Five Items People Get From Beef by Productions
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| ... Meat is a relative bargain today compared to where it was 10-20 years ago. How'd yous practice information technology? Every other cost has gone up. It has a lot to do with efficiencies -- doing what we exercise even meliorate and more efficiently; ... squeezing costs out of the process; calculation value to the production. America in general is a tremendous nutrient success story. ... We pay the everyman percentage of our per capita income on food than any country in the world. In the mid-1980s, it was well-nigh 12 percent. Today it'due south beneath 9 pct. And meat, which is a large part of our diet in this country -- meat and poultry -- is less than 2 percent of our disposable income. That's a keen success story. We take high quality, reliable, abundant, and low-toll food in the U.s.. We're very fortunate. Historically, going dorsum to the early on function of the 20th century, we would raise our animals in the Midwest, ship the live animals to major metropolitan areas similar Kansas City, Omaha, and Chicago -- all of whom still take remnants of their stockyards today. We would process the animals there; sell them in sides of beef, carcass form, sides of beefiness, to local butcher shops. Nosotros would cut them into steaks and roasts and sell them to consumers. After Globe War Two, two developments occurred. The local butcher shop began to expand into grocery stores and regional grocery chains. At the same time, we adult engineering science to transport refrigerated foods. And with the advent of grocery stores wanting to purchase their meat from a unmarried source, and with the power to ship candy meat every bit opposed to live animals in rail cars, the packing houses moved out of the metropolitan areas and built new facilities in the heartland, shut to where the animals were being raised. ... The next pregnant development in the evolution of the beef manufacture in the United States involved the transformation and the transition from shipping carcasses of beef to aircraft boxes of beef. The industry discovered that it was much more efficient to have the processing proceed at the next footstep in the meatpacking plant, and reduce the side of beefiness to a slice of tenderloin, or a length of New York strip steak, and send a whole box of tenderloins to a grocery shop that only wanted tenderloins, equally opposed to shipping that side of beefiness with some parts they may want for their customers, some parts of beef they may not desire for their customers. It immune us to be more responsive to the grocery shop. Information technology allowed them to exist more responsive to their private customers and their local markets. And it immune us to practice that at a lower cost. ... Everyone talks about one of the most important things to empathize near the meat manufacture is how highly concentrated it is -- 84 per centum of the slaughter is controlled by but iv companies in beef. Have we gotten back to the days of the "beefiness trust"? ... Most business concern sectors in the Us economy are fairly full-bodied, comprised of three or four market place leaders that in full general accept about a 60 percent, 70 percent, 80 percent market share. You see that happening in the banking business, and it's been a long-standing construction in the automobile industry. ... So in that regard, in terms of the overall economy of the U.s.a., the beef industry is not much unlike in its economical structure. Merely what is important to understand is that information technology is a dynamic, evolving, highly competitive sector of our nation'southward agricultural economy. Four companies business relationship for more than 80 percent of the beefiness capacity in the United States. ... Merely 30 years agone, only i of those big four were actually in the beef industry. Within the last 30 years, three of the other big 4 take actually grown upwardly as startup companies, or expanded every bit a result of acquisition, to the market share levels that they have today. It'due south a vibrant competitive industry. If you ask the CEOs of the 4 largest beef companies, one concern that they accept is the upstart companies that are coming into the business concern, the pocket-sized regional new entries that are coming into the beef manufacture, who one solar day may have the agility, the acumen, and the competitive instincts to achieve the market share levels that the larger companies have today. | ||||
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| We have gone away from moo-cow-dogie operators and modest feedlots dominating the production of meat. ... [Now] you clearly accept a relationship where, on the processing side of the moving-picture show, we have three or four or five very big operations that run the show. And in the meat manufacture -- beefiness -- you have four that control over lxxx percent of the market place; when, in the 1920s, the government filed an antitrust action to break upwards the "beef trust," I call up but five [companies] controlled about 50 per centum of the marketplace. And then you come across, information technology'south become much, much more concentrated. If we were concerned in 1920 nearly that kind of consolidation, why aren't we concerned about more consolidation now? At that place's a lot of business in production agriculture. Those farmers and ranchers who are left are very concerned nigh it, considering ... they've got [merely] ane or two sellers to sell to, and there's no competition. Just the truth of the matter is, the existent reason why we haven't been and then concerned as a country is because food is and so cheap in America. That is, Americans pay a lower per capita cost for food of all types than whatever identify else in the world. And equally a pct of their income, it's the lowest in the earth. So as long as Americans get their hamburgers or their craven or their hot dogs, people take not been overly concerned about these issues of consolidation. ... And then the cost of