Publication Date

8-2025

Abstract

The production of meat is almost entirely controlled by a small group of multinational agribusinesses. These "packers" own everything from animal genetics to feed to wholesaling to slaughtering to butchering-leaving only the raising of the animals to nominally independent farmers, who are, in turn, controlled through one-sided contracts. Packers use this power both to push down costs and make raising and slaughtering animals more specialized and efficient and to extract more money from farmers, workers, retailers, consumers, and state and local governments. They also wield their resources to avoid accountability for the costs they impose on others and to shape the research and press coverage on their industry.

Taking on the power of meatpackers and its impacts on working conditions, prices, animals, rural communities, and the environment would require a comprehensive set of reforms. But a surprisingly large amount would be possible by revitalizing enforcement of a century-old statute that has largely lain dormant during the transformation of meat production. Congress passed the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 ("PSA") in (belated) response to the first wave of integration and consolidation in meatpacking. By the 1950s, the PSA had become part of a quasi-sectoral regulatory regime. This Article narrates how that regime came to be and how it collapsed. It then synthesizes the criticisms of concentrated agribusiness that have resulted and explains several means by which the PSA (the rump of the old regime)-and its prohibition on "unfair" and "unjustly discriminatory" practices-could be used to redistribute power in the short term and begin to build toward a more comprehensive re-regulation.

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