Yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend about a lecture she went to with a representative of a major beef company, in which she tried to challenge his assumption that the solution to improving the fatty-acid profile of beef is to genetically modify the cattle (as opposed to just feeding them more grass instead of grain, which is how it was done…forever).

During our conversation, we shared the impression that the beef industry is much less concentrated and integrated than the poultry and hog industries. Well, apparently we were wrong:

In 2005, Phil Howard of Michigan State’s “Connect Four” Information Graphic (above) showed the percent of the beef-packing industry controlled by the top 4 companies, also known as the industry’s “CR4″- it was already much higher than other industries.

Marion Nestle reported this week on the “chickenization” of the beef industry, which is rapidly consolidating to resemble the monopolies and monopsonies (few buyers/packers for the number of producers) of the poultry industry. According to Nestle, three companies now control 70% of the market: JBS 31%, Tyson 21%, and Cargill 21%.

And now JBS, a Brazilian meatpacking firm has proposed buying National Beef Packing and Smithfield, the fourth and fifth largest US beef-packers. With help from Mary Hendrickson and William Heffernan’s latest report, Tom Philpott at Grist crunches the numbers, showing that if JBS acquires National Beef Packing, the CR4 would become 83.5% and if they also acquire Smithfield, the CR3 would be above 90%. (Without knowing the current sixth-largest packer, we can’t calculate the CR4).

Until tomorrow (3.24), the Nat’l Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture and the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition are collecting organizations for a sign-on letter to the Assistant Attorney General in charge of Anti-Trust Division requesting him to conduct a thorough anti-trust review of the acquisitions. It’s clear that the power imbalance resulting from this sort of integration has had a big role in the food safety issues plaguing our nation’s beef supply - not to mention other food security, environmental and rural development issues.

(cross-posted on The Great Work Begins)