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The cartel that controls the US meat industry

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Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#131

Post by michael_michael »

freejazz wrote: post #120
declan_roberts wrote: post #114

Moving 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/foo…

lol 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

I'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.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#132

Post by Dig1t »

corinroyal wrote: post #111
Dig1t wrote: post #35

RFK put out a video explaining how this consolidation occurred in the pork industry: 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 acqu…

I'm not sure I'd want to admit in public that I follow RFK Jr. If he said it, it's unlikely to be true.

I mean, if there's something specific that he says that's untrue in this video I'd love to discuss it, but I think it's possible to listen to what people say with a skeptical ear and an open mind. I don't have to agree with everything he says but sometimes he says some interesting things that are worth thinking about and discussing.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#133

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

mikeyouse wrote: post #76
Sparkyte wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was free how are the operating costs covered?

I 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.

[flagged]

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#134

Post by arrosenberg »

brookside wrote: post #130
freejazz wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol 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

Pasteurized as in the meats are pre-cooked? Or are you possibly meaning pasture-raised?

Pastured. As in, raised in a pasture.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#135

Post by systems_glitch »

My 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.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#136

Post by dreadlordbone »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #126
declan_roberts wrote: post #114

Moving 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/foo…

Well, 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 y…

"You've linked to a politically Republican organization's page"

Why does this matter? You could have said "a political organization's" but didn't.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#137

Post by mandmandam »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #115
mandmandam wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There really aren't clear signs of price fixing. At least not in this piece.

That's fair. Price fixing is a specific thing, while I was more referring to facts like:

>BigAg’s consolidated power throttles the price discovery process.

and

> Over time the share of feedlot-to-meatpacker sales done via contract has increased to 72%, so BigAg sets the price outright with no price discovery process at all.

I'm tired and can't even think what to call this except 'undue influence', which is too vague. Though that said, I'd still be shocked if there wasn't price fixing going on, given the state of things.

While I'm here, OP seems to miss that this is 4 players controlling "roughly 85% of the total hog, cattle, and poultry processing market", focusing on chicken where the number is lowest. It's really, really bad; and not something to dismiss based on wild historical speculation.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#138

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

myshpa wrote: post #51
bubsie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those sources are cool and all but I like cheese /s

Vegans have cheese. Salty and fatty, melts. You should try it. There is no magic ingredient in cow (dog, giraffe, lion, bat, dolphin) milk that we couldn't get from plants instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI https://www.vegancheese.co/discover (1700+ cheeses from all over the world)

To call other things "cheese" that aren't cheese is torturing the very definition of the word, much like "milk", which, of course, as a precursor to cheese, has been traditionally understood, inconveniently for you, as excretion from mammary glands.

A lot of of cheesemakers have also traditionally depended upon rennet, a product of animal stomachs, so in the effort to replace it as a coagulant, the definition of "rennet" has itself been tortured to expand as much as possible until vegans are happy with fake, highly-processed, chemically-treated foods.

I was reading the bag of my Chipotle burrito the other night, and it listed all 51 ingredients they use in their restaurant (even water is listed in here), and my eyes alighted on "gypsum". I nearly spit out my steak and pinto beans when I discovered that there's basically drywall in Chipotle's food. It turns out that gypsum (calcium sulfate dihydrate) is a coagulant for soy products, and so if a restaurant doesn't use soy, and doesn't produce fake, highly-processed, chemically-treated vegan foods, then it doesn't need to use drywall.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#139

Post by rambojohnson »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #133
mikeyouse wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

[flagged]

wtf is wrong with you

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#140

Post by rambojohnson »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #14

A 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-... 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.

They produce around 20% of the beef, pork, and chicken in the United States. They also have a range of food products under brands like Tyson, Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, BallPark, Wright, Aidell’s, and State Fair.
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