![]() ![]() ![]() As the author observes, all of this occurred out of sight of most Americans, who from the 1960s to ’90s knew only that meat was cheap and plentiful in fast-food restaurants and supermarkets. The strategy, soon a blueprint for other firms, worked first in the chicken business, then in the hog industry (some 90 percent of all hog farms disappeared), and now threatens the cattle business, where a minority of ranchers refuse to abandon their independence. Using Tyson as a window on modern meat production, Leonard shows how the company has eliminated free market competition through vertical integration, buying up independent suppliers (feed mills, slaughterhouses and hatcheries) and controlling farmers through restrictive contracts. meat supply-most notably Tyson Foods, the biggest, which has $28 billion in annual sales with $780 million in profits. Leonard, a fellow at the New America Foundation and former national agribusiness reporter for the Associated Press, debuts with a richly detailed examination of factory farming, which has reshaped small-town life for the worse in Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma and elsewhere, leaving a handful of huge companies with “unprecedented control” over the U.S. An engrossing report on the industrialized American meat business. ![]()
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