Our Food System is Under Attack
In America, it is illegal for a farmer to sell anything less than half a cow to individual consumers unless your animal is processed at a USDA monitored slaughterhouse.
The requirements for a full time USDA inspector at every facility, paid for by the processor, make most small operations unprofitable. These federal rules as well as others have led to massive closures in slaughterhouses over the last few decades.
In 1980, the four largest beef packers accounted for 36 percent of all purchases of steers and heifers; today they control over 80%.
If a farmer is lucky enough to have an independent facility within affordable transport distance, the demand is so high they are likely to be turned away or have to pay such a high fee that they are barely profitable.
The rest are automatically forced into being low margin suppliers for major processors.
All innovations on the farm level come from the farmers adopting technology. The destruction of profits has left farmers unable to make investments required to innovate, leading to worse outcomes in sustainability, health, costs, and animal welfare.
These extra costs get passed onto consumers, who in exchange receive lower nutritional quality, fewer artisan aged meats, more imports and less resilient, less local food systems.
Farmers who are forced into effectively becoming contract suppliers not only suffer from tight margins but have less incentive to improve the quality of their supply or adopt transparency measures, as they are not marketing directly to consumers.
Almost every horror story shared by animal rights groups comes from the massive slaughterhouse pens in our increasingly centralized supply chain, so why do people support these federal regulatory regimes?
The theoretical minor reductions in foodborne illness have come at the expense of innovation, available nutrition, animal welfare, and affordability. Resulting in millions of deaths from chronic health issues.
Not to mention the abdication of our food system to a handful of international corporations who are pushing for regulations that squeeze out independent farmers whose land they can then purchase.
The USDA passed a new rule going into effect Nov 5th 2024 that mandates electronic identification tags for all cattle that end up getting sold over state lines.
There are many benefits to electronic ID tags. I was on the founding team of a company focused on integrating farm generated data into diagnostic applications for nutritionists.
However, the mandate puts a large cost burden on struggling farmers who would have already adopted the technology if they had a direct consumer connection or the profits to invest.
If the USDA is able to institute these rules as planned, we will lose another chunk of our farmers to closures and land seizures by BlackRock. The ruling will also further consolidate control of farm data within the major players, who are able to leverage their partnerships with leading farm management systems to keep out independent software developers in favor of their inferior internal solutions. Leading to the loss of innovation in digital diagnostics while sparking privacy concerns among farmers who have little control over their data or end market.
Most farmers are currently getting older, the younger generations have been turned away by the lack of opportunity. We are approaching a critical window where If we lose these farms, we will have a much larger hill to climb if we ever hope to re-capture our food system.
We must push back on the bureaucracy by passing legislation like the PRIME act, a bill sponsored by Thomas Massie that would ease USDA restrictions on independent slaughterhouses so we can build a thriving food culture before it is too late.
There is no better way to control a man than through his stomach. If we lose our control of independant food systems we will lose the rest of our freedom.