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The cartel that controls the US meat industry
- naillo 3y agoInteresting to read this and think about how the future of AI might turn out if the google microsoft cartel comes into being like they're trying to.
- greenie_beans 3y agoi thought centralized economies were communist?
- ben_w 3y agoPlanned economies are associated with communism, but they're also basically what all corporations do internally, including government owned "corporations" like the police and militaries. Food gets massive subsidies in the west, because we really don't want shortages, and even massive subsidies are a really cheap way to do that, because most of the consumer cost of food is later in the supply chain than the production. My gut feeling (I'm neither an economist nor a political student) is that while many small corporations competing with each other is an excellent way to explore the space of supply, demand, and technological changes, when you find a known-good solution it's probably better to merge them into one to get rid of the needless duplication — which happens naturally in capitalism, but then I'd go further and say the government should buy up the shares and take advantage of any dividends to (effectively) be a non-tax based revenue source.
- gruez 3y ago>then I'd go further and say the government should buy up the shares and take advantage of any dividends to (effectively) be a non-tax based revenue source. Isn't that just a consumption/sales/value added tax with extra steps?
- ben_w 3y agoIf it is any of those kinds of tax, then so are all divided payments; this is something a corporation could just decide not to pay one year because it wants the money for investing in future growth or whatever else is the usual reason is for not paying dividends to shareholders.
- zwieback 3y agoArticle is about meat, why change the title?
- trostaft 3y agoThe title appears to match the one on the article (unless they're doing some title fuzzing)?
- maeil 3y agoArticle says "meat industry", HN title says "food industry", unless we're getting AB tested.
- zihotki 3y agoFor me the title of the article is "The Cartel That Controls the US Meat Industry".
- drewm1980 3y agoSame. This is about meat, although since a lot of our land is used to grow feed for livestock, subsidies for plant agriculture are indirectly subsidizing inefficient animal agriculture.
- b112 3y agoCalling meat agriculture inefficient makes no sense, when meat is a vital, and necessary food. Most of the world grazes meat animals, no crop feeding, and do so on land utterly unusable for crops. If you want to dive into weirdo anti-meat statements, at least be sensible. We could just eat raw vitamins and eat bacteria paste too, instead of "inefficient" fertilizer driven crops.
- rm206 3y agoIt is still unclear if the land that is used for grazing could be suitable for growing crop that could be used for human consumption. Where do you think the grazing land comes from? Clearing natural habitat. And no, except for extreme conditions (like people living in extreme cold), meat is not a necessary food. An average human living in a city/village with moderate temperatures (especially when most of their time is spent inside buildings) does not need meat, they only want it.
- hombre_fatal 3y agoJust more reasons to eat a plant based diet.
- spacephysics 3y agoYou should see the cartel Monsanto has on agriculture This is just one more reason we should push for sustainable farming, including meat products. livestock naturally bring nitrogen and other nutrients back into the soil when grazing. Then use that land to grow plants, move the animals where plants pulled the nutrients from the soil, rinse and repeat. Also reduces the need for harmful fertilizers that impact the ecosystem
- gen220 3y ago("We" below refers to the US, and an increasing proportion of the world that is adopting US farming practices). There's a good-natured argument to be made that plant-based diets are more sustainable, because we don't generally farm meat sustainably and ensuring that your meat was farmed sustainably is difficult and expensive. But it's important to underline that sustainable is an insufficient target in the U.S. in 2023. The motion we need is regenerative. I don't think regenerative farming can be done efficiently without ethical use of livestock. This is all to say: if you view the health and quality of our food chain as a higher priority than the ethical concerns of consuming meat, you should reconsider your approach to diet construction. That being said, it's an expensive lifestyle, and will remain expensive as long as our society continues to subsidize processed foods. If we want to generalize a healthier food chain, we have to change the incentive structures that led us here.
- Michelangelo11 3y ago> (2) The Immigration System: that simultaneously enables BigAg to procure cheap migrant labor and can be weaponized to prevent that same migrant labor from organizing for or demanding humane working conditions. The Jungle all over again ... apparently not much has changed in ~100 years. Fascinating.
- prepend 3y agoI was really interested in the figure that shows prices going up while input costs decrease. But this doesn’t reflect all inputs just the price of meat procured. There are many other input costs, mostly labor. So this diagram is really frustrating as it makes me want to reach a conclusion (wtf, what an unnatural difference) without giving me enough information to know anything. It would be like showing that household grocery costs decreased while disposable income decreased and then writing an article about the relationship between those two while not revealing that rent increased at the same time. In general, I don’t know if they answer properly if profits increased because of inflation or if inflation increased because of inflation. Since the cartel existed before the shift, I would like to know what they think made companies suddenly get greedier.
- Michelangelo11 3y ago> In general, I don’t know if they answer properly if profits increased because of inflation or if inflation increased because of inflation. Since the cartel existed before the shift, I would like to know what they think made companies suddenly get greedier. That's my big question too with all this "greed driving inflation" discourse. I don't doubt it at all, in fact, from everything I see it seems like the likeliest story. But ... why now?
- ceejayoz 3y ago> But ... why now? Because "oh, it's the pandemic" gave them cover for the increases.
- Michelangelo11 3y agoRight, but I don't know, that feels kinda thin ... couldn't they have conjured any number of other excuses before?
- ceejayoz 3y agoThey've never had so clear an opportunity - what other excuse was available as widespread and impactful as a global pandemic? - and you see it across the board. Daily housekeeping at most hotels is gone forever, "because COVID". They were trying to get away with it pre-pandemic, but people pushed back on the reduced level of service.
- r3trohack3r 3y agoA reminder that Tyson is abusing the legal system to force people in the American south into working in their chicken plants for free: https://revealnews.org/article/they-thought-they-were-going-to-rehab-they-ended-up-in-chicken-plants/ https://revealnews.org/article/they-thought-they-were-going-... I don't know every brand that uses Tyson products, but when I discover something is coming from a Tyson factory I stop purchasing it.
- xnx 3y agoAnother solid reason to boycott meat.
- radicaldreamer 3y agoWow, this is atrocious
- snake_plissken 3y agoThankyou for sharing this.
- Sparkyte 3y agoIf it was free how are the operating costs covered?
- mikeyouse 3y agoI think you misunderstand - prisoners and people that are "diverted" from prison to rehab are being sent to chicken processing plants as part of their sentences. The taxpayer is paying the bills to these institutions and then Tyson is getting labor for free.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago[flagged]
- rambojohnson 3y ago
- Scoundreller 3y agoRevealed: the true extent of America’s food monopolies, and who pays the price [2021] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2021/jul/14/food-monopoly-meals-profits-data-investigation https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2021/...
- Dig1t 3y agoRFK put out a video explaining how this consolidation occurred in the pork industry: https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1686538797310242816 https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/16865387973102428... It was basically a case of a politician, Wendell Murphy, who helped pass 28 laws making it illegal to sue a factory farm, then left office and went into partnership with Smithfield Foods, a Chinese-owned company (which according to Wikipedia was "the largest Chinese acquisition of an American company to date"). Smithfield and Wendell used the factory farming model to undercut and put out of business almost all of the smaller pork farms. They now control 80% of pork US production and put 28,000 independent farmers out of business. I personally do not understand why China controlling 80% of pork production in the US is not a national security issue. But, that aside, this seems pretty bad for the country. *Edit, I remembered the video wrong, they control 80% of pork production _in North Carolina_. They control 26% of all US pork processing and 15% of pork production. They also have been found guilty of price fixing: https://www.reuters.com/legal/pork-consumers-75-million-price-fixing-accord-with-smithfield-approved-2023-04-12/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/pork-consumers-75-million-pric...
