By: Liesl Stewart
Recently, while cooling off in a pool in Arizona (USA), I overheard a conversation. As they bobbed on foam noodles, a group was bemoaning the high cost of pot roast. “Have you seen the prices?!” Heads shook in knowing commiseration, for meat prices had indeed increased noticeably. The conversation rolled along covering in great detail exactly where pot roast could be bought for the cheapest prices.
And the cost of that pot roast? While food prices were climbing, Tyson Foods,2 the U.S.’s largest meat corporation by sales,3 posted a $1 billion profit the first quarter of 2022–up 48% from that same quarter the year before.4 This seemed confusing to me because, in the same period, meat prices in the U.S. increased by an average of 13.1%.5
How could this be? How could Tyson Foods and other meat corporations report spectacular profits when consumers were feeling a tighter pinch to their wallets every time they bought meat? When Tyson Foods CEO Donnie King celebrated these company earnings, he said, “The company worked closely with customers to pass along that inflation through price increases.”6
There we go. That’s how this can be. The company–read this with giant air quotes–“worked closely with consumers.” How did they do this? By setting much higher prices for meat, and letting consumers pay for those increases. 13.1% increases, to be exact. Their profiteering has, in fact, increased inflation.7 It's hard not to feel incredulous anger toward this industry and the corporate systems that enable their activities!
However, as expensive as it is now, I’ve learned that the true cost of pot roast isn’t simply the money paid at the cash register. There are costs that are hard to see behind the price tags, and these costs have everything to do with corporations gaining dominance in the business of animal farming. To talk about both the overt and hidden costs of meat in the U.S., it’s important to identify the source of the problem: the corporatization of the nation’s–and world’s–food systems.
I grew up hearing the narrative that the U.S. is a patchwork of small family farms–from the “amber waves of grain” to the “fruited plain”. I believed that each of these family farms is a healthy ecosystem of crop varieties and different farmed animal species feeding the country in the most wholesome ways. This was once true but not anymore. This image is so strong, however, I didn’t realize how much the country’s land and foodscapes have changed in just my lifetime of fifty-some years.
Animal production on this scale is driven by corporations. If a person eats meat, eggs, or dairy products in the U.S. without deliberately sourcing from the small farms that are the exceptions, the animals have been factory-farmed and processed by a handful of corporations that are politically powerful. Their dollars speak loudly in state legislatures and in the lobbying halls of Washington D.C. They dominate U.S. animal agriculture, such that many small family farms have gone out of business.9 Sadly, many countries around the world have also adopted this corporate production model.
How did I not know this? Because the world is urbanizing and, like many people, I’ve only lived in cities. I don’t often see what’s happening in rural areas where food is produced. I don’t see the enclosed concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and industrial facilities that don’t look at all like the picturesque family farms I thought dotted the countryside. I don’t see the trucks carting live, frightened animals from the CAFOs to be killed at meat processing plants. And, I don’t see the poorly paid CAFO and slaughterhouse workers living in rural poverty because they aren’t my close geographical neighbors. As Christopher Carter writes in his important book The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice, “To be fair, this is how industrial food systems are designed to operate: we consumers are not supposed to think about where our food comes from.”10
I began writing this blog as we finished celebrating the Easter season. As I followed the lectionary readings, the words of Jesus jumped out at me: “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.” (Mark 16:15) We don’t simply proclaim with words. Our discipleship is expressed in full-bodied, everyday living, and the good news is for all that Creation encompasses–not only for human animals, as I believed for so many years. The way we live and eat should proclaim good news to all of Creation.
I now believe that corporate agribusinesses exploit Creation. Decisions about the welfare of people, animals, the earth, and the environment as impacted by industrial farming are made in boardrooms, not in day-to-day embodied interactions with the people and animals living, working, and dying within farming systems. CEOs are answerable to their shareholders, who are primarily interested in short-term profits–not in providing good working conditions for employees or the kind treatment of animals within their care. When governmental oversight and regulatory bodies aren’t powerful enough–which they definitely aren’t in the U.S., nor in most countries–corporations can exploit Creation in the name of profit.
This industrialized mode of meat production has terrible costs for Creation, costs that are much greater than the price tag on a pack of pot roast. I’m going to look at these costs–the true costs of industrially farmed pot roast–in a follow-up to this blog, for it’s important to know what those costs are. Thankfully, we can learn new ways to support food systems that proclaim good news to all Creation, so I’ll also write about some of those.
This discussion will continue in my next blog…
2. Though they're well-known for chicken, Tyson produces significant amounts of beef and pork with brands like Steak-EZE®, Original Philly™, Hillshire Farm®, Star Ranch Angus®, and more.↩
3. Michael Hirtzer, Tyson Soars as Rising Meat Prices Boost Profit, Sales View (Bloomberg.com, 7 February 2022), retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-07/tyson-foods-tops-earnings-estimates-with-meat-prices-rising↩
4. Sarah Ovaska quoting Robert Reich, former US Labor Secretary, “Grocery Store Prices Are Up, But So Are Corporate Profits” (Cardinal & Pine online, 14 April 2022), retrieved from https://cardinalpine.com/story/grocery-store-prices-are-up-but-so-are-corporate-profits/#:~:text=Tyson's%20CEO%20says%20they're,This%20is%20about%20corporate%20greed.↩
5. https://www.foodmanufacturing.com/supply-chain/news/22172152/usda-predicts-food-price-hikes↩
6. Elizabeth Crawford ‘Tyson: In this dynamic environment, we will be aggressive in monitoring inflation and driving price recovery activities' [Tyson Foods is celebrating a better-than-expected fourth quarter thanks in part to “aggressive” pricing actions that buoyed sales and offset inflation, and a “bold” new productivity plan that seeks to bring the company’s operating income margin up to at least the 5-7% range on a run rate basis by mid-fiscal 2022.] (Food Navigator, 16-Nov-2021) Retrieved from HTTPS://WWW.FOODNAVIGATOR-USA.COM/ARTICLE/2021/11/16/TYSON-BENEFITS-FROM-AGGRESSIVE-PRICING-TO-OFFSET-INFLATION-LAYS-OUT-BOLD-PRODUCTIVITY-PLAN ↩
7. Michael Hirtzer, Tyson Soars as Rising Meat Prices Boost Profit, Sales View (Bloomberg.com, 7 February 2022), retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-07/tyson-foods-tops-earnings-estimates-with-meat-prices-rising↩
8. Pew Commission Report: “Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America” [Executive Summary] (A Project of The Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2008), 1.↩
9. I liberally used the wording directly from the source: The Pew Commission Report: “Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America” (A Project of The Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2008), 49.↩
10. Christopher Carter, The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, 2021), 43.↩