A Moment of Social Crisis: Recalling the 1970s

IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES

IT WAS WHEN I CAME OF AGE AS A YOUNG ANARCHIST!!!!

by DAVID ROSEN

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does restage old moments in new conditions and costumes.

The U.S. is in the midst of a major political crisis. The crisis is rooted in the Covid-19 pandemic and the accompanying economic and social destabilizations it engendered. But it is a crisis made worse by Donald Trump’s failed presidency.

While the stock market is, like a roller coaster, in an upswing and reaching new heights, deeper, most troubling and structural problems are only getting worse. Unemployment is widespread; families are going hungry and many are facing eviction; millions are mobilizing to challenge institutionalized racism and deepening inequality; a new Cold War with China is being promoted; and interpersonal and social violence is intensifying.

Today’s mounting social crisis recall the decade of the 1970s, a tumultuous moment in U.S. history. It was the moment when U.S. imperialism began to stall-out and the “American Dream” started to unravel.

The late-60s was rocked by widespread political protests, urban riots and political assassinations. In 1968, half a million U.S. soldiers were at war in Vietnam and other Southeast Asia war zone. When the U.S. withdrew its military in 1973, 58,000 Americans had died.

In May ’70, U.S. forces expanded the war from Vietnam to Cambodia; in response, major protests erupted at Ohio’s Kent State University (National Guardsmen killed four students and wounding nine) and Mississippi’s Jackson State (city and state police killed two students and injuring twelve). That year witnessed the first major postal workers’ strike — that last seven days! — in the nation’s history. Equally memorable, Ralph Nader, author of Unsafe at Any Speed, won his long-fought battle with General Motors.

Sadly, the war dragged on. Nixon’s failed Cambodia Initiative as followed by the equally flawed Easter Offensive, a massive bombing campaign against North Vietnam. In response, anti-war activists organized the May Day demonstrations to shut down the government. An estimated 35,000 protesters rallied and were confronted by 10,000 federal troops and 5,100 D.C. police officers – and 12,614 people were arrested.

So begins the ‘70s and, over the coming decade, the Christian, corporatists right congealed into a powerful social force. It was response to the social dislocation of the 1960s – a reaction to the civil-rights movement, anti-Vietnam War protests, the counterculture of sex, drugs & rock-and-roll, second-wave feminism (especially abortion) and homosexuality.

The conservative campaign was (unofficially) launched in August 1971 when Lewis Powell, a Virginia attorney, released a secret study commissioned by a neighbor affiliated with Chamber of Commerce entitled, “Attack on the American Free Enterprise System.” As Ben Waterhouse observes, Powell articulated a deeply shared belief among “anti-capitalist forces — from the universities to the pulpits to public-interest law firms — were waging a cultural assault on business, and that groups such as the Chamber of Commerce had no choice but to become politically active.” Powell argued that, as Waterhouse, notes, “Business-people had to become more involved in national politics.”

In his secret memo, Powell advised the Chamber and its members on a simple, if profound, message:

Business must learn the lesson . . . that political power is necessary; that such power must be assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination—without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.

And they acted. Independently of the memo, on January 7, 1972, Powel began serving as a Justice on the nation’s highest court.

Influential Americans took Powell’s warning to heart. In February ‘73, three of the nation’s richest conservatives – Joseph Coors, Richard Mellon Scaife and H. L. Hunt — backed Paul Weyrich and the creation of the Heritage Foundation. In May, the National Council of Catholic Bishops spun off its National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) into a separate, activist anti-abortion organization. In September, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was founded as the Conservative Caucus of State Legislators.

Powell’s memo came at a propitious moment. The nation faced mounting international tensions and Nixon’s foreign-policy tsar, Henry Kissinger, worried that America’s global fortunes were faltering. The Soviet Union was growing in power; independence movements were spreading throughout he third-world; Europe and Japan were resurging; Nixon visited China in February ’72, signaling its entry onto the world stage; the CIA backed the bloody coup in Chile; and the disastrous, nearly-two-decade long Vietnam War dragged on.

Nixon’s veto of the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971 was most telling. Promoted by Pat Buchanan, Nixon claimed the act was “a long leap into the dark” that would “commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over against the family-centered approach.”

Equally troubling, in 1971 Nixon decided to decouple the dollar from the gold standard and, in retaliation for the U.S. support for Israel during the Arab–Israeli War, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an oil embargo in ’73-’74. This led to a period of “stagflation.” Wage and price controls were introduced as post-WW-II prosperity stalled. One response to the economic downturn was an increase in the violent crime rate. It escalated by 260 percent from 1960 to ’75, from 288,460 to 1,039,710 reported incidents.

In June ’71, portions of what became known as the Pentagon Papers were published in the New York Times. Released by Daniel Ellsberg, they detailed the U.S.’s political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. Its precipitated Street protests, political controversy and lawsuits followed, ultimately ending in a Supreme Court ruling that found the Nixon administration failed meet the burden of proof required for a prior restraint injunction.