inexpensive meat is ultimately going to exist, in today's economic system, putting the clasp on the small rancher? Certainly the smaller rancher will be the nigh victimized by the pricing system. ... The meat manufacture certainly makes the statement that we have the cheapest, safest meat supply anywhere in the world -- and it'south basically true. What is the cost of that? You have a system that mass-produces food. So the positive price of that is that nobody'due south hungry in America, or needs to exist hungry. And by and large, you get nutritious nutrient, at all times, 24 hours a solar day, seven days a calendar week, 365 days a yr. I mean, that'southward great. The downside of information technology is, information technology's then cheap, that people kind of take it for granted, and it doesn't tend to build a lot of respect for the things that go in for the production of food. It too has an ecology impact, because you're now producing, food--especially animal agriculture -- in very large animate being feeding operations, where there's both brute waste and water quality problems. Those are challenges primarily for state governments equally well as the EPA. That is certainly a big challenge every bit well -- the environmental side of the movie. I don't retrieve we can go back to the old days. But I think that what the authorities needs to do is information technology needs to brand sure that the pricing is fair, that you lot don't have monopolies out there, so that people don't have a chance to compete fairly. And nosotros probably haven't been doing as practiced a task in that area equally nosotros should have. ... [Has the consolidation of the industry contributed to food-prophylactic risks?] We raise animals differently at present than we used to. They're raised much more than intensively; large numbers of them together. And where there is affliction, it tends to spread much faster. Therefore, information technology creates additional adventure that nosotros might not have had 30, 40, fifty years ago. ... Information technology may be better for safety: a mass industrialization standardization probably can ensure quality control ameliorate, because somebody'south watching the product at all stages of the scheme. On the other hand, if a problem develops, that trouble becomes a much more than monumental and significant problem; if that problem will infect thousands of animals, let'south say, as opposed to one or ii isolated animals. ... Where there is a problem, the risks to the public are greater than they've ever been before considering disease, or a pathogen, can affect millions of people, as opposed to just a few. So even though I remember the systems are better today, the risks are probably greater besides. ... | ||||
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| There take been a number of of import changes in the meat industry over the terminal 50 years. More and more animals are raised on a single farm, so hundreds of thousands of pigs, or hundreds of thousands of chickens, may be raised under one roof. This gives the opportunity for pathogens to spread from i brute to some other. And when they are transported to slaughter, animals from many different farms may go in the same truck or the aforementioned transport freight to the abattoir. Again, there'due south the opportunity for the exchange of these bacteria. As the line speeds and the general efficiency of the slaughter plants increase, there may also be a greater opportunity for contamination to spread from one carcass to another. I suspect that the industrialization of our meat supply opened up a conduit for salmonella, for campylobacter, and for Eastward. coli O157 infections to pass through to the consumer. So efficiency has a downside? If nosotros have the meat from one animal and grind it up and make ground beef, we're including only the bacteria from one animal. But if we accept the meat from a g unlike animals and grind that together, nosotros're pooling the bacteria from a thousand different animals every bit well. Do you have an idea how many animals may exist pooled in one burger? I suspect at that place are hundreds or fifty-fifty thousands of animals that have contributed to a single hamburger. What are the public health implications of that? This is the large challenge of Eastward. coli O157. Even if in that location's a low level of contagion in ground beefiness, it's possible to have an outbreak of affliction that affects many people. Former [Agronomics] Secretary Glickman said he thought the meat supply is safer today than it's been in a long fourth dimension, merely that the potential for something going wrong is greater than ever. That's a overnice way of putting it. There have been changes in the way meat is processed and produced within the last decade that accept been important, and I remember that's office of the explanation for why we're start to see a reject in salmonella. But again, because the meat is produced in big cardinal facilities, if something goes wrong, a lot of people could be afflicted at in one case. How are outbreaks today different from outbreaks in 1950? Back in the 1950s, the usual food-borne outbreak was a church social or a hymeneals reception -- something where a hundred people who all knew each other got ill. And most of them lived in the same boondocks. Those folks would know immediately that there had been an outbreak. What we're seeing now [is] that there is some other kind of food-borne outbreak, which is more than subtle just has much wider ramifications. And this occurs when a food that is distributed in many different places at in one case gets contaminated back at the factory, or even dorsum at the farm. People fall sick at about the same time, just all over the country; they don't know each other, and they don't know that everyone else is sick. They remember they're just an isolated case. And the more centralized our food supply gets, the more than there is an opportunity for a really large outbreak. In 1993, there was a very large outbreak of Eastward. coli O157 affecting the western states of the United States. That was traced to ground beef. The ground beefiness came from ane grinding plant, but was distributed to outlets of a Jack in the Box chain. And in that location were cases of E. coli all over the West Coast. At least 750 cases were culture-confirmed, but there were probably lots more that were never confirmed. ... Is modern meat in some way designed for these pathogens? Well, nature is a wonderful affair, and there are a lot of unlike microbes out in that location. When a new manner of making a living opens upward, some microbe may well try to accept advantage of it. For instance, a big role of modern nutrient processing is refrigeration. Virtually microbes won't grow in the cold, and meat won't spoil. Merely there turns out to be a few bacteria that practise abound at refrigerator temperatures, bacteria that detect a nice moist, cold room just the sort of place to thrive. One of these is listeria. Listeria was not a major food-borne trouble until refrigerators became a role of our food-product landscape. Listeria has plant a home in the processing institute itself, in the cold room, in the nooks and crannies, in the mists and fogs that drip off the chiller equipment. If something drips off the ceiling onto hot dogs or deli meat, they tin be recontaminated with a new organism that they didn't originally have. If the meat is then packaged up and stored in a refrigerator, that listeria tin slowly grow in the refrigerator. And now at that place's a problem. Given the problems that centralization brings, some people say we need to go back to the smaller producers. Others say we need more applied science to solve the problem. What do you recall? Food can be produced safely in a number of unlike ways, and I think that the big industrialized food supply of this country is probably what we need in order to have plenty to eat. There are an awful lot of us, and the efficiencies of that food industry are what keep us fed everyday. But large-scale nutrient production means we need to take large-calibration safety engineered in. And I do think we demand new engineering science in the large-calibration food production to really be confident of the safety of our food supply. | ||||
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| I'thou not sure that concentration has exacerbated our food-safety concerns in the beef industry. ... Dealing with pathogens is a significant problem. I'grand not sure that a significant cause is the concentration of cattle feedlots in our industry. E. coli O157:H7, the chief pathogenic business concern within the beef sector today, xx years ago that pathogen, if it existed -- and there'due south some debate whether it did exist -- was non known. ... Nosotros have done a adequately good chore in responding to a pathogen that starting time became widely known in 1992 or 1993. Nosotros've invested tens of millions of dollars in what we telephone call intervention strategies, which are basically new technologies that are in place in beefiness-processing plants to further reduce the incidence of E. coli in the beef supply. If you await at USDA examination results that go back to the early on 1990s on East. coli O157:H7, you will find a consistent decrease in the incidence of that pathogen. ... Secretary Glickman had said that the meat supply is safer today than it was 10 years agone, merely because of the concentration in the manufacture, the way the meat is so efficiently prepared and distributed, if something goes wrong, the take a chance is awe-inspiring. And with new pathogens like E. coli appearing, doesn't that system brand usa more vulnerable? That system also makes us more efficient. That system also gives united states greater resources to identify and reduce and ultimately eliminate the kind of food-rubber concern that you raise. And at the same time, that system has given us the ability to respond to our customer needs and consumer preferences. | ||||
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| Frequently, cows are endemic in smaller groups by individuals. The calf is built-in; truly a miracle of creation when this happens. ... Ofttimes though, the ownership changes when that brute, the calf, is 400 or 500 pounds. And it might well exist sold to a stocker operator who has perhaps large ranchland and grows that animal from 400 or 500 pounds to peradventure 700 or 800 pounds, in which grass is its sole source of food. Beyond that, then the animal is frequently sold to someone else and delivered to a feedlot where, for the last 120 to 180 days of its life, information technology has a very loftier-energy ration based on corn. And it becomes a much more than desirable eating beast at that signal. You take marbling that makes information technology more juicy and more flavorful and very much in keeping with the [preferences] of human beings as we exist hither in America, at least. The side by side footstep would exist to get to the packing firm, where the animal is candy into either cuts of meat that are sold just every bit cuts of meat, or maybe fifty-fifty highly processed lunchmeats or precooked items that are microwaveable. ... I've seen some of these feedlots that are just enormous. Could you depict i of these massive feedlots today. Well, the feedlots are massive. Some of them equally large as 100,000 head of cattle at one location. And they've been driven by one thing, and one matter but, and that is efficiency. Xx-five years ago, we thought a 25,000-head feedlot was sort of where you maxed out at the economies of scale. We soon found that those were just sort of self-imposed limitations. ... I'chiliad not certain we take institute yet where the economies of scale cease. But at that place certainly are a number of 100,000-head feedlots in the United states. And their cost of production tends to be lower than the smaller feedlots. ... A lot has to be done to keep the animals salubrious [when they're living in such shut quarters], correct? ... [C]attle feeders, from the starting time, accept embraced the idea that they