The Meat Racket

Journalist Christopher Leonard traces how a small group of firms came to dominate meat production in the United States. He describes the arrangements that squeeze farmers toward financial ruin, keep retail prices high for shoppers, and have pulled the industry back toward its early twentieth-century structure, a period when meatpacking giants were once broken apart. Leonard argues that the industry now resembles an oligarchy, with growers working under a modern form of sharecropping that depends on tight corporate control. He points out that these companies can push meat prices up for consumers while paying farmers less. The book accepts that large corporations are needed to supply meat to American tables, then asks whether the system they built is stacked against everyone involved.