We need to permanently bring back small processors and butcher shops.

May 13, 2020 Midwestern Plate

Or, we put all our eggs into one awful and super brittle basket thinking it could last forever and now we are seeing the results….
Support the Prime Act!

How did we get here?
A brief history of how America ended up
relying on Big Agriculture

“Pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable. Our culture, obsessed with numbers, has given us the idea that what we can measure is more important than what we can’t measure.”
Donella H. Meadows Thinking in Systems

The Chicken and the Egg.

Traditionally, chickens had not been separated from their eggs, nor bred into groups such as layers or meat birds (broilers). Chickens were raised outdoors in backyard flocks, or in very small quantities. However, while in the full swing of the Industrial revolution, people were also thinking of ways to make raising food in a more systematic factory way.

Around 1844 the first American Egg incubator was invented that could hatch up to around 360 eggs per batch. Fifty years later, another egg incubator was invented by Charles Cyphers that could hatch up to around 20,000 eggs. Cyphers also patented a multilevel brooder capable of brooding 300 chicks. This helped jump start the industrialization of our meat and food. Widely considered to the be pioneer of the commercial broiler industry, Wilmer Steele raised a flock of 500 broiler chickens in 1923, one thousand birds in 1924, then the following year in 1925 she raised 10,000.

Images from The Poultry Keeper: Volumes 22-23 (1905)

By the 1930s industrialized chicken had really taken off. Egg incubators were able to hatch over 50,000 chicks at one time. Separating breeds of chickens into egg-laying or meat birds and being bred to do only one or the other became the norm with meat birds being kept indoors by the thousands. In 1938 the DeWitt brothers invented the first automated poultry feeders that could feed 100,000 birds, drastically reducing the need for human care (this grew into the company known as Big Dutchman, a global company supplying equipment for industrial egg, poultry and pig production).

With World War II in full swing, the US government significantly upped its annual chicken production goals in order to ship food to troops. In 1942, an Illinois meat plant had obtained government approval of on-line evisceration, as a first. Processing and packing full ready-to-cook whole carcasses in ice in wooden crates become standard even today (except now we use refrigerated trucks and coolers). From 1940-1945 the value of US chicken went from $268 million to over $1 billion.

Since thousands of meat birds had been kept in small confinement with little no sun or care, they of course often became sick or lacked nutrients, causing up to 20% of flock death. This led to vitamins and antibiotics being added to their food and water, starting in the 1950s to today. This also happened to also increase their growth rate and weight gains, only enforcing the use of drugs for faster profit. And because the birds were not dying as often, industrial producers increased their flock size, leading to the increase demand of supplies like chicks, feed, and housing. This is where Big Ag really started to take off by way of combining all aspects of chicken raising into one business and having the farmer, and subsequently the consumer, choose from one of only a few companies.

Before the 1940s, there were many independent and diverse feed mills, hatcheries, farms, and processors who each sold their product in a separate market. But then all the different stages of production started to be consolidated and owned by singular companies, referred to as vertical integration, in order to streamline production and raise more birds. Vertically integrated companies in a supply chain are owned common owners (such as Tyson, which started appearing in the 60s and 70s in tv and print media). These companies own the birds, supplies the feed, and medicine. The farmers on the other hand, must purchase land independently, provide housing that meets the standards and capacity requirements of the company, equipment, utilities, or purchase from the company.

The farmers are paid for pound of meat or quantity of eggs based on efficiency standards that the company sets, oftentimes with a “bonus payment” for exceeding goals. This model leaves very little room for profits for the farmers even though they endure a lot of the cost and all of labor, thereby promoting the need to raise bigger birds faster. The companies own everything but the farm itself. However, oftentimes farmers out of necessity must put everything on the line in order to finance this large operation, leaving them even more indebted.

From the 60s to today, large companies use chicken in an ever-growing variety of ways from cut up chicken pieces, egg products, and various processed poultry products. Because of vertical integration and the need for enormous amounts of supplies to provide to the producers so they can grow birds not only for the US but for the world as well, companies have continued to consolidate so much that there are now only a few major meat providers globally, essentially taking over or wiping out small family farms and local economies/food systems.

These companies also own the majority of USDA meat processing plants.

The Great Bottleneck

“The social structure of agriculture, which has been produced by-
and is generally held to obtain its justification from- large-scale mechanization and heavy chemicalisation, makes it impossible to keep man in real touch with living nature; in fact, it supports all the most dangerous modern tendencies of violence, alienation,
and environmental destruction.”
- E.F Schumacher Small is Beautiful

Industrial chickens are raised to be processed at a certain age, usually around 5 to 8 weeks (sometimes less). Since chickens have been bred to gain weight at an unnaturally fast rate in order to meet requirements during this time, their body is unable to support further growth if not processed at their date. Meaning, they will literally collapse under their own weight leading to an eventual awful and painful death. They simply were not bred to live long.