Compounding the growing tension, in the 18-month period between 1971-’72, 2,500 bombings took place throughout the country. In ’71, Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” dramatically increasing the size and presence of federal drug control agencies as well as securing mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants. In 1973, 200 Oglala Lakota people occupied Wounded Knee. A Democratic-controlled Congress passed major liberal legislation, including: Title IX, prohibiting discrimination in education; the Equal Rights Amendment; extended the Equal Pay Act to cover administrative and professional positions; and passed Equal Employment Opportunity Act.

On January 20, 1973, Nixon was inaugurated to his second term as president. This followed his landslide victory over Sen. George McGovern (D-SD) — who had been labeled the candidate of “acid, amnesty, and abortion” – driven by the “Southern strategy” that reconfigured national politics and shaped the culture wars. Nevertheless, the presidency faced the gravest threat since Lincoln’s assassination.

On June 25^th, John Dean, Nixon’s former counsel, testified before the Senate’s Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities and acknowledged the president’s role in planning the White House Special Investigations Unit — aka the “Plumbers” — broke into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate complex. On October 20^th, Nixon executed the situation by ordering the “Saturday Night Massacre,” firing the heads of the Justice Department for refusing to follow his orders. On February 6, 1974, the House initiated the impeachment of Nixon and, on August 9, 1974, he resigned.

Perhaps most threatening for traditionalists, especially to white evangelicals and Catholics, a new moral order was recasting American sexual and “family” values. The ‘60s counterculture reconceived social life; Ozzie & Harriet were gone, replaced by Sonny & Cher. Contraceptive and birth control – the Pill – were transforming sex life; women were re-entering the labor market in ever-growing numbers; divorce increased, reforming the family; school segregation and prayer were prohibited, and a more secular school curriculum was being introduced. The gravest challenge was the shift in moral values, from one based on a notion of “sin” to a legal concern, “consent”; sex crimes included rape, pedophilia, child porn, sex trafficking, incest, lust murder or inflicting someone with an STD.

Conservatives were deeply disturbed by what they saw as the breakdown of Christian morality. They were upset by the 1970 report of a special commission, “President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography,” that found no link between pornography and child molestation – Pres. Nixon repudiated it. Deep Throat, a porn sensation starring Linda Lovelace (aka Amanda Seyfried), premiered at New York’s World Theater in June 1972, launching a new genre called “porn chic.” A host of celebrates went to see it, including Truman Capote, Jack Nicholson, Johnny Carson, Barbara Walters, Frank Sinatra and even Vice President Spiro Agnew. (It was so popular that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein used it as the pseudonym given to the secret informant who provided information for their 1972 Watergate investigation.)

In 1972, Phyllis Schlafly, a lawyer and conservative activist, launch a successful campaign to block the ratification of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Her campaign gained momentum following the Supreme Court’s momentous Roe v. Wade decision of January 22, 1973, that legalizing a woman’s right to the privacy of an abortion. In his decision, Justice Harry Blackmun noted, “… throughout the 19^th Century prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn ….” The Roe decision forced 46 states to liberalize their abortion laws and remains the defining issue of the culture wars.

Traditionalists were further incensed when the Supreme Court, in Miller v. California (1973), introduced a new, expanded three-factor definition of obscenity; (i) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work as a whole appeals to the prurient interest; (ii) whether the work depicts or describes sexual conduct or excretory functions, as defined by state law, in an offensive way; and (iii) whether the work as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Equally disturbing to many traditionalists, the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) held its 1973 conference in that led to the landmark decision removing homosexuality from the list of mental disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III). Shortly thereafter, other medical, religious and civic groups formally ending discrimination against homosexuals, sodomy laws were dropped in more than a dozen states and cities across the country passed laws explicitly prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Over the last half-century, traditionalists successfully wove together a series of deep-seated social concerns into the culture wars. These issues range from the defeat of the ERA, opposition to abortion, efforts to strengthen family relations, anticommunism, contain race relations, restrict sexual identity to the dualism of male/female, suppress “obscenity,” replace public education with private and religious schools, and, perhaps most threatening, the increasing secularization of a supposedly religious society. These efforts forged the New Christian Right that recast the Republican Party and, decades later, culminated in Donald Trump’s 2016 election.

However, during this half-century the nation has changed. While the U.S. military was defeated in Vietnam, it has nonetheless pursued an aggressive interventionist strategy ever since. Domestically, a series of “liberal” Supreme Court decisions rippled through society. They helped increased women’s rights (e.g., military service), gay rights (e.g., marriage), shifts in popular values (e.g., contraceptives use, “consensual” premarital sex), changes in family relations (e.g., decreased divorce rate) and growth of the multi-billion-dollar commercial sex industry (e.g., sex toys, porn and prostitution). These and other developments outline America’s changed moral order.

A deepening crisis grips the nation. Grounded in the Covid-19 pandemic, its fueled profound economic uncertainty. More troubling, the crisis has freed African American and others to challenge the repressive police state that seeks to contain social resistance. Like the protest movements of the ‘70s, today’s challenge takes many forms – from individual acts of resistance, to street mobilizations, to lootings, to political organizing and voting.

This crisis speaks deeper than the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. If Trump wins, the ongoing crisis will likely only intensify and get more militant, especially if he appoints an additional Judge to the Supreme Court and imposes his all-American Gestapo to enforce social order. If Biden wins, and the Democrats gain control of the Senate, the social crisis, while being moderately contained, will intensify as the neoliberal policy of economic inequality intensifies. And if Biden wins the presidency and the Republicans continue control of the Senate, a stalemate not unlike what gripped Obama’s last couple of years in office will likely paralyze the nation.

More articles by:DAVID ROSEN

David Rosen is the author of Sex, Sin & Subversion:  The Transformation of 1950s New York’s Forbidden into America’s New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015).  He can be reached at drosennyc@verizon.net; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com.

Bloody Chicken: Inside the American Poultry Industry During the Time of COVID

by JOSEPAUGUST 14, 2020

H GROSSO

Photograph Source: ben – originally posted to Flickr as Nugget Truck – CC BY 2.0

One effect of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. is the momentary spotlight it shined on the meatpacking industry. Working conditions inside packing plants were exposed in the sheer number of workers who were infected with the virus. Exact numbers are elusive but thousands of cases have been confirmed along with up to 100 deaths. Meanwhile, meatpacking workers were deemed ‘essential.’

On April 28^th, President Trump went as far as invoking the Defense Production Act compelling meat processors to remain open. This came two days after the chairman of Tyson Foods, one of the largest meat-producing companies in the world, took a full page ad in several newspapers warning that the ‘food supply chain is breaking’ (this alleged shortage did stop pork exports to China from reaching an all-time high at the same time).

Equally telling is that the two recent executive orders issued by Trump blocking the entry of foreign workers in several visa categories, allegedly in response to the employment crisis of American workers during the pandemic, specifically exempted workers in the food industry, including agricultural workers. For decades immigrants have made up a disproportionate amount of the workforce in packinghouses and on farms. It is an open secret many of these workers are undocumented.

In fact, the last time the meatpacking industry captured the headlines was last August when ICE raided seven poultry plants in rural Mississippi. In what was billed by Mike Hurst, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, as the largest single-state immigration enforcement in U.S. history, 680 undocumented workers were swept up. Needless to say, the meat companies raided, who often wisely outsource hiring to outside agencies, faced no penalties.

With questions surrounding the meat industry, attention has been turned to the rise of plant-based protein as a more environmental (and animal) friendly alternative. Human consumption of more plants and less animals has obvious benefits but it is impossible to see plant-based protein replacing meat. Whatever the nobility of ethical consumption it often serves as an isolating distraction from the productive side of the economy. It also allows the well-off ‘enlightened’ class to decisively separate itself from the backward rabble. The mission of the Left historically has been to uplift the masses, not separate from them.

It has been a universal truth that the more a society develops economically, the more it consumes meat. Consider that in 1970 the average American ate roughly 200 pounds of meat per year. Today the number is around 20 pounds more, not less. During this time beef consumption has been in decline. It peaked in the mid-1970s. Veal is eaten significantly less than it was two generations ago, and pork has only held steady. It is chicken consumption that has exploded the past 40 years. In that vein, is it notable that the largest poultry producing states are Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, North Carolina, and Mississippi, most of which are among the poorest states in the country?

There was a time when Americans didn’t eat so much chicken. Running for President in 1928, Herbert Hoover promised a ‘chicken in every pot.’ This reflected not only the banal way most chicken was cooked back then, but also its relative exclusivity (perhaps a modern equivalent would be ‘lobster in every pot’). For example, dining at the posh Blackstone Hotel in Chicago in 1914 one would have come across a menu that featured a dish of Prime Rib for $1.25, Imported Venison Steak at $1.50, Broiled Lobster for $1.60. Chicken was priced at $2.00.

At the time poultry was a local affair with farmers raising small flocks mostly for eggs and home consumption.

It was in the Delmarva Peninsula, which encompasses parts of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, where the broiler industry first emerged in the mid-1920s. Located near the major urban markets on the East Coast and filled with farmers looking to escape from the boom and bust of vegetable farming (according to popular history the pioneer was a farmer named Mrs. Wilmer Steele), Delmarva was a perfect place from which to ship live birds. Chickens were slaughtered by local butchers in the cities. By 1934, Delmarva farmers were raising around seven million chickens. Before long the ‘New York-dressed’ method was developed- chickens were slaughtered and defeathered before being shipped on ice with feet and entrails intact, allowing processing to be done near farms and the market base to be expanded.

It was soon realized that a chicken’s physiology had advantages over cattle and hogs. Chickens eat virtually anything and their size makes them easier to transport. Plus they mature quicker than cattle or hogs. Early experiments in genetics and nutrition got results. In 1927, Delmarva broilers went to market at 2.5 pounds in 16 weeks; by 1941, they averaged 2.9 pounds after 12 weeks. Over that same period the amount of feed needed to produce a pound of chicken fell by half a pound.

Like humans, chickens need Vitamin D for proper bone growth, and they need sunlight to synthesize it on their own. Chickens spending part of the day outdoors made them vulnerable to weather and predators (foxes, chicken hawks). An early breakthrough in chicken nutrition was the discovery that adding cod liver oil to feed would allow farmers to raise chickens entirely indoors. Wooden sheds soon gave way to long, low, metal versions that hold thousands of broilers.

As war often serves as an organizing catalyst, World War II had a large influence on the poultry industry. In 1941 the Delmarva Peninsula was producing two-thirds of the country’s chicken, roughly 77 million. A year later it hit 90 million. With the more popular beef and pork rationed for soldiers in the field under the “Food for Freedom” program, chicken was initially left for civilians causing demand to explode. By 1943, the military declared ‘chicken is for fighters first’ and the War Food Administration commandeered the Peninsula’s boilers- the National Guard literally seized chickens off of trucks heading out of Delmarva. Facing a labor shortage, more than 3000 Axis Prisoners of War were imported to work in chicken production (mostly Germans who served Rommel’s Afrika Corps).

Domestic production moved to the South where it has mostly remained. While the South was late to large scale production, it was there that the system that would soon dominate meat production was developed. Known as ‘vertical integration’, it is a system that is designed to be dominated by a few very large companies.

Chicken farming made its way to Ozark Hill country, where golden ages of farming were nonexistent. The soil is low yielding, the land is hilly and was removed from the plantation economy. Cash poor farmers often rented the land, their landlords used a credit system to finance crops upfront for those farmers who needed it. The farmer provided the labor and the ensuing earnings from the crops would be split- i.e. tenant farming.

In the midst of the Great Depression, the federal government passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act in 1933. The idea was to ensure a stable price for wheat and cotton farmers by setting a limit on the number of acres farmers could raise, thereby preventing the market from flooding with crops. The edicts, along with bad weather, including hot winds from Oklahoma, proved devasting for farmers in the Ozarks scratching out a living, thus creating a population of farmers willing to try chickens.

Upcountry Georgia was in similar circumstances. It was also distant from the plantation economy and made up of small farmers. In the midst of devastation after Sherman’s March to the Sea, farmers found themselves in need of credit to get their farms operational. Local creditors, known as ‘furnishing merchants’ demanded a lien on crop in exchange for supplies. This necessitated growing a crop which could be sold in Northern markets. Cotton served this role. Whereas there was little cotton grown in the region prior to the Civil War, farms previously grew mostly grain and raised some meat, cotton became the dominate crop for decades. This exploitative arrangement held steady but prevented any diversification since creditors would advance credit only for cotton. Soil exhaustion became prominent as time went on and tenancy greatly increased. By 1940 tenants and sharecroppers operated two-thirds of farms.

When the Depression completely bottomed out the price of cotton (along with the effect of the Agricultural Adjustment Act) the system there simply shifted to chicken. Another impactful federal initiative was the Rural Electricity Administration passed in 1936. Prior to 1936 over 95 percent of homes in rural Georgia lacked electricity. For poultry production access to electricity, like the advance in feed, eliminated any seasonal limitation (hence the earlier term ‘spring chickens’).

It is important to note that many of the founders of the companies that would grow to dominate the poultry industry (John Tyson, Jesse Jewell, Charles O’Dell Lovette) were not farmers. They were middlemen. John Tyson was exiled from the family farm in Missouri at the age of twenty-five with one half bale of hay and a truck. He moved to Springdale, Arkansas (in the middle of the Ozark Plateau) and starting making his living hauling fruit grown from the richer soil west of the town to markets in St. Louis and Kansas City. By the early 1930s that industry began to decline. Tyson turned to the emerging chicken economy.

Squint hard enough and one could already see how this would take shape. A middleman like Tyson needed a steady supply of birds. With the price of chicken subject to volatility due to the speed with which they reach maturity, leaving prices prone to boom and bust, local farmers couldn’t be counted on to deliver a regular supply. Tenants were already being fronted money for chickens. Tyson simply took it a step further by buying chickens from hatcheries and actually loaning them to farmers to raise and receive a fixed price upon delivery. The next obvious step was to buy a hatchery. From there the remaining variable is the price of feed, so why not make some, sell it to the same farmers, and profit on both ends of the transaction. From there the processing plant; Tyson built his first plant in Springdale in 1958.

The National Chicken Council (NCC), the poultry industry’s DC lobbying arm, describes vertical integrated companies as ‘companies in a supply chain united through a common owner. Usually each member of the supply chain produces a different product or service, and the products combine to satisfy a common need- in this case, the production of broiler chicken.’ What that translates to is the company owns and hatches the chickens. It owns the feed, trucks, and slaughterhouses. Meanwhile, the farming part still remains a contract affair with birds hatched and delivered to farmers, along with the feed, to raise to maturity with payment on delivery. The beauty of this is farmers are supposed to have a regular, safe supply while there is quality standardization along the whole chain. Well over 90 percent of chickens raised for consumption in the U.S. are produced under this system. According to the NCC, ‘the system has worked well for decades and had kept tens of thousands of families on small farms who otherwise would have had to get out of agriculture altogether.’

The system certainly produces a lot of chicken. If chicken was once an occasional Sunday dinner, now it is omnipresent. According to the North American Meat Institute (NAMI), the American meat industry in 2017 processed 9 billion chickens (equaling 42.2 billion pounds of meat). Despite the silly mythology of the farmer as a cultural buffer against coastal elites, science, much of it having roots in big name universities, has long been a decisive factor in farming. Back in the mid-1920s chicken cost almost $8 a pound ‘live weight’ in today’s dollars. Today’s chickens weigh more than twice as much, mature in half the time, and cost $1 per pound fully dressed. From the 1920s to the 1950s the price of chicken declined steadily and faster than beef and pork. By the late 1980s, the real price of chicken was less than one third of what it cost in 1955.

By the 1970s, with the industry cranking out so much chicken new products and methods of cooking needed to be developed. Paradoxically these run the full gauntlet from being considered healthy to near junk food. Grilled chicken breast has served for decades as a healthier, less fatty, alternative to beef. The anti-cholesterol craze of the 1980s and 1990s gave a big push to chicken’s appeal. Chicken salad does go back a long way but exploded in that context. Of course, there is plenty of chicken of the less healthy variety. McDonalds unleashed the very influential McNugget in 1982 (an order of McNuggets has a higher fat content than the regular burger). It was a short step from there to the universal chicken fingers. Wings covered with skin and dripping with gooey sauces became a staple of bar food and then expanded to restaurants of all kinds, including many places that serve almost nothing else but them. KFC was an early fast food chain with a focus on fried chicken but Chick-fil-A came along in 1967, Popeyes in 1972.

Chicken consumption exploded. In the mid-1920s the average American ate about 14 pounds per year. Between 1976 and 1989 per capita consumption rose by 50 percent. By 1980 that average American was eating roughly 35 pounds of chicken per year. By 1995: more than 50 pounds. 2001: 82 pounds. In 2016, according to the USDA, it was up to nearly 92 pounds.

Farming and processing are the two main pillars of the chicken economy. As we have seen, the industry line is that vertical integration, by supplying farmers with regular shipments of chickens and feed, has stabilized the farming economy keeping small farmers in business. Whatever truth that logic contains, there is the counterbalance of the farmers losing complete control over the entire process. From sales to marketing to the chickens, the corporations run it all. Farmers are paid on the basis of ‘feed conversion’, how many of the chicken delivered to the farmer can be raised and returned for slaughter with as efficient use of feed as possible. Farmers under contract for the same particular company, and there aren’t many such companies given the inherent concentration built into the system- the ten largest poultry companies control about 80 percent of the market, compete with each other under that metric with the winners getting paid more than those ranked lower (the cost of feed deducted from all). Only the company holds all the information. Contracts can be cancelled by the company at any time.

In hindsight it is perhaps difficult to fathom why farmers would allow such a set-up to materialize. An exact inflection point is impossible to uncover. Its origins lay in hundreds of transactions. Well documented in Monica R. Gisolfi’s The Takeover: Chicken Farming and the Roots of American Agribusiness, prior to the early 1950s, there were many variations of what eventually became the conversion contract. Under the ‘open account’ contract, feed dealers retained ownership of birds and shared with the farmers both profit and loss. Both parties were bound by the market. An important variation to that was the ‘no loss contract’. Here integrators still owned the feed and birds but protected the farmers from debt if production costs for a flock exceeded the return on the flock. Essentially the company assumed the debt. The siren song of that allowed the integrators to take more of the sales based on them assuming the risk.

The thing is in the 1930s and 1940s investment requirements to operate chicken farms was relatively low. This would change as technology advanced with ever larger barns equipped with temperature controls and automatic feeders. If the system’s appeal for farmers is supposed to be stability, the charm for the companies is the outsourcing of the least profitable part of the production process. There is a reason the independent feed dealers and truckers are gone but farms remain on the outside: the companies realized the model worked better without them. Greater still, capital investment is outsourced. Farmers make expensive investments and upgrades to their farms, indeed companies force these investments on farmers with the threat of losing the contract- farmers already in debt have little choice but to comply. By the early 1950s, farmers were providing about 50 percent of the capital to run an integrated farm. A government study in 1966 found that ‘growers of a firm slaughtering about 20 million birds per year would have invested nearly three times as much as the firm itself ($6.4 million compared to $2.3 million).’

Meat companies have farmers making capital investments and competing with each other, not in a free market, but in company owned corporate fiefdoms. Thus exists the surreal scenario of farmers owning the means of production while playing the role of serfs on their own farms. Contract farming started with chicken but soon swallowed up hog farming as well. Nearly all hogs are grown under contract farming. As the pork industry integrated 90 percent of hog farms disappeared, and as with chicken farmers, no doubt many left loaded with debt. How often do politicians speak romantically of small farmers?

Ever since Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1904, meatpacking has been synonymous with low wage, backbreaking labor. Sinclair’s novel had an effect most novelists could only dream of but didn’t have the effect he intended. He famously quipped ‘I aimed for the public’s heart but by accident hit it in the stomach.’ For decades after The Jungle was published packing house labor remained precarious. Gains in wages, such as during World War I, were always a moment from being taken back, large strikes were unsuccessful. It wasn’t until the emergence of the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA), originally charted by the CIO in October 1937 as the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee, that lasting gains were made. In the aftermath of an organizing wave, master agreements for the industry were signed in the 1940s. Where in the past companies were able to divide their workforces along racial lines, UPWA was successful in uniting workers. For a generation meat packing provided a solid living. In 1950 wages for meatpacking were only slightly lower than U.S. manufacturing. By 1960 wages in meatpacking were 15 percent higher, a number that basically held through the 1970s.

At the same time the seeds of this period’s demise were eagerly being planted. With the rise of inter-state trucking, production began to be moved from its traditional strongholds of meatpacking districts in cities such as Chicago, New York, and Kansas City, to rural areas. These meatpacking districts had been centered along railroad lines where livestock was shipped. The industry shift to the country moved packing closer to the livestock saving transport costs while moving away from urban unions. IBP (originally named Iowa Beef Producers) emerged, with a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration, as an industry equivalent of Wal-Mart, pioneering boxed beef (thereby leading to the decline of skilled butchers) and dragging the rest of the industry to extreme cost cutting.

The rise of IBP inspired emulators such as ConAgra and Excell and expanded to chicken and pork production. Older companies were forced to adopt. By the time the anti-union work of the 1980s was done wages in meatpacking were 20 percent lower than manufacturing. By 2002 they were 24 percent lower; today they are 44 percent lower. Regulations were withdrawn and line speeds were once again increased unilaterally by companies. Even by official statistics, injuries surged in the 1980s. Records compiled by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) showed that from 2015 to 2017 there was an average of 17 serious incidents a month, basically one every other day, at U.S. packing plants. These injuries are classified as ‘hospitalizations, amputations or loss of an eye’. In the 1960s meatpacking had one of the lowest turnover rates among industrial jobs. Today the turnover rate is 100 percent.

The meat industry is currently pouring cash into the government, particularly the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), pushing for new liability waiver laws in order to acquire immunity against any wrongful death suits stemming from COVID-19. Smithfield Foods gave RAGA $25,000 in May, three days before the association penned a letter to Congress lobbying for protection for businesses from ‘devastating civil liability litigation concerning baseless COVID-related claims.’ The letter was signed by 21 state Attorney Generals. The lead signee was Christopher Carr, Georgia’s attorney general- Georgia being the largest poultry producing state. Mountaire Farms, one of the largest poultry companies in the country has also dumped substantial amounts of money into RAGA. The company was the target of a brilliant recent investigation in the New Yorker by Jane Mayer that charged the company with concealing the rate of infection of its workers at its poultry plants in North Carolina. Mountaire Farms is facing another federal claim filed by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents Mountaire’s workers in one of its plants, that the company forced workers to attend anti-union meetings in-person during the pandemic, violating CDC guidelines. The largest meat processing company in the world, JBS SA, is facing a wrongful death lawsuit for failing to provide sufficient protective equipment and forcing employees to work in close proximity and share crowded break areas and restrooms. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is currently pushing for a national liability shield for businesses.

Food being the basis for existence, it is a given that money will flow from it. The eternal question about money is where it flows. In this case the money hardly appears in the rural areas where packing workers toil, nor to the surrounding farms. As if on the same conveyor belts that churn carcasses inside the plants, the money flows into the coffers of Big Meat. Net income for Tyson Foods has hovered around $2 billion a year the last four years. Pilgrim’s Pride’s net income in 2019 was a reported $455.9 million. Mountaire reportedly earned $2.3 billion in revenue last year.

Soon after The Jungle was published Sinclair lamented ‘I aimed for the public’s heart and by accident hit it in the stomach.’ Over a century later it is clear that the main players again adorn the stage: The Meat Trust, the exploited immigrants, the amputated limbs, now along with bounded farmers. The jungle remains a dark, forbidding place.

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More articles by:JOSEPH GROSSO

Joseph Grosso is a librarian and writer in New York City. His first book Emerald City: How Capital Transformed New York is being published this fall by Zer0 Books.

Science Does Not Support the Claims About Grizzly Hunting, Lethal Removal

by ADRIAN TREVES – JOHN LAUNDRÉ 

COUNTERPUNCH AUGUST 14, 2020

Yellowstone Grizzly. Photo: National Park Service.

As the Montana Governor’s Grizzly Bear Advisory Council (GBAC) works to finalize its recommendations regarding the future of grizzly bear management in Montana, it would be well-advised to follow its own guiding principle: “the best available science should inform decisions in all aspects of grizzly bear management and conservation.”

A close look at what that science actually shows about coexistence with native carnivores reveals insufficient support for the notion that hunting seasons and lethal removal will reduce grizzly bear-livestock conflict or improve tolerance of grizzlies’ presence on the landscape. To the contrary, the science suggests that killing carnivores can make these problems worse.

As a professor of environmental studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison (where Treves directs the Carnivore Coexistence Lab) and an assistant professor at Western Oregon University (where Laundré studies large predator-prey relationships), we are well-acquainted with the scientific literature on predator management. We have been studying predator-prey ecology for a combined 80-plus years, and have published more than 80 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles on ecology, conservation and predator management.

Our research and that of other scientists shows that lethal management and hunting seasons can hamper coexistence efforts by reducing residents’ tolerance of native carnivores. Independent colleagues and both of us have examined public attitudes toward gray wolves in Wisconsin over a 13-year period that included the federal delisting of wolves in January 2012, which was immediately followed by government trapping and soon after by public hunting, trapping, and hounding seasons. We found that public tolerance of wolves declined each time policy changes made it easier for state managers or the general public to kill wolves. Wisconsin’s decision to open a hunt on the newly delisted population in 2011 was no exception. Even as hunters and trappers were allowed to kill hundreds of wolves in a single season, the men living in Wisconsin wolf range became more hostile toward them and, especially disturbingly, more inclined to poach them.

More recent work coming out this year is showing that radio-collared wolves were more likely to be killed, and the evidence hidden from authorities, during six independent periods in which wolf-killing was legalized. The reason why is elusive, but we suspect that lifting restrictions on killing essentially signals that it is socially acceptable to kill these animals; moreover, reduction or removal of disincentives, such as penalties associated with “take” of endangered species, could be to blame.

The claim that killing carnivores is necessary to address livestock conflict is also dubious. A large and growing body of high-quality research from a dozen nations and two dozen independent scientists shows that nonlethal conflict prevention methods such as livestock guardian dogs and electric fencing are the most effective way to prevent predation on livestock by bears, wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and other native carnivores.

By contrast, there is relatively little evidence supporting the effectiveness of lethal removal, and many of the studies that seemingly support such a claim are plagued by biases that render their findings weak and unreliable. In extreme cases, lethal control of carnivores might be necessary when coexistence proves impossible. However, this generally happens when and where we fail to use nonlethal interventions.

Some suggest that public hunts of carnivores are the solution. Yet public hunting has never been shown to reduce livestock conflicts, probably because the timing and location of hunts generally do not coincide with the timing and locations of domestic animal injuries. Indeed, recent research on cougars in Washington state has instead found that sport hunting led to more losses of livestock, probably by disrupting cougars’ social and territorial hierarchy. Similar results for wolves in Michigan suggest government trapping may have exacerbated cattle losses for the neighboring farms. That’s how word of mouth between farmers can spread a counter-productive intervention. These results have been further supported in a large regional comparison of livestock loss to cougars between 10 western states with a sport hunt and California where sport hunting of cougars has been banned since the early 1970’s. Sport killing of carnivores just does not produce the management goal of lower livestock losses. All it does is to reward a killing opportunity to the small segment of society, hunters, who as a group are the least supportive of protection of carnivores, as we have shown in multiple surveys.

Simply put, the alleged benefits of carnivore-killing policies – both hunting seasons and lethal management by state officials – are overstated and unsupported by robust scientific evidence. Research shows that these policies are likely to undermine coexistence efforts by stoking social intolerance and failing to address conflicts. Continuing to promote these ineffective wildlife management policies wastes limited resources and harms nature, animals and people.

The GBAC should heed the lessons learned through decades of rigorous research on carnivore populations in the U.S. and around the world by supporting nonlethal conflict prevention and recommending against hunting as a conservation strategy.

This column first appeared in The Missoulian.

More articles by:ADRIAN TREVES – JOHN LAUNDRÉ

Dr. Adrian Treves is a professor of environmental studies and director of the Carnivore Coexistence Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. John Laundré is a wildlife ecologist and an assistant professor at 
Western Oregon University.

DOES TRUMP HAVE ANY HOPE AGAINST A BIDEN-HARRIS TICKET?

Bruce Wolpe
Non-Resident Senior Fellow, United States Studies Centre

17 August 2020

https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/does-trump-have-any-hope-against-a-biden-harris-ticket
It was a shock when the announcement was made from the Oval Office: the United Arab Emirates would recognise the state of Israel, sign a peace treaty, and host ambassadors in exchange for Israel withholding annexation of the West Bank. After four years of promising to bring his mastery of deal-making to the White House, but failing to disarm North Korea, secure comprehensive trade reform with China, bring Iran into a new nuclear agreement,or settle the 100-year war between Israel and the Palestinians, President Trump finally delivered a tangible diplomatic achievement. And a huge one it is, as experts immediately attested.

Forty-eight hours after Joe Biden's historic naming of Senator Kamala Harris as his vice presidential running mate, the timing of the announcement betrays its political utility at an inflection point in the US presidential campaign. It was to be expected that Trump, the ruthless and cunning master of the media cycle, would counter the unveiling of the first woman of colour on a presidential ticket with not one, but two, counterstrikes: a ground-shaking initiative in a completely unrelated area - the Middle East - and, as insurance to blunt whatever momentum Biden could get from Harris, overtly questioning whether she was legally qualified under the constitution to serve.

IT WAS EXACTLY THE SAME FAKE AND SHAMELESS CHARGE TRUMP LEVELLED FOR YEARS AGAINST BARACK OBAMA: IS HARRIS A NATURAL-BORN US CITIZEN ABLE TO SERVE AS VICE PRESIDENT? THE FACTS ARE INCONTROVERTIBLE; THERE IS NOTHING HERE TO PROVE.

It was exactly the same fake and shameless charge Trump levelled for years against Barack Obama: is Harris a natural-born US citizen able to serve as vice president? The facts are incontrovertible; there is nothing here to prove. But the Trump playlist has its golden oldies, and he reprised his Obama hit: "So I just heard ... it today that she doesn't meet the requirements ... I have no idea if that's right. I would have assumed the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice-president. But that's a very serious - you're saying that, they're saying that she doesn't qualify because she wasn't born in this country."

Trump will take this ugly canard all the way through the election; it took him five years to concede Obama was born on American soil. But in the meantime, a reputational smear occupies news coverage.

Biden's selection of Harris cleared all the hurdles that could have harmed his standing at a pivotal moment. She was the best overall choice in a wide-ranging field of women leaders. Indeed, early polls show that the choice augmented Biden's leadership position at this stage of the campaign.

First and foremost, Harris is instantly seen as being qualified to become president at a moment's notice. This was a threshold factor in the minds of many, given Biden's age (he will be 78 on inauguration day in January). As a senator and former presidential candidate, someone tested and vetted at that level, Harris passes that test.

No ghosts from her past have yet emerged. No ethical charges have surfaced. Harris is not battling with past statements or gaffes on foreign policy or domestic issues that she would have to repudiate.

NO GHOSTS FROM HER PAST HAVE YET EMERGED. NO ETHICAL CHARGES HAVE SURFACED. HARRIS IS NOT BATTLING WITH PAST STATEMENTS OR GAFFES ON FOREIGN POLICY OR DOMESTIC ISSUES THAT SHE WOULD HAVE TO REPUDIATE.

Over the past three months, Biden has consolidated a very strong position against Trump. His management of the pandemic is being adjudged a failure. Unemployment is at levels not seen since the Depression. There is a widespread sentiment that the country needs to move forward on racial justice. As a result, Trump is failing the election-deciding Ronald Reagan test from 1980: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Trump's approval rating is stuck just above 40 per cent. Even the Senate appears in danger of flipping Democratic.

As a result, Biden leads nationally by five to 10 points in the polls, and in swing states. As FiveThirtyEight has reported: "Biden is currently ahead in our polling averages in Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Ohio ... all places that Clinton lost in 2016. If he won those states (and held the other states Clinton won), that would be enough to give him 352 electoral votes. He's also within roughly 1 percentage point of Trump in Texas, Georgia, Iowa and Maine's second congressional district. If he won those, too, he'd be up to a whopping 412 electoral votes."

What can turn this around for Trump? A visible economic recovery that is evident by October and brings Americans back into paying jobs would work wonders. A severe resurgence of urban violence across the country would play into Trump's law-and-order theme of fear. An announcement before the election that the Operation Warp Speed vaccine effort has paid off and a safe and effective vaccine - complete with the Good Housekeeping seal of approval from Dr Anthony Fauci - will be available to the American people early in 2021 would instantly change the American people's sentiment and outlook, and help guide them to rewarding Trump with a second term.

But Trump will not regain the White House on the back of the UAE-Israel deal (even if Trump gets a Nobel Prize for it, as his staff is advocating). Not even the Middle East peace agreement judged the most historic - the one signed between Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel on the south lawn of the White House in 1979 - could save President Jimmy Carter's re-election in 1980.

So Trump has to do it the old-fashioned way: earn the trust of enough of his voters for four more years - and utterly destroy Biden and Harris in the eyes of many more of the American people.


Bruce Wolpe
Non-Resident Senior Fellow, United States Studies Centre
Bruce Wolpe is a Senior Fellow (non-resident) at the United States Studies Centre. Bruce is a regular contributor on US politics across media platforms in Australia. In recent years, Bruce has worked with the Democrats in Congress during President Barack Obama's first term, and on the staff of Prime Minister Julia Gillard. He has also served as the former PM's chief of staff.

This article was published by The Canberra Times.



DOES TRUMP HAVE ANY HOPE AGAINST A BIDEN-HARRIS TICKET?

Danon: Trump is considering running with Nikki Haley

Danon: Trump is considering running with Nikki Haley

Ex-Israeli Ambassador to the UN confirms rumors Trump is considering replacing Mike Pence with Nikki Haley. 'I know its being considered.'

Arutz Sheva Staff , 17/08/20

Donald Trump with Nikki Haley
REUTERS


Israel’s former Ambassador to the United Nations backed up rumors Monday that President Donald Trump is considering replacing Vice President Mike Pence with Nikki Haley.

Speaking with the Knesset Channel Monday, Danny Danon, who was recently replaced as Israel’s ambassador to the UN, said that rumors that Trump is seriously considering removing current Vice President Mike Pence and bringing on former US Ambassador to the UN and ex-South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley on as his 2020 running mate are true.

“There are rumors that former ambassador Nikki Haley will run as vice president along Donald Trump. I know it’s being considered, but I don't know if it will happen. Vice President Pence is also a good friend of Israel, and the president values his work, but I do know that this is being considered. It is impossible to say what will be."

Haley, the first female governor of South Carolina, was a prominent critic of Trump prior to the 2016 general election.

In January 2017, Trump appointed her Ambassador to the UN, where she served until the end of 2018.

Haley was floated as a possible vice presidential pick in both 2012 and 2016.

Last week, former Vice President and presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden announced that he had chosen California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate.