Beef for All, Profits for Few
A Lament About Food Laws
I don’t care for the laws surrounding food safety. Yeah, I said it! I think they are overbearing and from a bygone era when people were not as literate or scientifically knowledgeable as today. Laws enacted over a century ago were created to curb a very dangerous health and societal problem found in meatpackers in Chicago. However, in today’s world, with a 91% high school completion rate compared to the 4% seen in 1900, these laws come across as overly restrictive for small businesses and are blindly followed despite equitable, if not better, alternatives being available.
I remember the butcher shops in my town from my childhood, they left enough of an impression and I have never seen anything like them since. Open-air, electricity-less wooden shacks with various cuts of meat hanging in view of the dirt road a few meters away. Often, there was a hand-painted sign nailed above the cutout window and a coal fire with chairs nearby. Upon reaching the storefront, the flies would simultaneously take off to reveal dried meat and sinew. Bartering the cost, the butcher would cut away the agreed-upon amount, and then one would either take it home or cook it on the coals. Sharing "nyama choma," the grilled meat from a butcher, and a coke with my brothers is a fond memory and one I often think of when grilling.
I want to clarify, for the sake of my mother's dignity and to dispel any notion that she subjected her family to deliberate food poisoning, that we never ate meat from a butcher as a family. Mom would have never gone for it. However, when the boys went to town for errands or such…every time.
Go back to the turn of the 19th century America and the flies at the meat shack is going to be ten times better than the horrednous conditions described in Upton Sinclair's novel “The Jungle”, which was published just 117 years ago. Sinclair intended to highlight the working conditions of the time, which were terrible, but that is not what people focused on. The meat being sold and shipped likely caused more deaths due to disease and rot than those who died from the day-to-day conditions in the Chicago stockyards and processing plants, and that is what people focused on when hearing about the conditions.
Sinclair's book came out in 1906, and it caused a wave of public outrage and disgust towards the putrid hell-like conditions in the meatpacking industry. President Roosevelt formed an inspection committee to visit the major packers and investigate what was going on. The full report can be read here.
All of the major meat packers in Chicago were criticized for the condition of the meat and products. The inspectors even noted that those in charge knew better than to operate in such conditions, and the lack of humanity in dealing with the product and the workers was appalling. The fact that doctors at the time were commenting on how bad TB was in the plant indicates that enough people were realizing the poor conditions within the factories and that something should be done to curb the illnesses.
It's frustrating how history shows that we've been in similar situations before, yet here we are again. Roosevelt targeted the meatpackers due to their market monopolization, and "The Jungle" solidified the four companies' inability to join and control the market. But if these efforts were successful, why do we still have only four major meat packers responsible for selling 55%-85% of the meat in the US? Why aren't there hundreds of custom meat packers handling varying amounts of meat near every large urban area?
Hey hey hey, that’s called capitalism and questioning it is unpatriotic and anyone who could do better could come along and blah blah blah no. No they can’t. Despite the fact that I could order tests for any of the major diseases found in meat and do them myself, I cannot sell beef. Despite the repeated evidence that centralizing meat production fosters disease growth and spread, I am still unable to sell beef. Despite the fact that the manner in which I raise my beef cattle has no negligible effects to local water ways, odor pollution, or noise pollution, I cannot sell my beef.
Sure, I can have a ranch butcher come out and slaughter the animal, take it to the local butcher and through the kind graces of our sausage fingered overlords we are allowed to do a monkey dance to sell off portions through herd shares to individuals, but I don’t think we should be happy with that! I think we should be tired of dancing and start asking why the same song is still playing over a hundred years later.
The proper role of government, however, is that of partner with the farmer -- never his master. By every possible means we must develop and promote that partnership -- to the end that agriculture may continue to be a sound, enduring foundation for our economy and that farm living may be a profitable and satisfying experience.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
Special Message to the Congress on Agriculture, 1/9/56
It's government, overeach is expected, sound principles are not.
THE BEST tasting beef we ever had came from a friend's small herd out east of Oakdale from a quarter of a steer we bought that she raised on pasture and with kindness.