Currently browsing posts about: Chickens

On January 3, the White House issued a press release to announce “The Biden-⁠Harris Action Plan for a Fairer, More Competitive, and More Resilient Meat and Poultry Supply Chain.

This came with a Fact Sheet explaining the plan and its rationale.

Even as farmers’ share of profits have dwindled, American consumers are paying more—with meat and poultry prices now the single largest contributor to the rising cost of food people consume at home.

The plan provides $1 billion to increase independent processing capacity: For example, 50 beef slaughter plants owned by just a handful of companies currently process nearly all the cattle in the United States.

• Independent processing plants–$375 million
• Financing for independent producers: $275 million
• Back private lenders to independent processors–$100 million
• Worker development–$100 million
• Technical assistance–$50 million
• Inspection support for small producers–$100 million

How this happened

Let’s start with a report from the White House Competition Council, which sets the tone by beginning with this quote from President Biden:

Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism; it’s exploitation.  Without healthy competition, big players can change and charge whatever they want and treat you however they want.

The Council’s goal for reducing competition in agriculture: Lowering food prices for consumers and increasing earnings for farmers and ranchers.

The 2021 timeline

July 9  President Biden issues Executive order on promoting competition in the American economy

Robust competition is critical to preserving America’s role as the world’s leading economy. Yet over the last several decades, as industries have consolidated, competition has weakened in too many markets, denying Americans the benefits of an open economy and widening racial, income, and wealth inequality…Consolidation has increased the power of corporate employers, making it harder for workers to bargain for higher wages and better work conditions…Consolidation in the agricultural industry is making it too hard for small family farms to survive.

July 9  The White House presents a Fact sheet on the Executive order

The markets for seeds, equipment, feed, and fertilizer are now dominated by just a few large companies, meaning family farmers and ranchers now have to pay more for these inputs. For example, just four companies control most of the world’s seeds, and corn seed prices have gone up as much as 30% annually.

September 8  The White House issues a report Addressing Concentration in the Meat-Processing Industry to Lower Food Prices for American Families  [Note: this contains many useful charts]

December 10  The White House finds Recent Data Show Dominant Meat Processing Companies Are Taking Advantage of Market Power to Raise Prices and Grow Profit Margins  [Note: I did a blog post on this one]

The meat-processors are generating record profits during the pandemic, at the expense of consumers, farmers, and ranchers…the prices the processors pay to ranchers aren’t increasing, but the prices collected by processors from retailers are going up…At the same time, we have seen some of the top firms in this industry generate record gross profits and their highest gross margins in years.

The Reactions

The North American Meat Institute: Government Intervention in Markets Will Not Help Consumers, Producers 

For the third time in six months, President Joe Biden and his Administration announced the same plans to spend $1 billion to fund government intervention in the market in an attempt to increase prices livestock producers receive while blaming inflation on private industry…The Biden Administration continues to ignore the number one challenge to meat and poultry production: labor shortages.

Washington Post Opinion: Why President Biden is suddenly talking about meat

Now that President Biden has unveiled a plan to combat monopolistic practices in the meat industry, much of the media coverage is treating this effort as little more than an attempt to mitigate the political fallout of inflation by blaming large corporations for it…But the truth is that the White House plan only makes passing mention of inflation. Its primary focus is on the power dynamics of an industry that puts small faWilrmers and ranchers at the mercy of large meatpacking corporations, and the role this plays in causing higher prices and creating other problems.

The Counter: Can $1 billion really fix a meat industry dominated by just four companies?

The Biden administration’s newly announced investment in small, independent processors is intended to level the playing field. But without addressing the root causes [larger plants, union busting] of market concentration, critics fear it may have limited impact.

