"Chickenization" of Beef Industry?

Yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend about a lecture she went to with a representative of a major beef company, in which she tried to challenge his assumption that the solution to improving the fatty-acid profile of beef is to genetically modify the cattle (as opposed to just feeding them more grass instead of grain, which is how it was done...forever). Anyway, in framing the conversation we were agreeing about our impression that the beef industry is much less concentrated and integrated than the poultry and hog industries....

Well, apparently we were wrong:

• In 2005, Phil Howard of Michigan State's "Connect Four" Information Graphic showed the percent of the beef-packing industry controlled by the top 4 companies, also known as the industry's "CR4"- it was already much higher than other industries.

• Marion Nestle reported this week on the "chickenization" of the beef industry, which is rapidly consolidating to resemble the monopolies and monopsonies (few buyers/packers for the number of producers) of the poultry industry. According to Nestle, three companies now control 70% of the market: JBS 31%, Tyson 21%, and Cargill 21%.

• And now JBS, a Brazilian meatpacking firm has proposed buying National Beef Packing and Smithfield, the fourth and fifth largest US beef-packers. With help from Mary Hendrickson and William Heffernan's latest report, Tom Philpott at Grist crunches the numbers, showing that if JBS acquires National Beef Packing, the CR4 would become 83.5% and if they also acquire Smithfield, the CR3 would be above 90%. (Without knowing the current sixth-largest packer, we can't calculate the CR4).
  

Until tomorrow (3.24), the Nat'l Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture and the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition are collecting organizations for a sign-on letter to the Assistant Attorney General in charge of Anti-Trust Division requesting him to conduct a thorough anti-trust review of the acquisitions. It's clear that the power imbalance resulting from this sort of integration has had a big role in the food safety issues plaguing our nation's beef supply- not to mention other food security, environmental and rural development issues.

Defending the Rights of Paper

Do you feel comforted by the steady stream of junk mail coming into your home? After all, what else would do in the bathroom if there was no junk mail?

Well, never fear: In the battle against evil state governments that wish to allow individuals to stem the tide of junk mail, the International Paper Company is fighting back with this memo sent, presumably, to clients which use their paper services. They want to make sure that in the 4 states they deem "actionable," no law passes allowing you, the lowly, uninformed consumer to reject all junk mail that might come your way.

Kudos to the International Paper Company. Fighting the good fight for....dead trees?

Obama and Tikkun Olam

There is this interesting piece over at Daily Kos about Obama's use of the ideas of "tikkun olam" and "repair of the world," which is pretty interesting. Not sure exactly how much I buy it--- yet.
The author ties in the famous Rabbi Hillel quote at the end, all of which yield some humorous comments.

Also, I have recently discovered that the blogspeak acronym of MSM for "mainstream media" is confusing to me because my first thought whenever I see MSM is "men who have sex with men," which it's also used for, often in public health contexts. Someone needs to clear this up....it's very confusing.

Update: Kate Clinton mentions this very same "MSM" confusion on her recent video blog.