If we want more ideal operations like White Oak Pastures, we’re going to need to support them. USDA is already a major buyer of ground beef from the biggest meatpackers like JBS – the same meatpackers that failed us during the pandemic.
Why not redirect those purchases to the local/regional plants USDA has provided grant money to and said we need to be able to feed ourselves, be more resilient, and rebuild rural America.
You will love Will’s new book. The audio version is especially good in Will’s voice.
Will Harris didn’t like the direction industrial ag was taking him, so he did something amazing.
Who was the primary force in concentrating the beef industry, eliminating competition, and reducing cattle producers share of the consumer beef dollar? Who led the elimination of half a million cattle producers, 80,000 independent feeders, and most of the small to mid-sized local/regional slaughter plants? During my presentation at the annual R-CALF convention, I asked the question, “How many of you have heard of Bob Peterson?” Very few, mostly those around my age, raised their hands. It’s not surprising considering its been 27 years since 1996, the year of the South Dakota Governors Conference, and when Bob Peterson was President and CEO of IBP, the nations biggest meatpacker.
My point in asking the question was to help people understand what happened to their markets and why the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) has been so supportive of the big meatpackers fleecing of our ranchers and cow-calf producers.
The year 1996 was also the year we filed the antitrust lawsuit against IBP. The case finally made it to trial in 2004 with the jury awarding the cattlemen $1.28 billion. The trial judge reversed the jury verdict and made the cattlemen pay Tyson’s court costs. We lost the jury award and any hope of the injunctive relief that would have stopped the big meatpacker stealing.
Cows and other ruminate animals are a gift to humanity and the world with their ability to transform inedible plants into highly nutritious human food, while at the same time improving the environment. We need a lot more of them on the planet.
So how do we bring back cows, land stewardship, animal husbandry, and the ability to feed ourselves?
See the following presentation by clicking on the arrows on the right and left side of the images.
The pandemic exposed the many failures and empty grocery shelves of our highly concentrated and consolidated food system. The Biden administration said, in the interest of food security, “Let’s build back better.”
Millions of dollars have been directed to building new infrastructure, but unfortunately the administration didn’t get the permission from the big-food cartel to allow market access to the existing small plants that showed amazing resilience under pandemic pressure, or the new local/regional processors that have been built since, or who foolishly expanded operations post pandemic. And critically, President Biden didn’t get buy-in from USDA leadership, or USDA’s career employees who hold primary allegiance to big-food.
Big-food is stealing from producers, exploiting workers, destroying rural communities, and price gouging consumers (not inflation), while government bows to the interests of criminals and the concentrated wealth and power of the global food cartel.
Rather than supporting our own U.S. cattle producers and local/regional meat plants, beef from other countries is receiving preference from USDA and big food companies. Below-cost-of-production imported beef is blended with cheap fat from over-fed cattle, and Lean Finely Textured Beef (aka pink slime), a low-cost ammonia washed byproduct of boxed beef, is added at around 10 to 12 percent of final weight.
The blended product appears as “Product of the USA” on the price lists of food service companies and big processors selling to big-box retailers, restaurants, institutions, including fast food, retirement homes, schools, hospitals, food banks, etc., at below $2.50 per pound. It’s roughly half the cost of the high quality domestically produced ground beef from local/regional plants, leaving the small plants which the Biden administration claims to support, to go broke, drowning in their beef trim.
There are many meat companies across the country selling this cheap burger blend, replacing the higher cost, and far higher quality product from local/regional processors.
See the following note from a food manager who works with retirement communities on the Front Range of Colorado:
Hi Mike,
Here’s some pricing on ground beef. Facilities typically go with the cheapest option. I highlighted a few that are commonly purchased:
In 1998 a DNA analysis showed 1082 animals were represented in a typical fast food quarter-pound burger patty. It would most likely be more today as sourcing has become more global and processing is more centralized and concentrated.
Following the pandemic food system collapse, the Biden administration pledged to support more sustainable, and resilient local/regional food system development. The plan is failing to deliver.
*See Mike Callicrate’s presentation from the 2023 R-CALF meeting in South Dakota here:
Subscribe to information and news updates related to farming, food and health issues, click here!
“The money and political power of Wall Street has stolen America’s food system, bankrupted our farmers and ranchers, mined our soils, polluted our environment, wasted our precious water, and left us with expensive industrially produced food that makes us sick.” – Occupy Wall Street Food Day, December 2011
Industrial Agriculture and Urban Sprawl – A model of growth that’s made to fail.
Ranching Reboot Episode 4, Mike Callicrate “It’s time for a third revolution against monopolies”
Above: Ranching Reboot – Episode 4 – Mike Callicrate, owner of Ranch Foods Direct, sat down with us to talk about all manner of things from cattle markets, to public food spaces, the Bander, his feedlot and the pathway he built to market.
He shares valuable lessons learned from fighting against the commodity production system and how he’s built his own pathway to the consumer.
We talk about small community slaughter plants and public meat spaces and what that could look like going in to the future. We discuss environmental challenges, the food police and what it means when a Dollar General comes to town.
by John Munsell | Oct 11, 2011
Opinion Editor's Note: This is the first part in a series written by John Munsell of Miles City, MT, who explains how the small meat plant his family owned for 59 years ran afoul of USDA's meat inspection program. The events he writes about began a decade ago, but remain relevant today.
They say that confession is good for the soul. I've been involved in a series of ugly events since my plant in 2002 recalled 270 pounds of ground beef contaminated with E.coli O157:H7 and now want to admit the embarrassing truth for public review.
more
During my 