The Meatrix: the 2.5-minute trailer provides an excellent summary of the issues.  It also comes with a Take Action page

The Hagstrom Report’s list of links

• The White House — Readout of President Joe Biden’s Event with Farmers, Ranchers on his Action Plan for a More Competitive Meat and Poultry Supply Chain
• (video) — Roundtable on Promoting Competition and Reducing Prices in the Meat Industry
• Remarks by President Biden During a Virtual Meeting to Discuss Boosting Competition and Reducing Prices in the Meat-Processing Industry
• What They Are Saying: Bipartisan Members of Congress, Key Agriculture Stakeholders Applaud President Biden’s Action Plan for a Fairer, More Competitive, and More Resilient Meat and Poultry Supply Chain
• Justice Department and Agriculture Department Issue Shared Principles and Commitments to Protect Against Unfair and Anticompetitive Practices
• Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Delivers Remarks at the Roundtable on Promoting Competition and Reducing Prices in the Meatpacking Industry

Comment: Will any of this do any good in reducing the monopolistic power of Big Meat?  This depends on anti-trust legislation, and for that we must wait and see.  And where is Big Chicken in all of this?  Most of the attention here is on beef production, but the unfair practices of chicken companies need just as much attention.

Gina A. Warren.  Hatched: Dispatches from the Backyard Chicken Movement.  University of Washington Press, 2021. 

I did a blurb for this book:

Hatched is Gina Warren’s exceptionally thoughtful account of raising backyard chickens from chicks to dinner, with dumpster diving in between–actions that reflect her deep respect and care for the animals we eat and her profound commitment to living ethically.

Here’s what she says it’s about:

Backyard chickens are still on the rise, partially because the style of living they exemplify rebels against modern metropolis ails; in the wake of stresses about increasing urbanization, environmental collapse, GMO foods, and kids growing up with their fingers on screens instead of in the dirt, chickens are an all-inclusive reprieve.  Chicken people tend to have concerns about the environment, industrial food, and the economy of commercial agriculture.  By owning chickens, people perform a feat of micro-resistance against society’s dominant forms of consumption and production and create a counter-narrative to the story that food, something we all require on a daily basis, can only be produced by certain industries in sequestered places.

This book is a welcome addition to others about the backyard chicken movement, a subset of the greater food movement.

It extols the pleasures of getting to know the hens that produce daily eggs, and those of hens scratching around in the grass as compared to those raised in enclosed barns housing 50,000.

Backyard chickens are a privilege.

President Biden has blocked the Trump Administration’s allowance of increased speeds on poultry processing lines.

I first heard about this from an announcement from Food and Water Watch.

As described by The Counter, the Trump rule allowed facilities “to slaughter chickens at a rate of 175 birds per minute—equivalent to 3 birds a second—up from the industry standard of 140 birds per minute.”  

As the Washington Post describes, poultry processing plants with higher line speeds are more dangerous for workers.

The history of the rule changes over the past few years is given on the USDA website.

But line speeds are only one of the problems with poultry safety.  Salmonella is another.  The history of attempts to reduce Salmonella in poultry is summarized by Michael Taylor, former USDA official, at FoodSafetyNews.com: “Our poultry safety regulation isn’t working: It’s past time to fix it.”

This is why food safety groups have filed a petition

urging FSIS [USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service] to modernize its food safety standards by establishing enforceable standards targeting Salmonella types of greatest public health concern while reducing all Salmonella and Campylobacter in poultry. We also ask that FSIS ensure the safety of the food supply chain from farm to fork by requiring slaughter establishments to adopt and implement effective supply chain programs, and by publishing finalized versions of its “DRAFT FSIS Compliance Guidance for Controlling Salmonella and Campylobacter in Raw Poultry.”

Biden’s first 100 days seems like a terrific opportunity to make poultry production safer for workers and for people who eat the poultry produced in these plants.

The CDC reports that more than 1000 people have been infected with a toxic form of Salmonella, almost certainly from contact with backyard poultry.

Among these cases of illness, 23% are among children under the age of 5 years.

The link to backyard poultry comes from epidemiologic and laboratory evidence.

The CDC warns owners of backyard poultry to take steps to avoid acquiring Salmonella from their poultry

This problem has become so serious that the CDC has a webpage devoted to the safety of backyard poultry.

Best to follow its advice.

Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, explains in The Atlantic Why It’s Immigrants Who Pack Your Meat.

You really should read the whole thing.  It’s a powerful indictment.  Here are a few excerpts. 

