In Meat We Trust

by Maureen Ogle

  [>] “Just to raise the calves”: Quoted in “Falling Market Hits Colorado’s Steak Raisers,” Springfield (MA) Union, April 15, 1952, p. 20.

  [>] Nor did Monfort: Information about the decline of the range is scattered among federal documents, but two good summaries of changing range use are U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Major Uses of Land in the United States: Summary for 1954, Agriculture Information Bulletin no. 168, January 1957; and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Federal and State Rural Lands, 1950, with Special Reference to Grazing, by R. D. Davidson, Circular 909, May 1952.

  [>] “lust”: Bernard DeVoto, “Sacred Cows and Public Lands,” Harper’s Magazine 197 (July 1948): 55. The conflict of the 1940s is typically portrayed as one where ranchers sought to continue a longtime practice of engaging in land grabs, but the conflict was far more complicated. See Karen R. Merrill, Public Lands and Political Meaning: Ranchers, the Government, and the Property Between Them (University of California Press, 2002), especially 178–204.

  [>] “More of the growing period”: Quoted in “Falling Market Hits Colorado’s Steak Raisers,” 20.

  [>] “across the mountains”: William M. Blair, “Packers Battle Chain Stores in Marketing ‘Revolution,’” New York Times, March 24, 1958, p. 42.

  [>] Consider the McDougal: For the McDougal operation, see “Look What’s Happening to Cattle Feeding!” Farm Journal 79 (October 1955): 39. For Tovrea, see Charles R. Koch, “Super-Sized Feed Lot,” Farm Quarterly 12, no. 1 (Spring 1957): 60–63, 136–43.

  [>] “beef factory”: “Big Beef Factory Turns Out the Best Steaks,” Lowell (MA) Sun, December 10, 1950, p. 17.

  [>] He was an imposing: The description of Ken Monfort is based on information in Barnhart, Kenny’s Shoes.

  [>] “a heck of an asset to the industry”: Quoted in “Neighborhood Bully?” Feedlot Management 16, no. 2 (February 1974): 27.

  [>] “I can walk into that town”: Quoted in Orville Howard, “Feeder Cattle Eat Way to $250-Million Industry,” Amarillo Globe-Times, November 28, 1962, p. 2.

  [>] “We used to have to ship”: Quoted in “Look What’s Happening,” 221.

  [>] The manager: The Amarillo Club example is in Jack Hanicke, “Range Change: Ranchers Fatten More Cattle at Home, Using Cheap Grain Sorghums,” Wall Street Journal, February 13, 1959, p. 1.

  [>] “Our feature”: Ibid.

  [>] “impossible”: The packer is quoted in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Agriculture, Prohibit Feeding of Livestock by Certain Packers: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Livestock and Feed Grains of the Committee on Agriculture, 89th Cong., 2d sess., 233.

  [>] “I’m getting out”: All quoted in Victor J. Hillery, “Steak vs. Controls: Midwest Cattlemen Cut Meat Output to Grow Corn—for Storage Bins,” Wall Street Journal, April 16, 1953, p. 1.

  [>] “No question”: Quoted in “Look What’s Happening,” 221.

  [>] “the small, one-or-two”: Quoted in Hanicke, “Range Change,” 1.

  [>] “only one aim”: Quoted in Committee on Agriculture, Prohibit Feeding of Livestock, 232.

  [>] “As in most any business”: Quoted in “Look What’s Happening,” 38.

  [>] “beef feeding on a factory basis”: Ibid.

  [>] “less nourishing”: “Why Pork Is Losing Popularity,” Farm Journal 80 (December 1956): 123.

  [>] “more of a gamble”: Quoted in Albert R. Karr, “Gains from a Glut: Federal Grain Storage Payments Lead Farmers to Cut Other Activities,” Wall Street Journal, September 22, 1958, p. 1.

  [>] “Inherent in all this”: “Standardization Comes to the Farm,” Business Week, March 21, 1959, p. 167.

