Cornett: A One-Sided Probe of Beef

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(USDA)

You might be inclined to assume that a book entitlted “Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat” would be negative about the state of the beef industry.

You’d be right. I mean, really, really right.

Author Chloe Sorvino’s exhaustive, albeit occasionally rambling, 340-Kindle pages concentrate on “big Meat” problems like a teenager obsessing over a fresh pimple on prom night. She trots out all the usual culprits: Global warming; antibiotic resistance; bigevil packers; soil degradation;  worker exploitation; water quality; food safety; food inequity.

Raw Deal

Here’s the Cliff Notes in one sentence: “Good meat is not just meat that is made in a way that does not directly worsen climate change, although that is a crucial element. It must be good for all the other parts of the system too: the animals, the workers, the producers, food waste, land use, biodiversity, the nutrition and health of the community around production.”

Like we haven’t heard that before. So why would I suggest cattle people read it?

Well, if you’re one of those who believe bigevil packers are the reason you don’t get more money for your cattle, she provides some ammunition. Only in passing does she mention that Big Retail is bigger than Big Packers and takes a larger share of the beef dollar. Year after year. Cycle up, cycle down.*

Which isn’t to say she is pro-big retail. She’s just anti big.*  Wants us all back farming on Farmall tractors and milking cows before sunup and gathering eggs before sundown, I suppose. She has plenty of examples of entrepreneurial niche players succeeding at things like that.

Beyond that, it’s well-written and food for thought for anybody worried about the future of beef in the US market. For another, we all should open our minds to other viewpoints if only because thinking like Ms. Sorvino’s will impact the way we do business in the future. She’s done a lot of research and, while I might have steered her to some different sources (she kind of ignores what I consider mainstream cattle economists in favor of guys whose points of view I sometimes agree with but consider outliers: John Ikerd and Mike Callicrate and Bill Bullard) she presents a point of view too few cattle people seem to realize is so prominently out there. No mention of NCBA or the many sources at the Beef Board. Nobody to leaven her argument which is, basically, the meat system is broken and needs to be torn down and rebuilt.*

Might sound like overkill to you, but here’s one reviewer’s opinion:

"Raw Deal is Chloe Sorvino’s deeply reported, firsthand account of how business imperatives drive the meat industry to mistreat workers, pollute the environment, fix prices, bribe, and manipulate the political process, all in the name of shareholder profits. She argues convincingly for holding this industry accountable and requiring it and other corporations to engage in social as well as fiduciary responsibility. Raw Deal is a must-read for anyone who cares about where our food comes from." -- Marion Nestle, author of What to Eat and professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health, New York University

A lot of cattle folks seem to agree. Ikerd, Callicrate and Bullard among them.*** There is no mention of any positive impacts of feeder and packer consolidation.****

I mean: Hello! New York! We’re feeding millions of people here!

That kind of, for me, undercuts her credibility. I’d feel better if she acknowledged (refuted if possible)  some of the cattle folks who ask things like “would you rather sell cattle to four profitable packers or ten unprofitable ones?”

But I ramble. My purpose here is not to refute Ms. Sorvino*****so much as to tell cowfolk how a lot of smart and influential people perceive the business. She writes from New York City. As near as I can tell, her forays into flyover country are limited to tours guided by people telling her the story she’s telling her readers.  She describes her meat-eating habits as leaning toward what I would call boutique meats. No Walmart stuff. She cites zeropointzero evidence that boutique meats are superior to big chain stuff.****

She just feels that way.

She can afford to shop for beef where she buys her truffles. But not everybody can afford it. And the beef system she sees as broken does a pretty good job of keeping the supermarket shelves full at affordable prices.

Sure, the beef system could be improved. But not by popping perceived zits, no matter how tempting it is.

*Maybe market power? Maybe added expense? Maybe the fact that they don’t feature beef as often these days?

**Rebuilt how she doesn’t say. She acknowledges that grass fed beef is a hard fit for the modern marketing system, pays passing tribute to Ted Turner and buffalo and small integrated operations without much to convince me that any of that will ever scale.

***Like, for duh-instance, how much more cost-effective large-scale operations are than the niche operations. But that only matters if you’re worried about “food iniquity,” I suppose...

****She quotes them, one feels, because they said what she thinks. That’s a sin (merely venial, I hope, having on occasion sinned the very sin) for (objective journalism, though it seems to be very common these days.

*****But she’s plumb wrong about the new “meat” products. She thinks they’re drawing too much attention and investment from the evils she sees everywhere else. I think the fake meats and lab meats have a bright future, like it or not.

 

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