After a cyberattack crippled the world’s largest meat producer two weeks ago, the meat industry shouldn’t be returning to business as usual.
The production subversion has been attributed to a Russia-linked cybercriminal group and it reminded us of a glaring truth we already knew: Consolidation has made the U.S. meat industry — and the global protein supply — profoundly and unacceptably vulnerable.
It will become more susceptible in the years ahead as public health threats and potential cyberattacks continue to loom large, and as climate change increases the risk of natural disasters.
Drought, heat, flooding, wildfires, insects, superstorms and weather volatility are raising pressure on our farms and ranches. In short, the cost-saving benefits of agricultural consolidation are increasingly outweighed by the risks of disruption.
Food-industry experts have long been clamoring for systemic “resilience.” Last April, as the pandemic bore down on meat producers and before he began his second tour as U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary, Tom Vilsack told me that we’re “better off having multiple plants in multiple locations.”
Activists have made the case in stronger terms: Philanthropist Chef Jose Andres told me: “The food system centralized in big factories is putting us in danger. Decentralization makes you nimble.”
Yet little has been done to decentralize U.S. meat production. The Biden administration, along with state and federal lawmakers, have an urgent obligation not just to incentivize and support smaller and more diversified meat processors and producers, but also to begin dismantling and diversifying American meat monopolies, which have gone unchallenged and unchecked for too long.
Sweeping reforms will take years, but the USDA can begin to mobilize a plan immediately with the $4 billion allocated for food supply-chain resiliency under the American Rescue Plan Act. The USDA is conducting a large-scale study on resilient meat and poultry processing that is expected to be published this summer. Vilsack should listen carefully to the small and mid-sized processors and producers to find out what they need to expand their operations while meeting federal food-safety standards.
The vertical integration of livestock and poultry supply chains, with the same companies producing animals and slaughtering, has stifled competition and led to widespread price-fixing and corruption.
Not since Upton Sinclair’s eye-opening novel “The Jungle” has the American meat industry faced a more significant paradigm shift, and Biden and Congress must get out in front of it. If they don’t, the U.S. — and the world — won’t be able to maintain a reliable protein supply in an era defined by disruption.
Amanda Little is a professor of journalism and science writing at Vanderbilt University.
