In Meat We Trust (43 page)

[>]
“Integration has made chicken”: Quoted in Grant Cannon, “Vertical Integration,”
Farm Quarterly
12, no. 4 (Winter 1958): 90.

[>]
“cost-conscious”: Quoted in Bernard F. Tobin and Henry B. Arthur,
Dynamics of Adjustment in the Broiler Industry
(Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1964), 77.

[>]
“As a whole”: Quoted in “Contract Farming: Brings Higher Income, Lower Prices,”
Time
, February 3, 1958; accessed online.

[>]
“revolutionize the production”: Quoted in Cannon, “Vertical Integration,” 96.

[>]
“agriculture as an industry”: All quotes are from John H. Davis and Ray A. Goldberg,
A Concept of Agribusiness
(Harvard University, 1957), 1, 22. Davis and Goldberg spread the blame for this shortsightedness, but they were particularly critical of organizations like the American Farm Bureau, whose leaders, the two argued, insisted on treating agriculture as an independent economic sector rather than as part of a larger whole.

5. “How Can We Go Wrong?”

[>]
“touch of the Old West”: William M. Blair, “Broad Changes Sweep the Cattle Industry,”
New York Times
, April 30, 1966, p. 12. For a detailed description of the feedlot operation, see “Feeding Cattle on a Grand Scale,”
National Provisioner
154, no. 8 (February 18, 1966): 20–21.

[>]
They also noted: For the experiment station research, see, for example, H. B. Osland, E. J. Maynard, and George E. Morton,
Colorado Fattening Rations for Cattle
, Bulletin 422, Colorado Experiment Station, Colorado State College, February 1936.

[>]
“During the 20s”: Quoted in Walt Barnhart,
Kenny’s Shoes: A Walk Through the Storied Life of the Remarkable Kenneth W. Monfort
(Infinity Publishing, 2008), 18. Barnhart relied in part on information from an unpublished 1971 document written by William Hartman. I was not able to obtain a copy of it.

[>]
“aggressive”: Quoted in Bruce Wilkinson, “Warren and Ken Monfort Commercial Feeders of the Year,”
Feedlot Management
16, no. 2 (February 1974): 16.

[>]
By the end: For useful information about the early years of the feedlot, see Lynn Heinze, “Monfort Sees Cattle as World Food Buffer—Although Less Beef Consumption Likely, Cattle Have Future,”
Greeley Tribune
, March 9, 1976, p. B-23.

[>]
“a slightly lower grade”: Quoted in ibid. For meat consumption from the fifties on, I used figures from Susan B. Carter, ed.,
Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present
, millennial ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Table A212, pp. 160–61; the data is calculated in terms of retail weight.

[>]
“Our products are like cake mixes”: Quoted in John A. McWethy, “Canned Meat: Steak, Pigs’ Feet and Corned Beef Hash Rush in Tins to the Table,”
Wall Street Journal
, April 13, 1953, p. 8.

[>]
 “meat, vegetables and gravy”: Ibid.

[>]
But in postwar America: Statistics are from “The Franchise Restaurant Boom . . . Big New Market for Beef,”
Farm Journal
93 (October 1969): B10–B11, B13. For McDonald’s, see J. Anthony Lukas, “As American as a McDonald’s Hamburger on the Fourth of July,”
New York Times Magazine
, July 4, 1971, p. 22. The Mr. Steak example is from “Franchise Restaurant Boom.”

[>]
But consider these numbers: For the fed-beef statistics, see Table 43, p. 88, in U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service,
Cattle Feeding in the United States
, by Ronald A. Gustafson and Roy N. Van Arsdall, Economic Report no. 186, October 1970; and Table 1, p. 2, including the note for that table, in U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service,
Cattle Feeding, 1962–89
, by Kenneth R. Krause, Agricultural Economic Report no. 642, April 1991. Many sources document the transformation from range to feedlot, but the most useful summaries are in the two reports mentioned as well as U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economics and Statistics Service,
Structural Change in Agriculture: The Experience for Broilers, Fed Cattle, and Processing Vegetables
, by Donn A. Reimund, J. Rod Martin, and Charles V. Moore, Technical Bulletin no. 1648, April 1981, pp. 15–29; and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economics, Statistics, and Cooperatives Service, J. Rod Martin, “Beef,” in
Another Revolution in U.S
.
Farming?
by Lyle P. Schertz et al., Agricultural Economic Report no. 441, December 1979, pp. 85–118.

