Packinghouse ethics

A Storm Lake Times Pilot Editorial

This happened just last week: Cargill agreed to pay $32 million in a settlement over a lawsuit alleging price-fixing on turkey products. In a separate matter, meat processors JBS and Perdue agreed to settle federal investigations into child labor violations for $8 million. These are the Big Meat primetime players.

Earlier, Tyson settled over the turkey price-fixing allegations with New York food distribution companies. It remains the subject of a federal investigation into child labor on night clean-up operations (not in Storm Lake).

There have been many settlements over wage and price fixing in the meatpacking industry over the years. It is a cost of doing business, often a fatal factor to cattlemen pleading for open markets and a fair deal. Open markets in poultry, and then pork, ceased to exist a long time ago. Fixing markets is made more convenient except for the occasional class-action lawsuit or federal probe. It is easier to set wages in the absence of strong unions.

They are big employers and as such will ask a lot of communities. In the case of Storm Lake, the people who clock in every day get to pay a disproportionate share, with 7% annual rate increases, for an enlarged water plant and distribution system made necessary by food processing.

These are operators who skunked out independent livestock production. They control the markets because there are so few processors. They ultimately dictate the terms of the contracts with producers, who are indentured to confinement-building mortgages, because the players set the prices.

Not that they would admit it, but they are writing checks over claims that a small number of players control the turkey market.

When there are repeated claims and settlements you begin to figure out what sort of player you are dealing with: a mighty powerful one. They survive the probes and pay-outs. They sit on organized labor. The polite term is “integrated markets.”

Through all these community partnerships and teamwork you get kids not old enough to get a learner’s permit to drive working night clean-up in a packinghouse.

Through all our support for agriculture we get hogs owned out of Shanghai.

Through American free enterprise your turkey sandwich is inflated by price-fixing claim payments.

More claims will be made and checks written, and the behemoths of meat will remain. The independent producer is gone. Our water levels are going down while our rates go up. Iowa’s manure load is unmanageable, such that the state cannot keep track of (much less enforce) manure management plans for large livestock operations.

There has always been consolidated power, but not like now. It is almost impossible to operate independently, outside that system that is routinely accused of wage and price fixing. The system should be broken up for the sake of public safety. To the contrary, the industry is moving toward less regulation — hence our gagging dead rivers — and self-inspection. Workers are exposed to disease that goes untended because of the unbridled power.

We do not believe that affordable food and diverse production are mutually exclusive. The more concentrated the industry gets, the less efficient it becomes with class-action claims to pay. The producer’s neck has been wrung. Costs are kept down with teen help when the gate is closed in immigrants. The invisible hand guides Storm Lake’s wages. The hogs and turkeys keep coming. This is our basic enterprise. To say it is a fair deal belies the settlements, and the many other costs brought by such progress.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this editorial appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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