Since the start of COVID-19 many meat processing plants have had to shut down due to workers being infected or to help reduce the spread of the virus. Workers processing animals work in very close quarters on an assembly line of sorts, with their own set of extraordinary production goals that they must meet. This clearly poses a colossal problem for producers who have animals that need to be processed. Since the farmers do not own the animals, they have no say in which processing facility they can use assuming there is more than one available nearby (more on that below), nor are allowed to sell to the public because again, even though they raised and cared for the animals they do not belong to them. Farmers are being faced with the heart wrenching decision to either euthanize their animals by order of the corporation or let them die “naturally.” Which then farmers face another set of problems of incurring cost of where to move the remains of thousands of birds (and other types of livestock).

This has created an artificial shortage of meat. The problem is not that we have run out of livestock, the problem is that large meat plants have been shut down due to sick workers, lack of PPE, and cleaning supplies needed in large amounts. These shutdowns not only hurt large corporations but can decimate smaller farmers who also use these facilities to process their livestock too.

None of this is new information. Many small farmers and producers have been warning about the monopolization of the meat industry for decades.

The Wholesome Meat Act, a law passed by congress in 1967 requires all commercial chicken, beef and pork to be slaughtered and processed in the same way. Meaning that slaughterhouses are the only ones who can produce meat for sale and there must be a federal inspector on site. This originally was to encourage cooperation between the USDA and state governments but has since been attributed to other consequences. At the time, there was around 10,000 federally inspected slaughterhouses when this was passed, but now there are less than 1,000.

A small farm who wants to sell half a cow to a local grocer must follow the same rules and regulations as one of the top corporations that processes thousands of cattle a day (assuming they get their own cow back that they raised at the end, another issue). And because large slaughterhouses are also centralized and so few, a small farmer oftentimes must send their animals hundreds of miles away or even to a different state to be processed, incurring even more cost along the way.

There are ways to process a small amount of animals locally though, and that is for small farmers to use a local custom-exempt meat processor which can only slaughter and process livestock for the exclusive use of the livestock owner(s). Meaning, a consumer(s) can purchase a live animal from a farmer (so the consumer owns the animal) which then it can be processed at a custom-exempt processor. This creates a direct farmer to consumer relation, cutting out the need for big business’s control over the market.

However not all states have custom-exempt processors, or they are few and far between, a large processing fee, and even though they are under health department and USDA sanitation oversight, a federal inspector is not on site; meaning farmers cannot sell to grocery stores, restaurants, farmers markets, or sell individual cuts of meat. While custom-exempt processors are not perfect, they are a huge steppingstone to building a more diversified and resilient local food system.

The Prime Act

The Prime Act (Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption) would allow states to permit the sale of custom-exempt facilities to sell meat to in-state households, grocers, and restaurants.

So instead of having a small number of large plants, we could have a large number of smaller processing plants that are local. This would make it easier and more affordable for people to buy meat from local farmers that they know, promote sustainable and healthy farming methods, and help small farmers compete with large corporations.

Wyoming has already expanded upon their Food Freedom Act, which includes the ability for consumers to purchase individual cuts of meat through an animal-share agreement for an animal that was processed at a custom-exempt facility. Other states are calling for the same.

Moving Forward

“The bitterness of poor quality remains long after
the sweetness of low price is forgotten”
-Benjamin Franklin

We are finally seeing the real price of quick and cheap food; it can no longer be ignored. Our commodifying of nature and our obsession with bottom dollar results has led us here. Large international corporations do not have local interest at heart. Cheapness is not cheap.

Everything has a cost and actions have reactions but that doesn’t mean it has to be negative. By supporting small farmers who are using regenerative practices the reaction can mean a more resilient and local food system. Part of that is having animals that can support themselves and adapt to change, are rotationally grazed to help build our soils, which in turn provides us with nutrient dense food that aided in the health and healing of our environment.

The industrial food system exists only because we keep buying into it. Right now, we have a very rare gift of opportunity to change things on the whole. Small farmers are already starting to see a shift because we are returning to our food. Let us continue this.

What you can do:

1. Find and support a local sustainable farmer

2. Ask questions about where your meat and food comes from

3. Support the Prime Act. Call your representatives today and ask them to support the Prime Act (H.R. 2859 and S. 1620). Find your House Rep and Senate Rep, or call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

4. Eat seasonally and adapt your eating habits to eating less
(yet highly nutritious) meat

5. Support small local butcher shops that support local farmers.

Some of our favorites are:

Butcher & Larder Chicago, IL

Smoking Goose Indianapolis, IN

Louise Earl Butcher Grand Rapids MI

St Paul Meat Shop St.Paul, MN

Local Pig Kansas City, MO

Kettle Range Meat Co. Milwaukee, WI

Bavette La Boucherie Milwaukee, WI

6. Support Heritage Breeds

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