could learn from Ph.D. nutritionists and were willing to learn how they might feed the cattle more efficiently, from licensed veterinarians. Consulting veterinarians are actually very much the norm in the industry, and fauna health has been a tremendous driver ... partly because of the efficiencies, and partly because people in the manufacture have a genuine business organisation for the animals themselves. They want them to exist salubrious. They want them to fare well, to prosper. Partly considering it'due south in their economic interest, but partly because y'all really are dealing with living, breathing animals. And people in the industries tend to retrieve of them individually equally animals that demand to be cared for. ... In that location certainly would be people who would exist surprised to hear yous describing the sort of environment in a feedlot for cattle equally something driven by concern for that animal. A lot of people look at it and see it equally not the most humane of places, to have all these cows packed in together. Is information technology an inhumane place for cattle? I call back a feedlot is not an inhumane place for cattle. Certainly at that place'due south a dichotomy at that place. I mean, the creature is confined as opposed to roaming free in rangeland. And the picture in your mind of course is not every bit good. And that's where the dichotomy comes in. The creature is ameliorate fed, better sheltered, amend nourished, and watched literally daily, equally cowboys ... daily ride the pens and look for animals that have got wellness problems then that they can treat them immediately. Then information technology's a mixed blessing, really. My judge is that, could you interview a steer and ask him whether he'd rather be out in the pasture or in the feedlot, I think the vast majority of them would vote to be in the feedlot. ... Why? Well, a very nutritious and very palatable diet is delivered to them upon demand whenever they want it. If health issues come up -- which do in all of u.s., as humans and other animals -- they're treated immediately. All of their wants and needs are really taken care of in a very pampered sort of a style. ... We've been describing this concentration -- both economic, within the industry, and the concentration of how the animals are raised and slaughtered. Has that created an surroundings that ultimately has made food less condom? ... I think there are several issues, and they're conflicting issues at pale hither. Certainly the mixing together of animal parts -- particularly in basis beefiness -- if there is a contagion, does spread it more widely. There'due south no question about that. On the other hand, I recollect that if you lot spent much time in a major packing firm ... you'd detect that the sanitation practices are very strict, very well observed, very well monitored by government inspectors -- and probably a very good affair. Our ability to communicate aberrations, every bit we all know, has increased exponentially. And there are aberrations; there are problems. Only I believe that the Us has the safest food supply of any nation in the world. And to a great extent, that's been enhanced by the consolidation, so that you lot have large entities that are able to concentrate, that are able to spend the money on sanitation devices and practices, and accept the capitalization to exist willing to focus on information technology, as opposed to maybe cut some corners for a smaller operation. ... Former Secretary of Agriculture [Dan] Glickman said to united states that meat today is safer than it was ten years ago. It's the safest food supply in the world, but that the potential for something going wrong is enormous considering of this concentration. ... If you have a new pathogen or something we're not looking for, because of that efficiency and because of how quickly information technology is disseminated, the potential for something going incorrect is probably bigger than e'er. Exercise you hold with that? I think the potential for something going wrong is in fact less than information technology'south ever been earlier. The potential for wider distribution of a problem when information technology occurs is probably greater than information technology's been earlier. I'grand non quite sure that I know how those two abolish each other out or don't. ... The important affair is that we accept the safest food supply in the world. ... One of the things that'southward fascinating in having been in product agriculture for about xxx years to me is that consolidation concentration becomes kind of the whipping male child for a populist attitude -- that surely if we could just go back to the small family farm, the idyllic rural life, that things would be better; non simply for the people living out that life, merely for the people consuming the production. That'southward a gigantic jump of faith that in fact those things would occur that way. Why? I retrieve the more decentralized and the smaller the operation, the less capable that operation is of taking all of the precautions that need to exist taken, on 1 manus. The conflict is always going to be there, because watching American rural life disappear is a painful thing -- not only for the people who are in the process of disappearing, but for the public who really wishes that that manner of life [would continue]. ... It's sort of a wistful thing to watch that disappear and wish that things could be different. | ||||