[>]
“Just to raise the calves”: Quoted in “Falling Market Hits Colorado’s Steak Raisers,”
Springfield (MA) Union
, April 15, 1952, p. 20.

[>]
Nor did Monfort: Information about the decline of the range is scattered among federal documents, but two good summaries of changing range use are U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service,
Major Uses of Land in the United States: Summary for 1954
, Agriculture Information Bulletin no. 168, January 1957; and U.S. Department of Agriculture,
Federal and State Rural Lands, 1950, with Special Reference to Grazing
, by R. D. Davidson, Circular 909, May 1952.

[>]
“lust”: Bernard DeVoto, “Sacred Cows and Public Lands,”
Harper’s Magazine
197 (July 1948): 55. The conflict of the 1940s is typically portrayed as one where ranchers sought to continue a longtime practice of engaging in land grabs, but the conflict was far more complicated. See Karen R. Merrill,
Public Lands and Political Meaning: Ranchers, the Government, and the Property Between Them
(University of California Press, 2002), especially 178–204.

[>]
“More of the growing period”: Quoted in “Falling Market Hits Colorado’s Steak Raisers,” 20.

[>]
“across the mountains”: William M. Blair, “Packers Battle Chain Stores in Marketing ‘Revolution,’”
New York Times
, March 24, 1958, p. 42.

[>]
Consider the McDougal: For the McDougal operation, see “Look What’s Happening to Cattle Feeding!”
Farm Journal
79 (October 1955): 39. For Tovrea, see Charles R. Koch, “Super-Sized Feed Lot,”
Farm Quarterly
12, no. 1 (Spring 1957): 60–63, 136–43.

[>]
“beef factory”: “Big Beef Factory Turns Out the Best Steaks,”
Lowell (MA) Sun
, December 10, 1950, p. 17.

[>]
He was an imposing: The description of Ken Monfort is based on information in Barnhart,
Kenny’s Shoes
.

[>]
“a heck of an asset to the industry”: Quoted in “Neighborhood Bully?”
Feedlot Management
16, no. 2 (February 1974): 27.

[>]
“I can walk into that town”: Quoted in Orville Howard, “Feeder Cattle Eat Way to $250-Million Industry,”
Amarillo Globe-Times
, November 28, 1962, p. 2.

[>]
“We used to have to ship”: Quoted in “Look What’s Happening,” 221.

[>]
The manager: The Amarillo Club example is in Jack Hanicke, “Range Change: Ranchers Fatten More Cattle at Home, Using Cheap Grain Sorghums,”
Wall Street Journal
, February 13, 1959, p. 1.

[>]
“Our feature”: Ibid.

[>]
“impossible”: The packer is 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., 233.

[>]
“I’m getting out”: All quoted in Victor J. Hillery, “Steak vs. Controls: Midwest Cattlemen Cut Meat Output to Grow Corn—for Storage Bins,”
Wall Street Journal
, April 16, 1953, p. 1.

[>]
“No question”: Quoted in “Look What’s Happening,” 221.

[>]
“the small, one-or-two”: Quoted in Hanicke, “Range Change,” 1.

[>]
“only one aim”: Quoted in Committee on Agriculture,
Prohibit Feeding of Livestock
, 232.

[>]
“As in most any business”: Quoted in “Look What’s Happening,” 38.

[>]
“beef feeding on a factory basis”: Ibid.

[>]
“less nourishing”: “Why Pork Is Losing Popularity,”
Farm Journal
80 (December 1956): 123.

[>]
“more of a gamble”: Quoted in Albert R. Karr, “Gains from a Glut: Federal Grain Storage Payments Lead Farmers to Cut Other Activities,”
Wall Street Journal
, September 22, 1958, p. 1.

[>]
“Inherent in all this”: “Standardization Comes to the Farm,”
Business Week
, March 21, 1959, p. 167.