  [>] “This is the beginning”: Quoted in “Contract Farming: Brings Higher Income, Lower Prices,” Time, February 3, 1958; accessed online.

  [>] “If you don’t want”: Quoted in William M. Blair, “Hog Raisers Eye a Contract Plan,” New York Times, March 2, 1958, pp. 1, 69. For typical coverage of contract hog farming see “Contract Farming: Brings Higher Income, Lower Prices”; “Is the Hog Business Headed for a Shake-up?” Farm Journal 81 (April 1957): 30–31, 186, 190; and “Hog Contracts: How Near Your Door?” Farm Journal 82 (February 1958): 35, 132.

  [>] “happy”: Fred Knoop, “No Privacy in the Rumen,” Farm Quarterly 3, no. 4 (Winter 1948): 40, 42. Over the next few years, bovine nutritionists exchanged flank holes for artificial rumens.

  [>] Burroughs’s work with corncobs: Garst’s experiments were reported in a number of farm journals. For an example see Knoop, “No Privacy,” 43, 124. The notion of “dynamic” feed rations as a way to maximize growth is explored in Alan I Marcus, “The Newest Knowledge of Nutrition: Wise Burroughs, DES, and Modern Meat,” Agricultural History 67, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 66–85. The details of Burroughs’s research are in Marcus, “Newest Knowledge,” especially 71–72.

  [>] “female feathers”: “Chemists in Convention,” Time, September 20, 1943; accessed online.

  [>] “poisoned”: Quoted in “Effemination,” Time, April 16, 1951; accessed online. A New Jersey court ruled that the man, John Stepnowski, was eligible for workers’ compensation, but for no other damages. A summary of that ruling and a related appeal by Stepnowski is in Stepnowski v. Specific Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 18 N.J. Super. 495 (1952).

  [>] “devirilizing effect”: Quoted in Nancy Langston, “The Retreat from Precaution: Regulating Diethylstilbestrol (DES), Endocrine Disruptors, and Environmental Health,” Environmental History 13 (January 2008): 50. The company in question was Arapahoe Chemicals, Inc., of Colorado. The owner wrote to the FDA to express his fears about the drug. An FDA official responded by saying, in effect, that the agency knew nothing and could do nothing and suggested that the owner contact the United States Public Health Service. It’s not clear how the situation ended. The exchange of letters is detailed in Langston, “Retreat from Precaution,” note 45, pp. 63 and 64.

  [>] “cut out a carcass”: Quoted in “Stilbestrol-Fed Cattle: How They’re Selling Now,” Farm Journal 79 (August 1955): 16.

  [>] “My family”: Quoted in Chester Charles, “Stilbestrol,” Farm Quarterly 10, no. 1 (Spring 1955): 49.

  [>] “fortify”: Ibid., 48.

  [>] “become the bright hope”: Ibid.

  [>] “sweater girls”: Ibid., 49.

  [>] “Amazing?”: John A. Rohlf, “Two Million Head on Stilbestrol!” Farm Journal 79 (March 1955): 38.

  [>] “complete loss”: Cameron Hervey, “Barnyards Without Mud,” Farm Journal 73 (March 1949): 20.

  [>] “You can’t afford”: Ibid. Studies like this one explain why researchers in the 1940s equated confinement with keeping livestock on a paved “drylot.” Also see “Mechanical Pastures,” Farm Quarterly 10, no. 2 (Summer 1955): 104; and Dick Braun, “Pasture or Drylot: Which Is Cheaper?” Farm Journal 79 (June 1955): 32, 118. As this book was being written, I learned that historian James McWilliams was working on a project that would place confinement’s roots in the nineteenth century. I was not able to read his manuscript.

  [>] Two Indiana brothers: See “Cost-Conscious Feedlot,” Farm Quarterly 15, no. 3 (Autumn 1960): 62–63, 128–29, 130.

  [>] “He’s got what I call”: All quoted in George A. Montgomery, “Weather Can’t Hurt This Feeder,” Farm Journal 84 (October 1960): 38, 40.

  [>] “We were getting killed”: Quoted in Iowa Development Commission, Agricultural Division, Beef Confinement Can Pay in Iowa, 1974, p. 18.

  [>] “I can’t afford”: Quoted in Braun, “Pasture or Drylot,” 33.

  [>] “I analyzed my work schedule”: Quoted in “Automation of a Hog Farm,” Farm Quarterly 14, no. 4 (Winter 1960): 79.

  [>] An Iowa farmer: The dysentery example is from J. L. Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt: Agriculture, Technology, and Environment, 1945–1972 (Northern Illinois University Press, 2009), 94.

  [>] Confinement also enhanced: I found these and many other examples in midcentury agricultural and farm magazines.

  [>] �
�technical assistance”: Blair, “Hog Raisers Eye a Contract Plan,” 69. For the rental agreement, see Ovid Bay, “Now They’re Leasing Hog Breeding Herds,” Farm Journal 82 (March 1958): 39, 72. For other examples see “Pig Hatcheries,” Farm Quarterly 6, no. 2 (Summer 1951): 28–29, 94, 96, 98; Dayle Wahlert, “‘I’ll Raise the Hogs’—‘I’ll Raise the Corn,’” Successful Farming 56, no. 4 (April 1958): 50–51, 110–12; Dick Seim, “One Way for Family Farms to Stay in Hogs,” Farm Journal 85 (November 1961): 34–35, 67–68; and John F. Hughes, “Does Multiple Farrowing Pay?” Farm Quarterly 12, no. 1 (Spring 1957): 44–45, 99–102.

  [>] “You don’t have to go”: Quoted in “Half the Work Twice the Hogs,” Farm Journal 87 (June 1963): 50F. The connection between his sons’ plans and the switch is implied in the text.

  [>] “more power, more interest”: Quoted in John Harvey, “What Farmers Like and Don’t Like About Confinement Hog Setups,” Successful Farming 64 (July 1966): 41.

  [>] “It boils down to”: Quoted in Iowa Development Commission, Beef Confinement Can Pay, 5.

  [>] “You need some kind”: Quoted in Dick Braun, “Clean Hog Lots with a Pump,” Farm Journal 82 (December 1958): 34.

  [>] “float[ed]”: Ibid.

  [>] “hardly a whiff”: Ray Dankenbring and Ovid Bay, “Lagoons—Everybody’s Building ’Em!” Farm Journal 84 (November 1960): 38.

  [>] “County health officials”: Quoted in Ovid Bay, “How to Build and Use a Lagoon,” Farm Journal 86 (May 1962): 60F.

  [>] “just pull[ed] the plug”: Quoted in ibid.

  [>] “How stupid”: See the letter from B. E. Burger in Farm Journal 85 (March 1961): 20.

  [>] “You can call it a lagoon”: Quoted in “Lagoons Aren’t Magic but They Can Save You Work,” Farm Quarterly 18, no. 3 (Fall 1963): 48.

  [>] “faced all the problems”: Ibid. The calculations are from “The Big Fuss Over Lagoons,” Farm Journal 88 (April 1964): 57.

  [>] “You’ve got a stick”: All quoted in John Russell, “Manure Odors Can Land You in Court!” Farm Journal 89 (August 1965): 19.

  [>] “caught in the middle”: Ralph Sanders, “Animal Wastes—Pollution—Your Problem, Too,” Successful Farming 68, no. 11 (October 1970): 34.

  [>] “If you were [an employer]”: All quoted in Marc Newton, “Feed Lot Park Proposed,” Greeley Tribune, May 10, 1969, p. 1.

  [>] “no question”: Quoted in Ralph E. Winter, “Antipollution Laws Force Livestock Men to Devise Ways to Collect, Use Manure,” Wall Street Journal, March 5, 1974, p. 38. For a useful look at how the Clean Water Act affected livestock operations, see John H. Martin Jr., “The Clean Water Act and Animal Agriculture,” Journal of Environmental Quality 26 (1997): 1198–1203.

  6. The Vacuum at the Top

  [>] “at the mercy”: Quoted in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Agriculture, Prohibit Feeding of Livestock by Certain Packers: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Livestock and Feed Grains of the Committee on Agriculture, 89th Cong., 2d sess., 229.

  [>] “Most of the big packers”: Quoted in Heinze, “Monfort Sees Cattle as World Food Buffer,” B-23.

  [>] “legal hassles”: Quoted in ibid.

  [>] The slaughterhouse that opened: For the plant, see “Light Is Built into Colorado On-Line Beef Plant,” National Provisioner 143, no. 1 (July 2, 1960): 17, 19.

  [>] “When we opened”: Quoted in Jim Hitch, “Monfort Pack, Union Reach Agreement,” Greeley Tribune, February 23, 1965, p. 18.

  [>] The second factor: For the loss of byproducts, see John A. McWethy, “Meat & Synthetics: The Rise of Man-Made Materials Hurts Packers’ By-Products Business,” Wall Street Journal, January 3, 1953, pp. 1, 3.

  [>] “was something less”: Quoted in U.S. House, Prohibit Feeding of Livestock, 229.

  [>] Every step drove up the final retail price: For the study, see A. T. Kearney & Company, The Search for a Thousand Million Dollars: Cost Reduction Opportunities in the Transportation and Distribution of Grocery Products (National Association of Food Chains, 1966). A summary of the meat-related contents is in “Food Distribution Survey Proposes Cutback in Beef Handling Steps,” National Provisioner 155, no. 19 (November 5, 1966): 18–20.

  [>] In Chicago: In the early 1960s, the Jewel grocery chain sued the meat cutters’ union, arguing that the rule constituted restraint of trade. The case wound from district court to appeals and finally to the Supreme Court; in 1965, that court determined that the six o’clock clause was a work rule and did not violate the Sherman Antitrust Act. In 1977, the union agreed to abandon the rule and allow Chicagoans to buy fresh meat after six.

  [>] “vehicle for selling services”: Quoted in “Packing Industry Lags Behind Other Foods in Many of Its Market Concepts,” National Provisioner 151, no. 15 (October 10, 1964): 56.

  [>] “automated electronic beef”: “Cattle Feeding, Slaughtering Makes Future Bright,” Greeley Tribune, April 3, 1970, p. 32.

  [>] “the only way”: “Where Packing Takes On a New Dimension,” National Provisioner 156, no. 5 (February 4, 1967): 16–17.

  [>] “LBJ hat”: Peter H. Prugh, “Beefing Up Profit,” Wall Street Journal, May 4, 1966, p. 1.

  [>] “Andy’s a genius”: Quoted in ibid., 22.

  [>] “DENISON, IOWA”: Advertisement in Wall Street Journal, April 9, 1956, p. 9.

  [>] “A farmer a day”: “Good Investment,” Denison (IA) Bulletin, March 25, 1960, p. 2B. The history of Anderson’s first Denison venture demonstrates his resistance to unions. As at the Monfort plant, the men employed at CCPC were local and unskilled. But during the plant’s first year of operation, a field representative with the United Packinghouse Workers of America persuaded the men that they could and should earn the same high wages paid at big-city packing plants like those owned by Armour and Swift. By a one-vote margin, the Denison men agreed to allow the UPWA to represent them. When the employees’ original contract came up for renewal in the summer of 1959, negotiations turned ugly. The union demanded that employees be paid according to union job classifications, whether they possessed the skills attached to those classifications or not. Anderson pointed out that most of CCPC’s workers were unskilled and inexperienced; the union representative offered to bring in skilled union butchers from Omaha or Sioux City—if management would agree to pay higher wages. Anderson was adamant: he wanted to employ local people and Crawford County Packing Company, still a new venture, could not pay such wages. He explained that he’d worked for packers in the 1930s for less than 40 cents an hour to “help put them in the position” that eventually enabled them to pay hefty union-scale wages. He also noted that men who had started at the plant for a dollar an hour were making as much as $2.30 an hour and enjoyed a guaranteed thirty-six-hour workweek plus paid vacations and insurance. Anderson pleaded for understanding. “I must have this training and organizing period to develop not only production but buying and processing, and everything that makes such an industry successful.” The union, he argued, would “strangle” the company’s future. All quotes from “No Agreement on Contract Reached by Union, CCPC,” Denison [IA] Bulletin, September 4, 1959, p. 1.

