Where is the Beef? Regulatory Barrier to Entry and Competition in Meat Processing

"In short, regulatory extortion tyranny. Inspection regulations are size prejudicial. I know one facility that was ordered closed because it wasn’t processing fast enough. The Food Safety Inspection Service measures its efficiency by pounds inspected per personnel-hour, creating an adversarial discriminatory attitude toward small plants.

In 1906 when Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle 7 large companies controlled half the nation’s meat processing capacity. After a century of government intervention, 4 now control 85 percent. When licenses and compliance make entering and maintaining an abattoir more burdensome to small facilities than large, concentration and centralization is not an anti-trust issue; it’s a discriminatory regulatory issue."

—Joel Salatin

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