[>]
“This is the beginning”: Quoted in “Contract Farming: Brings Higher Income, Lower Prices,”
Time
, February 3, 1958; accessed online.

[>]
“If you don’t want”: Quoted in William M. Blair, “Hog Raisers Eye a Contract Plan,”
New York Times
, March 2, 1958, pp. 1, 69. For typical coverage of contract hog farming see “Contract Farming: Brings Higher Income, Lower Prices”; “Is the Hog Business Headed for a Shake-up?”
Farm Journal
81 (April 1957): 30–31, 186, 190; and “Hog Contracts: How Near Your Door?”
Farm Journal
82 (February 1958): 35, 132.

[>]
“happy”: Fred Knoop, “No Privacy in the Rumen,”
Farm Quarterly
3, no. 4 (Winter 1948): 40, 42. Over the next few years, bovine nutritionists exchanged flank holes for artificial rumens.

[>]
Burroughs’s work with corncobs: Garst’s experiments were reported in a number of farm journals. For an example see Knoop, “No Privacy,” 43, 124. The notion of “dynamic” feed rations as a way to maximize growth is explored in Alan I Marcus, “The Newest Knowledge of Nutrition: Wise Burroughs, DES, and Modern Meat,”
Agricultural History
67, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 66–85. The details of Burroughs’s research are in Marcus, “Newest Knowledge,” especially 71–72.

[>]
“female feathers”: “Chemists in Convention,”
Time
, September 20, 1943; accessed online.

[>]
“poisoned”: Quoted in “Effemination,”
Time
, April 16, 1951; accessed online. A New Jersey court ruled that the man, John Stepnowski, was eligible for workers’ compensation, but for no other damages. A summary of that ruling and a related appeal by Stepnowski is in Stepnowski
v
. Specific Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 18 N.J. Super. 495 (1952).

[>]
“devirilizing effect”: Quoted in Nancy Langston, “The Retreat from Precaution: Regulating Diethylstilbestrol (DES), Endocrine Disruptors, and Environmental Health,”
Environmental History
13 (January 2008): 50. The company in question was Arapahoe Chemicals, Inc., of Colorado. The owner wrote to the FDA to express his fears about the drug. An FDA official responded by saying, in effect, that the agency knew nothing and could do nothing and suggested that the owner contact the United States Public Health Service. It’s not clear how the situation ended. The exchange of letters is detailed in Langston, “Retreat from Precaution,” note 45, pp. 63 and 64.

[>]
“cut out a carcass”: Quoted in “Stilbestrol-Fed Cattle: How They’re Selling Now,”
Farm Journal
79 (August 1955): 16.

[>]
“My family”: Quoted in Chester Charles, “Stilbestrol,”
Farm Quarterly
10, no. 1 (Spring 1955): 49.

[>]
“fortify”: Ibid., 48.

[>]
“become the bright hope”: Ibid.

[>]
“sweater girls”: Ibid., 49.

[>]
“Amazing?”: John A. Rohlf, “Two Million Head on Stilbestrol!”
Farm Journal
79 (March 1955): 38.

[>]
“complete loss”: Cameron Hervey, “Barnyards Without Mud,”
Farm Journal
73 (March 1949): 20.

[>]
“You can’t
afford
”: Ibid. Studies like this one explain why researchers in the 1940s equated confinement with keeping livestock on a paved “drylot.” Also see “Mechanical Pastures,”
Farm Quarterly
10, no. 2 (Summer 1955): 104; and Dick Braun, “Pasture or Drylot: Which Is Cheaper?”
Farm Journal
79 (June 1955): 32, 118. As this book was being written, I learned that historian James McWilliams was working on a project that would place confinement’s roots in the nineteenth century. I was not able to read his manuscript.

[>]
Two Indiana brothers: See “Cost-Conscious Feedlot,”
Farm Quarterly
15, no. 3 (Autumn 1960): 62–63, 128–29, 130.

[>]
“He’s got what I call”: All quoted in George A. Montgomery, “Weather Can’t Hurt This Feeder,”
Farm Journal
84 (October 1960): 38, 40.

[>]
“We were getting killed”: Quoted in Iowa Development Commission, Agricultural Division,
Beef Confinement Can Pay in Iowa
, 1974, p. 18.