In Meat We Trust (44 page)

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

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

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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.

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

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“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.

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“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.

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“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.

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

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

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“float[ed]”: Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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“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.

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

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

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

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

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“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

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“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.

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

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“legal hassles”: Quoted in ibid.

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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

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

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

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

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

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“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.

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“We don’t believe”: Quoted in Prugh, “Beefing Up Profit,” 1.

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“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
.

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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.

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

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

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“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.

Here is what I learned about Holman (other than the fact that he played loose with facts): He grew up in Sioux City, where he worked for a time in a Swift packing plant, first on the floor hauling sheep guts, and then in the office. But most of his pre-IBP meat career was spent as a cattle buyer. According to Jonathan Kwitny, a
Wall Street Journal
reporter who covered the IBP conspiracy and Mafia scandal, and who wrote the 1979
Vicious Circles: The Mafia in the Marketplace
, Anderson and Holman met each other in Sioux City sometime before Anderson moved to Denison. By that time (the late 1950s), Holman was operating a cattle-buying business. Holman told Kwitny that the two men often discussed the idea of building a revolutionary new meatpacking plant. But Holman relayed these events nearly twenty years after the fact, and as near as I can tell, Kwitny did not verify that information with Anderson. Kwitny interviewed Holman’s friends and family from the Sioux City area, and according to them, Holman was annoyed by the way union recalcitrance drained the profits out of meatpacking and determined to build a modern, and presumably nonunion, plant. That may be the case, and presumably it’s true that Holman and Anderson knew each other before Anderson moved to Denison. But I found evidence that in May 1960, when Anderson was laying plans and raising money for his new company, Holman was still living in Sioux City and, according to family and friends, working seven days a week as a cattle buyer. In other words, I found nothing to indicate that he cofounded IBP (except in the sense that he was hired before the doors opened). (I did not, I should add, attempt to persuade what is now IBP to let me look at early company records. If those still exist, they may tell a different story.)