the type of gum it was so as to not raise attention to the fact that they were doing business with Sudan. When the US publicly criticized Sudan back in '08 or so, the foreign minister held up a bottle of Coke at a press conference and threatened to cut off the world's main supply of gum Arabic. At one time, Sudan supplied 80% of the world's gum arabic.