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| [In that location are] 35,000, l,000, 100,000 animals in the space of a couple of hundred acres. And in the middle of the urban center is rising the single landmark, which is the feedmill. Information technology'due south several stories loftier. Information technology'southward silver. It'south sort of this cathedral in the midst of this, and everything rotates around it. ... Just they actually are medieval cities in many respects, I realized, because they are cities in the days earlier modern sanitation. They're from the time when cities actually were stinky. When they were teeming and filthy and pestilential and liable to be ridden with plague, because you had people coming from many, many dissimilar places, bringing many, many unlike microbes into a concentrated area where they could spread them around. The only reason this doesn't happen in the urban center of animals, the mod urban center of animals, is of course the mod antibiotics. That is the only thing that keeps the modern feedlots from being unlike than the 14th-century metropolis where everybody was dying of plague. Nosotros can, to some extent, command the disease with drugs. Absent the drugs, these places would be as plague-ridden and pestilential as a 14th-century urban center. ... Every hour I was on this feedlot, some other tanker truck came in filled with liquefied fat. Another one with liquefied protein. Every hour there was another truck with 50,000 pounds of corn. You see all the feedstuff coming into the city, and you lot encounter the waste going out. The wastes, by and large, are manure, trucks coming in from farms conveying it abroad. But a lot of this was pooled in these lagoons, which were just full of this. I haven't even mentioned the smell. I mean, it is overwhelming, the smell of these places. ... You go used to it, after a couple of hours, but initially, it is [overwhelming]. And information technology'due south non the smell of a moo-cow on a farm. This is the smell of the double-decker station men's room. It's tearing. And you wear it in your vesture for days after. It sounds rather disgusting the mode you describe information technology. What's the purpose, what's the reward of the arrangement? It'southward a wonderfully efficient system; it'due south a factory for producing protein. What information technology does is, it takes in corn and fat and vitamins and drugs, passes through that mill, which in a style is the hub of this factory, and then passes it through the bovine digestive arrangement. And these animals put on three-and-a-half to iv pounds a day, half of which is edible meat. So it is an fantabulous factory for producing meat. And the factory farm metaphor makes perfect sense. You've got cheap inputs, more expensive outputs, although, the margins are very tight. It costs nearly $1.threescore a twenty-four hours correct now to keep an animal on a feedlot, which seems pretty cheap for 32 pounds of food, all you can swallow. But nevertheless, the toll of meat isn't very high, either. So they operate on very tight margins. ... | ||||
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| Well, information technology tin broadcast these pathogens. If you go a number of animals in a feedlot and one of them has a pathogen -- it's a shared community, you know, h2o troughs and everything -- they can be spread within the animals. The larger plants produce more product, and consequently, if a problem gets in, it tin can be broadcast to a bigger spectrum of people. Although today I would also tell yous that another piece of this is that nosotros have amend detection capabilities. Then we can await at levels way better than we used to. What does that mean? Information technology used to exist it took a lot of organisms, a lot of bacteria, to be found. Today, ane of those little guys is findable with some of this engineering science that nosotros have. ... Nosotros have gene probe analyses that we can look for genetic cloth from these bacteria, like Deoxyribonucleic acid testing. In the quondam days, you had to take some stuff out and put it on a plate and grow it, and see what grew, and peradventure selection a few off and isolate them. Information technology's a very analytical, demote-driven arrangement. Today we've got terrific technology that enables us to observe things at very low levels. ... But at the same fourth dimension, if y'all had a diseased moo-cow, the x people who ate it got sick. Now, considering of the way the food system works, that cow may stop upwards in far more products sent out to 30 states in a week. That's true. And so information technology's the case of one fauna that'due south problematic creating a larger problem. That's why the up-forepart control systems are all the more than important. If you are going to bring these animals to a larger venue where it can exist spread more widely, yous need to control their access, make sure that there's not a trouble. And and so you need to monitor to brand sure you haven't created that problem, which is what our microbial testing programs do. As I said, they tin't guarantee zero. But they're designed to make sure that waves of problems do non enter our nutrient supply. ... Isn't in that location ... an inherent risk in such a centralized nutrient system? We certainly see it now in terms of the bioterrorism threat and concerns well-nigh that. The fact that nosotros have consolidated then much makes it then vulnerable. In the former days, the smaller plants, the food could take been safer. That's a widely held notion, ... that the pocket-size plants were safer, slower, and that the old days were better, and that now information technology'due south riskier. That's actually non true. ... The reality is the new plants, and the big plants, and larger people, have more money to spend on technology. And I'one thousand non maxim small is bad. At that place are people that have pocket-size plants [who] practice a great job, but it's harder to practise it without these technologies that are available to y'all. ... dwelling house + industrial meat + interviews + the politics of meat + is your meat rubber? + the inspection organisation spider web site copyright 1995-2014 WGBH educational foundation | | |||
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If you expect over the last 30 years, one statistic that I read said that the price of beef today is most half, in real dollar terms, what it was in the 1970s. Does that ring true to you? 
FRONTLINE on
Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/industrial/consolidation.html
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