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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

#51

Post by myshpa »

bubsie wrote: post #37
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…

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)

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#52

Post by ceejayoz »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #48
ceejayoz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question is why didn't competition undercut them to keep prices low as it had before. This question is answered by the title of the article.

Didn't that cartel exist in 2020? So, once again, why now ?

The first line of the article is "Since 2020, Americans have experienced rising food prices". The pandemic's effects largely started in March 2020. "Now" is scoped to "that last couple of years", not "last week".

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#53

Post by snake_plissken »

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.

Thankyou for sharing this.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#54

Post by HEmanZ »

darth_avocado wrote: post #44
ceejayoz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But ... why now? Because "oh, it's the pandemic" gave them cover for the increases.

This is correct. Food companies cannot hike prices just because, especially when they are monopolies. If suddenly eggs cost $20/dozen, customers will ask why and if there are no good explanations, there will be a lot of noise. And politicians and regulators who are otherwise not willing to act on monopolies, do not like noise because it threatens their jobs. They will act, and that will not be great for the food comp…

Or, ya know, they can’t raise prices that high because people will just stop buying eggs and they will stop making money. Eggs are very much an elastic good.

Does no one understand basic economics anymore?

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#55

Post by rexpop »

b112 wrote: post #23
drewm1980 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. 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.

Calling 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.

There are many reasons to avoid meat that don't apply to vegetables. First off the top of my head is it's a disease vector: both bacterial and viral (think swine and bird flus).

Secondly, water usage for meat is 2-5x the liters-per-kilogram of lentils, tofu, and 10x the rest of the staple vegetables.

Thirdly, every bite of meat on your plate carries an opportunity cost of all the nutritious benefits of eating a variety of vegetables. I could go into this further, but I think it's common knowledge that plant chemicals offer "vital and necessary" nutrition unavailable from meat.

Greenhouse gas emissions are also a factor that favors plant diets over meat.

I love a good prime rib, or a BLT, but the costs grossly outweigh the benefits.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#56

Post by HDThoreaun »

ceejayoz wrote: post #49
HDThoreaun wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. The article doesn't have any evidence of collusion at all. 4 competitors should be more than enough to prevent abuses of market power.

There's certainly evidence of collusion in the meat industry even pre-COVID. https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/ag-ferguson-s-pric... > The Attorney General’s Office asserts Tyson Foods and 18 other chicken producers drove up the price of chicken since at least 2008, causing consumers to overpay by millions of dollars. The lawsuit asserts a widespread illegal conspiracy to inflate and manipulate prices, rig co…

$10.5 million over 14 years? That's what, half a cent per pound? probably less

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#57

Post by gruez »

ceejayoz wrote: post #15
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…

> But ... why now? Because "oh, it's the pandemic" gave them cover for the increases.

>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...

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#58

Post by ceejayoz »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #56
ceejayoz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's certainly evidence of collusion in the meat industry even pre-COVID. https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/ag-ferguson-s-pric... > The Attorney General’s Office asserts Tyson Foods and 18 other chicken producers drove up the price of chicken since at least 2008, causing consumers to overpay by millions of dollars. The lawsuit asserts a widespread illegal conspiracy to inflate and manipulate prices, rig co…

$10.5 million over 14 years? That's what, half a cent per pound? probably less

That's the settlement amount, from one state and for one type of chicken product, and merely one example of how the providers collude.

Until people start going to jail, these sorts of fines/settlements are just part of the cost of doing business. The profits from the scheme tend to outweigh the punishments, especially factoring in the probable times they don't get caught doing it.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#59

Post by nerdponx »

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.

It's a similar phenomenon to companies waiting until a recession to lay off extra and low performing workers.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#60

Post by strictnein »

Maybe 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%
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