Cory Booker Just Picked a Fight With Giant Meatpackers

And gave Biden a chance to prove he’s serious about confronting market power.

Jens Büttner/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

On July 13, for the second time in less than two years, Sen. Cory Booker (D.-N.J.) floated a bill that challenges the business model of a powerful, corporate-dominated industry: meat.

When Booker first proposed the Farm System Reform Act in December 2019, the Republican Party owned the White House and both chambers of Congress. The GOP draws the great bulk of the meat sector’s campaign contributions and its members have been known to embrace unchecked carnivory as a culture war issue. So it wasn’t a huge surprise that the bill gained no traction.

But things have since changed. 

Now the Democrats control the executive and legislative branches, Senate dysfunction notwithstanding, and have shown an increasing appetite to rein in the corporations that wield monopoly-like power. Last week, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that would do just that, specifically name-checking the meat industry as a target. “Four large meat-packing companies dominate over 80% of the beef market and, over the last five years, farmers’ share of the price of beef has dropped by more than a quarter—from 51.5% to 37.3%—while the price of beef has risen,” the order’s fact sheet complained.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus pandemic displayed both the industry’s disregard for worker safety and its massive concentration: In April 2020, a COVID outbreak at a single Iowa hog-slaughter facility run by Tyson temporarily shuttered 4 percent of US pork capacity, causing supply disruptions

The Booker bill would shake the foundations of the handful of companies that slaughter and pack the bulk of the meat that supplies supermarkets, restaurants, and fast-food outlets. Their supply of animals comes from factory-scale facilities known as CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), which concentrate vast amounts of manure that generate the potent greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide and often pollute water and foul air for surrounding communities. The Farm System Reform Act would place an immediate moratorium on new large-scale CAFOs, and halt the expansion of existing CAFOs over a certain size. And it would fund a voluntary buyout program for CAFO owners who want to exit the business. 

Such a moratorium would throw a wrench into an industry geared to perpetual expansion, its profit prospects reliant on satisfying ever-growing demand for US meat exports in Asia. And it would aid communities in livestock-heavy regions—WisconsinIowaNorth CarolinaDelaware/Maryland—that are rebelling against having to live among huge cesspools of manure known as lagoons. The press release for Booker’s bill spells out why:

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, large CAFOs produce as much as 1.4 billion tons of waste each year and are not required to maintain a treatment facility for livestock waste. The number of CAFOs have dramatically increased over the years and the steady growth makes rural communities vulnerable to environmental hazards and threaten the economic prosperity of family farms. The overuse of medically important antibiotics by large CAFOs has led to the generation and spread of dangerous antibiotic resistant bacteria. In 2019, the American Public Health Association urged federal, state, and local governments and public health agencies to impose a moratorium on all new and expanding CAFOs,and a 2021 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that air pollution due to animal agriculture is responsible for 12,720 US deaths per year. 

In addition to helping communities resist the expansion of a dirty industry, the bill would also help meat farmers escape an unfair contract system that strands them on a debt treadmill at the whims of the dominant meatpackers, who have minted profits by dictating terms to a compliant, cowed group of farmer-suppliers. It proposes a buyout fund for farmers who want to stop running a CAFO—and, say, switch to a pasture-based system. 

In 2021, a bill that would improve public health health but that undermines the business model of a potent industry remains a longshot. But the Farm System Reform Act has high-profile friends in the Senate (co-sponsors include Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, both now power players) and in the House (California Rep. Ro Khanna rolled out a companion version). And now there’s a president who says he wants to take on the power of the meat companies. If Biden’s serious, one way to show it would be to put some political muscle behind Booker’s bill. 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate