The industrial production of meat and meat products is becoming a huge problem for environmental pollution and the ravages to land and water. It’s also one of the greatest factors contributing to climate change and is the main global destination for GM crops. And if that weren’t bad enough, the industrial rearing of confined animals is characterised by its cruelty and, due to overcrowding and the large amount of antiviral drugs and antibiotics which are used, it’s a breeding ground for new diseases – both animal and human – such as bird flu and swine flu. The latter of these, for example, was detected in Perote, Veracruz, in the pig farms of Granjas Carroll.
This and other information which we need to know about the industry – because it affects our lives, nature and the environment in many ways – are part of the Meat Atlas, a new publication by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, written in collaboration with other organisations and investigators.
The case of Granjas Carroll in Mexico is a paradigmatic example of many of the characteristic impacts of this industry and the way in which it operates.
The firm was bought in part by Smithfield Foods in 1994, a US multinational corporation which was the world’s largest pork producer, and which upon its arrival in Mexico intensified and increased its production even further.
Smithfield moved to Mexico whilst on the run from several lawsuits worth millions of dollars for the serious pollution caused by its facilities in the United States. It came here to take advantage of the lack of regulations and auditing which Mexico offered the polluting North American industries, de facto, as a comparative advantage in the NAFTA. Here, Smithfield did not suffer the consequences of its pollution and the protests from the inhabitants of neighbouring towns affected by the poisoning of their soil, groundwater and air. The governments of Puebla and Veracruz made sure that the victims protesting against the pollution were criminalised and persecuted.
In 2013, China’s largest meat processing company, Shuanghui (Shineway Group), bought Smithfield in an operation typical of the industry’s current global tendency: Mega food processing firms from Brazil, India and China have been buying companies throughout the world which specialise in the production, slaughter and processing of meat, dairy products and eggs.
JBS S.A, headquartered in Brazil, is currently the world’s largest beef producer, and following the acquisition of Seara Foods in 2013, is also the world’s largest poultry producer. JBS is amongst the top 10 biggest food processing companies on the planet and is a leader in terms of slaughtering capacity. Its annual revenue is higher than that of the food industry’s traditional giants, such as Unilever, Cargill and Danone.
JBS has the capacity to slaughter, on a daily basis, 85,000 units of cattle, 70,000 pigs and 12,000,000 birds, which it distributes to 150 countries. Tyson Foods and Cargill follow closely behind with their output, the latter of which holds a quarter of the US meat market and is the largest exporter of meat in Argentina. Fourth place is occupied by Brasil Foods (BRF), produced by the merger of the mega-firms Sadia and Perdigão in 2012. Before Shuanghui bought in, Smithfield occupied seventh place amongst the world’s food processing companies.
Mexico, with conditions like those it granted to Granjas Carroll, has ended up situated amongst the 10 countries with the largest beef, pork and poultry production in the world. Multinational corporations dominate the industry, having pushed out many national small and medium-sized producers in the past two decades.
The meat industry hasn't slowed down and continues to strive for greater and greater development. Its concentration is achieved on two levels: by creating larger and larger firms through mergers and acquisitions; and by intensifying production through the artificial acceleration of growth, the expansion of their breeding centres, the increase in the amount of animals per surface area and the acceleration of the processing speed.
This type of confined breeding is sustained exclusively on industrial fodder. They've substituted the diverse crops that they used to use for genetically modified soya and corn. 98% of the global yield of these two GM grains currently go into fodder and have few other industrial uses. Mexico is no exception: Although the national production of non-GM corn is more than enough for human consumption and various other activities, companies import GM corn anyway for industrial animal breeding fodder, a necessity which they created themselves and which, as well as fuelling this devastating industry, puts the corn at risk of contamination at its point of origin.
Major industrial animal-breeding facilities eliminate revenue streams for millions of farmers and minor cattle-raisers around the world, while they also reduce consumers' options. They increase the profits of multinational corporations, shareholders and investors at the cost of putting health at risk, causing animal suffering, eradicating biodiversity, undermining food sovereignty and security and contaminating and abusing water, amongst other impacts.
(Translated by Thomas McGuinn)
- Silvia Ribeiro is an Investigator for the ETC Group.
http://www.etcgroup.org/content/carnivorous-greed