Month: March 2014

COOL – The right to label

Richard Oswald

Looking back over 100+ years of family farm history, attitude, sympathetic lenders, luck, and most of all family relationships are what average farmers rely on for their survival. Corporate partnerships don’t have much to offer us. In governments eyes, bigger has always been better–even when bigger meant corporate control, more pollution, less competition, and higher costs. Realistically, even though US agriculture seems a national icon, corporations, some native to foreign countries, are replacing people like me. They couldn’t Read More …

The Other Shoe Drops

Fred Stokes

The second “final” report on the USDA OIG Audit of the Beef Checkoff was released the end of January. An earlier seventeen page report was released in March of 2013 but was shortly withdrawn for “additional audit work” under withering charges of whitewash and cover-up. It was generally accepted that the audit was prompted by the disturbing findings in an Audit in 2010, ordered by the Cattlemen’s Beef Board (CBB). You may recall that the CBB ordered audit Read More …

Important anniversary coincides with compelling new book

Mike Callicrate

By Mike Callicrate | February 20, 2014 This week I’m taking a moment to observe the 10-year anniversary of the most important court case in the history of the U.S. cattle industry, while turning the last page on a powerful new book that tells in precise and riveting detail the sad story of why the lawsuit was so critically needed. Christopher Leonard’s new book, The Meat Racket – The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business, which hits book Read More …

UNDER SIEGE: THE U.S. LIVE CATTLE INDUSTRY

Mike Callicrate

Under Siege: The U.S. Live Cattle Industry ACADEMIC JOURNAL ARTICLE By Bullard, Bill South Dakota Law Review, Vol. 58, No. 3 EXCERPT: Although the largest U.S. agricultural sector—the live cattle industry—is still comprised of hundreds of thousands of independent producers, it is currently on a trajectory to become a vertically integrated supply chain controlled by just a handful of dominant meatpackers. This is the fate already suffered by the nation’s hog and poultry industries within which once competitive Read More …