“A Weapon of Market Destruction”: How Captive Supply and USDA Collusion Killed the American Cattleman

Republished from Mike Calicrate’s NoBull

Concentration and Consolidation has Destroyed the World’s Food Systems

In 2000, IBP president and CEO, Robert Peterson said, “Those who fight consolidation in the food industry will not be able to compete in world commerce.” A year later IBP sold to Tyson, a transnational conglomerate.

Showing preference to certain cattle feeders who provided market depressing captive supplies disadvantaged smaller independent cattle feeders and provided market leader IBP with a weapon of market destruction – The Formula

In 1996, Dr. Heffernan warned Bob Peterson, IBP wasn’t big enough to compete with transnational conglomerates. 

Jumping forward to today, Peterson’s “big is better” model has failed to feed U.S. consumers on a reliable basis, while eliminating over half our cattle producers, reducing our nation’s cow herd to 1950’s levels and forcing us to be dependent on imports to eat.

Any attempts to rebuild a more efficient, and healthier local/regional meat processing alternative has been crushed by the big meatpackers, big food retailers, and big food service, with help from a captured USDA.

The following images show how much we’ve lost in moving from a fair and competitive decentralized meat industry to a handful of global firms extracting maximum profits:

As Walmart, our nation’s biggest food retailer, continues to build their own beef supply chain, like they did in the dairy sector, Tyson loses their biggest beef customer. Consider the possibility of who might have the financial power to buy IBP when Tyson has had enough? Would newly funded JBS be a buyer?

We can’t build the alternative local/regional food system model Dr. Heffernan discussed fast enough.

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