- tyrfing 3y ago> It was basically a case of a politician, Wendell Murphy, who helped pass 28 laws making it illegal to sue a factory farm, then left office and went into partnership with Smithfield Foods, a Chinese-owned company Said politician was in office (NC House/Senate) in the 80s, and his company was bought in 1999 by Smithfield Foods. Smithfield was bought by WH Group, a Chinese company, in 2013. > They now control 80% of pork US production This appears to be fiction. The closest I can find is that 6 large companies control 80% of the wholesale market, Smithfield being one of them.
- Dig1t 3y ago>Smithfield was bought by WH Group, a Chinese company, in 2013. Correct, Smithfield seems to have consolidated the market _before_ being acquired by WH Group. Which he says in the video. But the fact that they are still controlled by China and that they have a massive market share of the industry is still true. >This appears to be fiction I just went back and rewatched the video, sorry my bad. They control 80% of hog production _in North Carolina_. They control 26% of all US pork processing and 15% of pork production. It's hard to remember this stuff when posting on here casually during work. However Smithfield was in fact guilty of price fixing: https://www.reuters.com/legal/pork-consumers-75-million-price-fixing-accord-with-smithfield-approved-2023-04-12 https://www.reuters.com/legal/pork-consumers-75-million-pric... Which means they are big and powerful enough to manipulate markets like this.
- madengr 3y ago[dead]
- Buttons840 3y agoThe word "monopoly" implies one dominant company ("mono-" meaning one), but industries with 2 or 3 companies are still unhealthy for a few reasons. First, it's pretty easy for 2 or 3 companies to price fix, which is against anti-trust laws. Second, a healthy market requires that it be easy for new companies to enter the market and compete, and if there's only a few dominant companies, then clearly new competitors are not succeeding. We need more anti-trust enforcement.
- acover 3y agoIs there a way to detect price fixing? For example in a competitive market everyone has the same price. But the same is true with price fixing.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoIn a competitive market, profit margins are low because sellers are fighting for customers. If you are price fixing, then obviously you want to earn more profit, and hence profit margins would not be low.
- hnboredhn 3y agoI am not too in the weeds on this particular issue, but it seems not that crazy to me that "the biggest four companies" produce 55% of the US's chickens. Presumably that means there is much more than four who register in at above a couple percent nationally and possibly even at a local level different players. Its also for one market. While I eat a lot of chicken, I could substitute it for other foods or meats. To be clear I think these companies would manipulate prices if they knew how and could get away with it, but having trouble seeing how "four companies control under 60 percent of one food's market" is that alarming. That seems like more competition than at any point in human history.
- mandmandam 3y ago> That seems like more competition than at any point in human history. I think your intuition is very wrong on this one. And since there are clear signs of price fixing which you haven't addressed, it's pretty irrelevant.
- algoatecorn 3y agoFood system is a technical term and is distinctly different than the meat industry, which it encompasses. These companies certainly do not "control the food system"
- myshpa 3y agoThat's debatable. If they're able to influence UN FAO and IPCC (among many others I'm sure), and they are, they kinda do. https://qz.com/ipcc-report-on-climate-change-meat-industry-1850261179 https://qz.com/ipcc-report-on-climate-change-meat-industry-1... The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352100490_Emissions_from_Animal_Agriculture-165_Is_the_New_Minimum_Figure https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352100490_Emissions... FAO's work on emissions from animal agriculture may be influenced by the meat industry's interests, potentially affecting their recommendations on reducing meat consumption for environmental reasons. https://www.pcrm.org/news/blog/meat-and-dairy-subsidies-make-america-sick https://www.pcrm.org/news/blog/meat-and-dairy-subsidies-make... Meat and Dairy Subsidies Make America Sick https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/dec/09/academy-nutrition-financial-ties-processed-food-companies-contributions https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/dec/09/academy-nutr... Revealed: group shaping US nutrition receives millions from big food industry https://www.salon.com/2022/11/11/the-meat-industry-is-borrowing-tactics-from-big-oil-to-obfuscate-the-truth-about-climate-change/ https://www.salon.com/2022/11/11/the-meat-industry-is-borrow... The meat industry is borrowing tactics from Big Oil to obfuscate the truth about climate change https://www.americanprogress.org/article/why-the-farm-bill-may-be-the-highest-stakes-climate-fight-flying-below-the-radar/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/why-the-farm-bill-m... Why the Farm Bill May Be the Highest-Stakes Climate Fight Flying Below the Radar
- strictnein 3y agoMaybe the caffeine hasn't kicked in yet, but how can this be true: > Tyson Foods, Cargill, JBS USA Holdings, and National Beef have gained control of roughly _85%_ of the total hog, cattle, and poultry processing market If the bar chart that follows that has the following information: > Percent of meat supply processed by the "big 4": - Beef: 73% - Pork: 67% - Chicken: 54%
- bobbylarrybobby 3y agoPossible resolutions are the fact that the size of the processing market is measured in $, not percent of meat processed, as well as Simpson’s paradox.
- coding123 3y agoSee also: https://www.good.is/Business/food-brands-owners-rp https://www.good.is/Business/food-brands-owners-rp And: https://www.cornucopia.org/who-owns-organic/ https://www.cornucopia.org/who-owns-organic/ I am a firm believer that inflation is actually controlled by a few people making phone calls. The FTC needs to grow its teeth and start ripping shit to shreds.
- jvm___ 3y agoI read a story of a Latino immigrant Mom who worked the night shift cleaning a slaughterhouse every night. Wet, slick surfaces and sharp objects everywhere. The Mom was hired as a contractor through a third party company. She fell and was injured at work, because she wasn't an employee of the bigger company she wasn't entitled to any compensation or help, just fired from the third party company which also provided no assistance.
- wombat-man 3y agommm, wouldn't she be able to go after the third party company?
- jvm___ 3y agoMaybe it was that she was hired as an independent contractor so she had no recourse. Either way, the story painted a horrible picture of the slaughterhouses who hire disadvantaged workers, and then just discard or ignore them when they are injured. Also, I think this was in Texas which isn't exactly a worker friendly state.
- wombat-man 3y agoYeah, the law is one thing but actually pursuing recourse is a pain itself.
- jvm___ 3y agoA single Spanish speaking mother with kids and a broken arm is unlikely to be successful in sueing the companies and they know it.
- dragonwriter 3y agoGiven both rules of property owner liability and workplace injury liability, she almost certainly was legally entitled to compensation by one or the other, or both, companies involved for damages (including future lost wages) from the accident. Of course, companies claiming you aren't entitled to compensation right up until you show them they are unlikely to get away with that by bringing in state authorities (if applicable) or your own lawyers is... very much a cost avoidance technique that is used often in practice. Especially against the Latino immigrant community where even legal immigrants and naturalized citizens are still operating in a culture of reluctance to engage with government or legal process, employers know this and exploit it.
- harveywi 3y agoInstacartel
- Trisell 3y agoAmazing that they completely ignore the regulatory capture of FDA meat inspection. It is the largest barrier to disrupting the "big 4" for anybody to enter the market. Given the cost and complexity of running an FDA approved meat cutting facility, it makes it nearly impossible for small farms to enter the market and provide an alternative to the big 4. Instead small farms such as myself are forced to do stupid things like sell the meat to somebody 'on the hoof' and then have it custom cut by a butcher, because getting the meat processed and cut at a FDA inspected facility, if you can get into one, adds $1-3 a pound. This also means I can only sell you a quarter beef or larger. Which most consumers don't have the money or the freezer space to do.
- corinroyal 3y agoI feel for you. You might enjoy a book from a small farmer called "Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal" by Joel Salatin. He talks about the absurdity of ag regulatory capture and it's effects on small farmers. It's an inspiring call to arms.
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- declan_roberts 3y agoMoving to the country has really opened up my eyes for food production, especially meat. There are so many small farmers here that are basically shut out from the economy because of impossible USDA guidelines. And we're honestly supposed to believe that mega meat processing plants are somehow better for us? It's delusional. Call your representative and ask them to support the PRIME act. https://ij.org/initiatives/food-freedom/prime-act/ https://ij.org/initiatives/food-freedom/prime-act/
- freejazz 3y agolol what? I live in NYC and buy from small upstate farms from my butcher that only sells pastured meats... the USDA doesn't seem to be a problem for them at all
- brookside 3y agoPasteurized as in the meats are pre-cooked? Or are you possibly meaning pasture-raised?
- arrosenberg 3y agoPastured. As in, raised in a pasture.
- michael_michael 3y agoI'm not sure your example disproves OP. Your artisanal butcher can pass on any costs of compliance to you, and people like you who live in wealth-dense NYC and are willing to pay extra for pasture-raised meats. That is not true for much of the population that expects to pay $5 for a Costco rotisserie chicken.
- malcolmgreaves 3y agoWell, this is quite thinly vieled attempt to let corporations hurt people and make a profit doing it! You've linked to a politically Republican organization's page, where they're promoting legislation that would let companies produce unsanitary and unsafe meat. Do you not understand that the USDA guidelines are (a) easily obtainable and (b) exist to keep people from getting sick or dying from unsanitary meat? Or do you just stand to individually profit from this legislation?
- moomoo11 3y agoIt would be better if people stopped eating as much meat.
- systems_glitch 3y agoMy family raises beef cattle on the side, mostly in the past it was just to help keep the property grazed down (it'll go fallow pretty quick if nothing is on it) and provide local higher quality, cheaper beef for folks in the extended family. At some point, my parents decided they wanted to try expanding the farm and actually selling the beef. They were shocked to learn that two guys control the local cattle markets and pay essentially "what they want" for anything and everything. Pretty much no one got more than $1/LB on the hoof for grass fed healthy cows. They gave up and went back to a property maintenance sized herd after 10 or so years of that.
- darrin 3y agoThere's no broader market for beef? Is there a higher break-even point factoring in transport costs?
- systems_glitch 3y agoThe more time they spend in a truck, the higher the risk of "transportation sickness," which is basically animals being stressed out from being in a weird truck going down the highway and being more susceptible to a bunch of stuff. Interesting aside, that's part of what made Roosevelt's ranch more successful, he was supposedly one of the first ranchers to stop transporting live cattle to Chicago for sale, and instead slaughtered on-site and made use of the newly invented refrigerated boxcar. There's money in direct sales, of course, but you have to a) be inspected for general sales and b) use a butcher who is inspected and licensed for i) in-state and ii) out-of-state sales. If you ever buy a "share" of an animal and pay to have it butchered, you may notice the meat comes in packaging with prominent NOT FOR RESALE markings -- that's why, it's a local butcher not USDA licensed for general public sales. Buying "shares" is a skirt around the law, but most people don't want to deal with the amount of meat from even 1/4 a carcass, and they're usually hard customers for local butchers ("Your butcher is robbing us! They wouldn't give us T-bones and NY Strip!"). Supposedly if you're found to be doing too much of it, or "automating" it too much for the "shareholders," the USDA will come down on you for it (IMO rightly). You also then have to market the meat. My wife and I had offered to help set up a canned site to help with it, but my parents were too concerned about the licensing requirements and that it'd be throwing more money into the hole that is subsistence farming!
- dirtyid 3y agoWould US be an ag powerhouse without consolidated scale? IMO US in geopolitical position with respect to land resources that it doesn't need to be, but powerful cartels seem to pretty good at expanding US ag competitive advantages with respect to foreign polciy.
- kornhole 3y agoI wonder why Smithfield did not make the list. https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1686538797310242816#m https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/16865387973102428...
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