The Meat Racket

March 31, 2014
In the heated debate on food safety and availability, there have been other serious tomes about the national leviathan farming firms, but Leonard, former national agribusiness reporter for The Associated Press, pulls off a stunning feat in putting the heat on the major industrial meat giants. The hardest body blows are landed by Leonard on Tyson Food, the nation's biggest meat company, whose production and distribution practices were previously hush-hush, due to a rigid code of silence and potential retaliation on those who snitch. Founded during the Great Depression, Tyson Foods fashioned a highly profitable empire through smart alliances with bankers, creating a network of local contract farmers and keeping them on a short economic leash while controlling the entirety of the supply chain. Most alarming is the portion of the book that deals with the shortening of the amount of time it takes to raise a chicken, going from 73 days to 52 days during 1955 to 1982. Although Leonard devotes the lion's share of this exposé to Tyson Food, he also catalogues the feverish lobbying, clever patronage, and masterful financial and political schemes among the other giants, all in service of providing product cheaper and faster to the market. Best for those readers who want to know the origins of the animal products they are putting in their mouths.

February 15, 2014
Before there is a chicken or an egg, there is Tyson. In his eye-opener to the inner workings of the corporations that control and manipulate the nation's meat supply, journalist Leonard reveals how these vertically integrated behemoths operate to the detriment of both farmers, who do the hard and risky work of raising animals, and consumers, who have actually fewer true choices when shopping in the grocery store or ordering at the local fast-food franchise. Putting human faces on economic statistics, Leonard documents the stories of exploited farmers, some of them Laotian immigrants seeking the American dream but driven to bankruptcy. Market control by these near monopolies has spread beyond chicken into pork and beef production as well. Leonard recounts the history of the Tyson family and how the generations have structured the corporation's exponential growth over the past decades, an expansion that even the American government appears powerless to rein in.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)