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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

#121

Post by aftermodern »

tamimio wrote: post #84
Buttons840 wrote: post #43

The 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…

“Oligopoly” is the word you are looking for, carried out by oligarch.

The correct word is in the title: it’s a cartel, in that it’s an association of suppliers that maintain high prices and restrict competition.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#122

Post by freejazz »

dragonwriter wrote: post #96
jvm___ wrote: post #79

I 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…

Given 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 app…

You are confusing her legal entitlement to recover her damages through tort, as opposed to what she might be entitled to a company that didn't have insanely regressive policies. They are similar, but not the same things!

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#123

Post by tyrfing »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #94
sct202 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author arbitrarily picked an outlier looking peak to start the graph vs consumer pricing to severely bias the graphs. May 2020 (graph 100 index) has a price index of 265, but April 2020 is 185 and Jun 2020 is 194. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU0221 *edit April not Feb *Edit2: Linked wrong graph, but correct graph is like the same trend. Thank you for the correction.

> to severely bias the graphs How does this bias manifest? It looks like what you linked is comparing something different but I wonder if I am misunderstanding.

The PPI time series they use is indexed to the outlier you see in 2020, although that's the incorrect chart - this should be a better one: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU0221

The conclusion is that industry PPI is down 20% since 2020, which is ridiculously misleading.

Speaking of incorrect charts, they used "Meats, poultry, fish, and eggs", which is the time series easily available on FRED, but on this timeframe is mostly about eggs - the one component irrelevant to the article.

The fact that this was written by a "Sr Data Scientist" is laughable, but probably average Silicon Valley economics.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#124

Post by hiatus »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #99
wonderwonder wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather go to prison. Take the gamble, at least prison has time off for good behavior and over crowding. This program looks like its designed to drain you of everything for as long as possible.

Pretty sure refusing to work when given the option is itself not considered "good behavior." It's one of the ways they coerce inmates into working those $0.12/h jobs.

It's even worse than that. In Texas, refusing to work essentially puts you in solitary confinement! [1]

[1]: https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/faq/cid.html#work

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#125

Post by lo_zamoyski »

nerdponx wrote: post #61
gruez wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because "oh, it's the pandemic" gave them cover for the increases. It might work, but as far as I can tell it doesn't stick. Egg producers had the "it's bird flu excuse" about a decade ago[1]. Profits (as %) went up, but eventually fell back down a few years later[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avian_influenza#United_States_... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CALM/cal-maine-foo...

Right, so total profit over the time period is greater than if they didn't raise prices. It doesn't matter if it sticks forever. See also: gas prices after hurricane Katrina.

Price gouging is immoral, and supposedly, illegal in some cases. And yet...

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#126

Post by malcolmgreaves »

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 you just stand to individually profit from this legislation?

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#127

Post by tyrfing »

fladrif wrote: post #28
Michelangelo11 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

From what I understand, price is sticky. It may have been difficult to be greedy as a first mover, and also difficult to cooperate to increase prices. When an external driver (pandemic) occurred, all players found a natural driver of prices and let their instincts take off. My unlearned thoughts.

Wages are sticky. Prices of undifferentiated commodity products are not, which is why Tyson (as an example) has falling ASPs and negative margins on many products.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#128

Post by snypher »

veave wrote: post #117
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.

>McGahey was 23 with dreams of making it big in rodeo, maybe starring in his own reality TV show. With a 1.5 GPA, he’d barely graduated from high school. He had two kids and mounting child support debt. Then he got busted for buying a stolen horse trailer, fell behind on court fines and blew off his probation officer. Yeah, you weren't going to make it big either in rodeo or anything else.

Id suggest reading the rules of this site and posting something more productive next time.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#129

Post by Dig1t »

tyrfing wrote: post #85
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…

> 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 p…

>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-pric...

Which means they are big and powerful enough to manipulate markets like this.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#130

Post by brookside »

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

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