Episode 104: Chickenization with Christopher Leonard
Episode description
The meat industry is becoming “chickenized” and it’s not a good thing. This week on What Doesn’t Kill You, Katy Keiffer talks to Christopher Leonard, author of The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business. Christopher is the former national agribusiness reporter for the Associated Press. His work has appeared in Fortune, Slate, and The New York Times. He is a fellow with The New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute in Washington, DC. This program was sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.
“We used to have a rigorous cash market for hogs – that totally got destroyed and erased by contract production.” [26:00]
“There is a deep aversion in [some states] to government regulation. People see the hand of big government as stupid and ineffective. Mostly what producers encounter are regulations, so there’s an inherent distrust for government intervention. The irony is […] big corporations are characterized by centralized control, secret contracts […] it’s a command and control system. That’s what happens when you don’t have anti-trust regulations. The laws of supply and demand don’t determine the price of chicken any more – it’s market power.” [29:00]
–Christopher Leonard on What Doesn’t Kill You
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