• The immigration raid last week at seven poultry plants in rural Mississippi was a perfect symbol of the Trump administration’s racism, lies, hypocrisy, and contempt for the poor. It was also a case study in how an industry with a long history of defying the law has managed to shift the blame and punishment onto workers.
• What Trump has described as an immigrant “invasion” was actually a corporate recruitment drive for poor, vulnerable, undocumented, often desperate workers.
• The immigrant workers arrested in Mississippi the other day were earning about $12.50 an hour. Adjusted for inflation, during the late 1970s, the wages of meatpacking workers in Iowa and Colorado were about $50 an hour.
• Over the years, I’ve spent time with countless farmworkers and meatpacking workers who entered the United States without proper documentation. Almost all of them were hardworking and deeply religious. They had taken enormous risks and suffered great hardships on behalf of their families. Today workers like them are the bedrock of our food system. And they are now being scapegoated, hunted down, and terrorized at the direction of a president who inherited about $400 million from his father, watches television all day, and employs undocumented immigrants at his golf resorts.

As readers of this blog should know by now, I’m a big fan of food safety lawyer Bill Marler, whose blog keeps me up to date on food safety matters.

He posted recently on a Salmonella outbreak caused by contact with backyard chickens.

The CDC keeps track of such things.  By its count,

A total of 279 people infected with the outbreak strains of Salmonella have been reported from 41 states.

• 40 (26%) people have been hospitalized and no deaths have been reported.
• 70 (30%) people are children younger than 5 years.

The CDC’s advice:

I was interested in Marler’s account because I knew that he had backyard chickens at his place near Seattle.

Here’s what he says about that:

We have had hens in our backyard since just after the DeCoster egg debacle in 2010.  I clean the chicken house about twice a month and the shoes and clothes I wear are removed before going inside.  I wear a mask and gloves when I clean and either wash my hands well or take a shower.  I do not pick up the chickens unless they are ill, and I wash my hands after I do.  I wash the eggs and refrigerate then.  They tend to get used within the week.

I do my best to think about the possibility of cross-contamination with Salmonella and/or Campylobacter.  So far, so good.

Good advice.

I subscribe to GlobalMeatNews.com’s daily newsletter to find out what’s going on in the international meat market.  Here is a sample of the type of issues it covers.

Special Edition: Focus on Poultry

The global poultry market is heating up with some major consolidation taking place. This focus on poultry looks at MHP and Cargill’s expansion plans as well as Costco’s decision to move up the food chain and manage its own supply. We also look at which countries are becoming the big players in poultry.

• MHP plans to acquire Perutnina Ptuj: Ukrainian poultry producer MHP has announced that it is seeking to acquire meat processor Perutnina Ptuj… Read
• Costco takes control of meat supply chain: Retailer Costco is setting a new “protein precedent” for the US market by taking ownership of the chicken supply chain from farm to fork, a new report from CoBank Knowledge Exchange has revealed… Read
• Global poultry market facing challenges: The growing incidents of African Swine Fever (ASF) across the globe could have a knock-on effect on the international poultry market… Read
• Cargill to acquire Konspol: Processor Cargill has reached an agreement to acquire Konspol, a leading Polish value-added food company… Read
• Asia driving global poultry growth: With poultry predicted to become the most consumed meat in the world in the next few years, where will this growth come from?.. Read
• Jamaican Broilers Group grows US presence: Poultry processor Jamaica Broilers Group has expanded further into the US with the acquisition of a feed mill in Georgia for an undisclosed sum… Read
• Singapore fresh chicken distributors fined S$27m: Thirteen fresh chicken distributors have been fined a total of S$27m (Singapore dollars) for anti-competitive behaviour and price-fixing… Read
• Canada resists US pressure to weaken poultry supply management system: Canada’s Government has been talking tough about protecting the country’s supply management system, as negotiators conduct what might be the final round of talks to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), with the United States and Mexico… Read
• Hong Kong reports human case of AI in China: Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection has revealed that a 42-year-old man from Guangxi, China has been infected with H5N6 avian influenza (AI) after handling poultry… Read
• Master Good set to expand Kisvárda plant: Hungarian poultry processor Master Good is to embark on a HUF15 billion (bn) expansion plan for its Kisvárda plant, aided by a Government grant of HUF3.4bn… Read