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The cartel that controls the US meat industry

statecraft.beehiiv.com

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Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#141

Post by Buttons840 »

hospitalJail wrote: post #78
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…

>We need more anti-trust enforcement. The medical field is the most urgent on this matter. Food prices are manageable. Healthcare prices are far far far worse.

I agree. We've also discussed on HN recently that some important medicines are produced in only 1 or 2 factories.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#142

Post by HDThoreaun »

ceejayoz wrote: post #109
HDThoreaun wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't need excuses to raise prices, this explanation still doesn't explain why they waited. Cartel's don't care what their consumers think since they've cornered the market on an inelastic product.

> Cartel's don't care what their consumers think since they've cornered the market on an inelastic product. They do care about attracting the ire of regulators, which can be triggered by consumers getting fed up with price increases.

Regulators are toothless in this country. I'm not buying the "scared of regulation" angle.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#143

Post by darrin »

systems_glitch wrote: post #135

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…

There's no broader market for beef? Is there a higher break-even point factoring in transport costs?

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#144

Post by tristor »

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…

> a politically Republican organization

Your other arguments aside, why is this surprising or relevant? For whatever else you can say about the broken politics in America, the only party that gives a shit about rural people is the Republicans, so of course any organization focused on rural issues is Republican.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#145

Post by hnboredhn »

ceejayoz wrote: post #93
hnboredhn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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…

> That seems like more competition than at any point in human history. What, were the Vikings running a global monopoly on grain or something?

If you were a random person in a town 1600 - how many people do you think you could buy meat form? I honestly dont know. I guess if everyone had subsistence farms with some chickens it in theory could be a lot, but not sure if it would be over 10 or not.

Its not like they had efficient shipping or storage back then.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#146

Post by myshpa »

slothtrop wrote: post #73
myshpa wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But animal ag is far from sustainable, unfortunately. Climate change, resource depletion, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, pollution, overpopulation, soil erosion, and overfishing are all symptoms of ecological overshoot. Agriculture is a key culprit in most of those symptoms, and animal ag accounts for 80% of all agriculture. Animal ag is directly responsible for majority of deforestation, is a major driver of b…

Lack of sustainability is contingent on increased encroachment of land and emissions, and that is contingent on growing demand overtaking gains in technological efficiency. The demand is growing as a matter of policy: immigration to prop up the GDP. Growing demand for just about anything will increase emissions, pollution and land encroachment - some just exacerbate things faster than others. That does not mean all o…

Few assumptions and oversimplifications, let's address them one by one:

> Lack of sustainability is contingent on increased encroachment of land and emissions, and that is contingent on growing demand overtaking gains in technological efficiency.

Sustainability is not solely dependent on one aspect but is the result of a combination of factors, including land use, resource management, environmental impacts, and ethical considerations. Even with improved technological efficiency, the sheer scale of demand for animal products still pose significant sustainability challenges.

> The demand is growing as a matter of policy: immigration to prop up the GDP.

The demand for animal products is influenced by various factors, including cultural preferences, dietary habits, advertising, and economic factors. While GDP growth and immigration can play a role in shaping demand, they are not the only drivers, and sustainability issues related to animal agriculture go beyond immigration policies.

> Growing demand for just about anything will increase emissions, pollution, and land encroachment - some just exacerbate things faster than others. That does not mean all other products are 'sustainable'

Some industries might indeed have more significant environmental impacts, and in the case of animal agriculture, the evidence points to its significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and water pollution and biodiversity loss.

You can't solve all of these with algae:

- Greenhouse gas emissions (methane, CO2, N2O)

- Deforestation (50% of pastures used to be forests)

- Land degradation

- Water pollution

- Water overconsumption

- Loss of biodiversity

- Antibiotic resistance

- Ocean dead zones

- Inefficient land and resource use

- Ethical concerns

- Contribution to zoonotic diseases

- Air pollution

- Eutrophication

- Soil erosion

- High energy consumption

- Chemical runoff from pesticides and fertilizers

- Destruction of habitats and ecosystems

- Inequality in global food distribution

- Public health risks from foodborne illnesses

- Nutrient pollution

- Strain on waste management systems

- Overfishing (40-70% of plankton gone, sharks 90% gone, fish almost gone in 2040's)

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#147

Post by jvm___ »

wombat-man wrote: post #92
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…

mmm, wouldn't she be able to go after the third party company?

Maybe 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.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#148

Post by ben_w »

gruez wrote: post #71
ben_w wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Planned 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…

>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?

If 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.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#149

Post by dirtyid »

Would 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.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#150

Post by systems_glitch »

darrin wrote: post #143
systems_glitch wrote: post #135

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…

There's no broader market for beef? Is there a higher break-even point factoring in transport costs?

The 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!

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