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The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America's Food Business Hardcover – February 18, 2014
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The biggest takeover in American business that you’ve n ever heard of
The American supermarket seems to represent the best in America: abundance, freedom, choice. But that turns out to be an illusion. The rotisserie chicken, the pepperoni, the cordon bleu, the frozen pot pie, and the bacon virtually all come from four companies.
In The Meat Racket, investigative reporter Christopher Leonard delivers the first-ever account of how a handful of companies have seized the nation’s meat supply. He shows how they built a system that puts farmers on the edge of bankruptcy, charges high prices to consumers, and returns the industry to the shape it had in the 1900s before the meat monopolists were broken up. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the greatest capitalist country in the world has an oligarchy controlling much of the food we eat and a high-tech sharecropping system to make that possible.
Forty years ago, more than thirty-six companies produced half of all the chicken Americans ate. Now there are only three that make that amount, and they control every aspect of the process, from the egg to the chicken to the chicken nugget. These companies are even able to raise meat prices for consumers while pushing down the price they pay to farmers. And tragically, big business and politics have derailed efforts to change the system.
We know that it takes big companies to bring meat to the American table. What The Meat Racket shows is that this industrial system is rigged against all of us. In that sense, Leonard has exposed our heartland’s biggest scandal.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSimon & Schuster
- Publication dateFebruary 18, 2014
- Dimensions6.25 x 1.5 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101451645813
- ISBN-13978-1451645811
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This is a remarkably insightful book, reflecting the author Christopher Leonard's deep and careful research and skilled writing. The book covers much more than just the evolution of the Tyson chicken empire, though that is the inspiration of the work. Don Tyson was the business genius who led his family firm to the heights of power and depths of iniquity which Leonard explains so clearly, and which inspired so many other businesses. Leonard capped his research by interviewing Don Tyson himself.
In the meat business, although the "farmers" contribute both financial and human capital essential to the overall enterprise they do not share in its profits. Each firm like Tyson owns all the elements of its overall business which have economies of scale (feed-mixing, hatchery, slaughter, marketing) but delegates the labor-intensive step of actually raising the animals on capital-intensive farmsteads to hapless peons. The peons do not ask for overtime or better wages as employees would, they do not shirk, they force their children to labor without pay-- because they think of themselves as "independent farmers," for a few years at least. They are not independent at all-- firms like Tyson supply the chicks, the feed, the medicines-- everything-- and take the grown chickens away every few months. Since the farmers don't own the animals they raise they cannot sell them into the market but must take whatever payment-- large or small-- their sponsoring firm decides to give them. They can't even quit easily because they owe huge mortgages on their farms, which Tyson and similar firms actually steer them to get.
The concept and practice of chickenization has spread beyond the raising of meat animals. It is essentially how so-called "sharing" businesses like Airbnb or Uber and various similar competitors work.
Airbnb owns all the good parts of its business. It does not tie up capital in dwelling rooms-- hosts supply those using mortgages for which they are solely liable (Airbnb refers new hosts to lenders for a commission)-- and does not employ housekeepers or maintenance staff-- as "independent businessmen" the hosts clean and patch. Uber is similar-- drivers buy the cars that Uber chooses with loans arranged by Uber, then to pay off those loans they drive Uber's customers around when Uber tells them to in return for payments set unilaterally by Uber (plus occasional tips). The drivers fuel and maintain the cars and pay all the taxes on them. Like chicken farmers, Airbnb hosts and Uber drivers contribute financial and human capital essential to the overall business, they work without minimum or overtime wages for payments set unilaterally by chickenizing firms, but they do not share in the overall profits.
Competitively, Airbnb destroys hotels and Uber destroys taxi firms because chickenization drives down capital and labor costs so effectively. What firm can afford a hundred-million-dollar mortgage on a hotel when a competitor uses a ragtag army of hosts to provide an equivalent number of rooms using independent capital? Worse, what firm can afford to employ housekeepers or drivers, with all the overhead of managing them and accepting liability for their actions, when a competitor uses "independent businessmen" who work furiously without supervision because they're desperate to make their next loan payment?
Reading "The Meat Racket" will teach you how to recognize chickenization in any industry (it's common in fast-food and small-retail franchising). That alone would justify the book, but the story Leonard tells, of the plight of the farmers, the history of the Tyson firm and the other firms which emulated it, the remarkable lives of Don Tyson, his father, and the people around them, is so interesting that you can read the book for sheer entertainment. For either or both, read this book.
Not surprising the essence of this book is the consolidation and exploitation of the many thousands of "farmers" who were abetted by a corrupt Agricultural system that allowed farmers to borrow millions of dollars to set up chicken/hog facilities in which they owned no animals, only the facilities and owed the bank. It is clear that specifically Tyson controlled every step in the business. From the eggs, to the chickens/hogs, feed, "inspectors" and payment to those who bought into the American dream. Systematically the farmers were slowly destroyed when the costs of operating their farms costs far more than the reimbursements from Tyson and their very few competitors. The oligarchy system does not discriminate between American farmers and the immigrants, mainly those from Laos. Banks loaned millions upon millions without risk (government backed Agricultural loans) to anyone who was willing to work as serfs. Story after story documented the crushing debt and eventual bankruptcy of almost anyone who participated in Tyson's rigged system. It did not and probably still does not matter how "modern" the farms were and are. Tyson controls the entire process. If chickens are diseased and die, if the food is tainted, if the "tournament system" is rigged and if you dare challenge Tyson, there is no chance of succeeding in business with them.
Due to the massive amount of lobbying and campaign contributions, nothing is going to change. It is virtually impossible to compete in the chicken/hog and now beef industry due to the half dozen major players and their integrated model. The ability to control production, thus prices paid by the consumer, should be a reminder of the consolidation of the telephone industry, the oil industry and the other oligarchs who dominate various sectors of our economy. All the while the concept of family "farms" is an anarchism of the glory days Thomas Jefferson spoke about several centuries ago. The industry is rigged for everyone but the mega corporations to fail. Not even a concerted effort by the current administration and savvy experts could corral the power of these mega food producers. The author does not spend a lot of time on the quality, or lack thereof, of the products that dominate our stores, fast food restaurants and institutions, but my hunch is if the Tyson's of this country control every step of the process, quality is probably not high on their priority list, production and lots of it come first, second and third.
Full disclosure, I discontinued eating pork, chicken, beef and fish forty years ago. I am reminded that my maternal grandparents were farmers, my grandmother also taught school. They raised a herd of approximately two dozen calves per year and sold them on the open market 25 miles from their farm each fall. They would raise a couple of hogs for butchering as well as one calve. They would freeze the meat and eat it throughout the year. No worries about antibiotics or steroids. I know the use of growth hormones has grown exponentially over the last half century. And with toothless oversight from the government, this practice goes on without any fear of prosecution for the dangerous chemicals used to fatten up the doomed animals. The only concern is how fast can the animals be fattened for the best return to the oligarchs who control our animal based food diet.
This is one of the best written investigative books I have had the pleasure to read in the past dozen years. Not "The Jungle", but by writing this book, Mr. Leonard has shown some things have not changed. Buyer beware and if considering doing business with the mega corporations that control these three industries, this is a cautionary tale not to be taken lightly...or at all.
Stephen Courts
May 13, 2013
p.s. If you see one and two star reviews, there is a good chance that the reviewer has not read the book or is affiliated with the Tyson's of the food chain.
I wish all books were written this well.