  The negotiations soon collapsed (aided by what was presumably an intentional bit of business on Anderson’s part: he left town on a two-week vacation). The union negotiator announced plans for a strike, retracted that statement, then issued another call for a strike. Given the uncertainty, CCPC’s staff had no choice but to stop buying hogs: there was no guarantee that the company’s line crews would show up to slaughter and process the animals. In early October, employees announced that they wanted to sever ties with the UPWA, organize their own union, and negotiate directly with management. The UPWA lobbed one legal obstacle after another at the locals in an effort to prevent decertification. In January 1960, the Denison workforce was finally permitted to decertify and soon after filed papers for their own union. A few days later, Andy Anderson resigned and began laying the groundwork for IBP.

  [>] “We don’t believe”: Quoted in Prugh, “B
eefing Up Profit,” 1.

  [>] “Think Money”: Information here from ibid.; Margaret D. Pacey, “Everything but the Moo,” Barron’s National Business and Financial Weekly 40 (July 22, 1968): 3; and Kenneth C. Crowe and Michael Under, “Iowa Beef’s Money Motto Out; but Message Remains,” Des Moines Register, April 22, 1973, p. 6B. The latter article originally appeared in Newsday.

  [>] By the end of the first year: For announcements of these efforts and company progress, see “Over 200 Stockholders Hear of IBP Progress Monday,” Denison (IA) Bulletin, December 22, 1961, p. 1; “IBP Killing 120 per Hour,” Denison (IA) Bulletin, September 1, 1961, p. 1; and Ed Heins, “Big Union Gaining at Meat Plants,” Des Moines Register, August 10, 1964, p. 3.

  [>] “chains of history”: Quoted in Arlo Jacobson, “IBP Tells Grocers: Beef Carcasses ‘Old-Fashioned,’” Des Moines Sunday Register, December 5, 1971, p. 1F.

  [>] “We’re trying to revolutionize”: Quoted in Seth S. King, “Union Unrest Splits Plains Town,” New York Times, December 17, 1969, p. 45.

  [>] “business as we pursue it”: Quoted in Jonathan Kwitny, “Troubled Packer: Iowa Beef’s History of Shady Characters Far Outruns ’74 Case,” Wall Street Journal, December 17, 1976, p. 1. Currier Holman has come to personify IBP’s evils, but he is frustratingly difficult to wrestle into the company’s history. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he identified himself as an IBP cofounder, but in the mid- to late 1970s, he described himself as its founder. He claimed that he designed the company’s plants. He claimed he’d played for Knute Rockne at Notre Dame. He claimed, as it turned out, many things that, as near as can be ascertained, are false. He attended but did not graduate from Notre Dame. He tried out for the school’s football team but apparently never played in a game. There is ample evidence that Andy Anderson, not Holman, designed IBP’s plants. As to Holman’s claim that he cofounded the company: Holman is not mentioned in any of the local news coverage of IBP’s early days in Denison. Not during the fundraising stage, when Andy Anderson raced from meeting to meeting, persuading bankers, farmers, and veterans to support the venture. Not during the construction phase, when architects, engineers, and equipment suppliers routinely described Anderson as the brains behind the plant designs. Not as the company neared its first day of operation, when extensive local press coverage mentioned and identified foremen, managers, and executive officers—but not Currier Holman. The first indication of Holman’s involvement dates to December 1961, when a local paper described him as a member of the board of directors; by that time he was also managing the plant, apparently a step up from his first job at the company: head cattle buyer.