-
CHAPTER 10 The Cost of Fodder
- University of Iowa Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
IN The Jungle, Upton Sinclair provides a memorable accounting of many of the items that meatpackers produced from slaughtered animals, including combs, buttons ,hairpins,and imitation ivory from cattle horns,and gelatin,isinglass,and phosphorous from feet, knuckles, hide clippings, and sinews. Sinclair’s observation that “no tiniest particle of organic matter was wasted” was no exaggeration. His list of animal-slaughter by-products provides a vivid sense of the array of goods that packers were providing to consumers early in the twentieth century. Yet within a couple of decades, Sinclair’s account would only scratch the surface of animal slaughter’s end products. His list also does not suggest the variety of inputs that the meatpacking process used transformed over time. Indeed, meatpacking companies from the late nineteenth century through the present have played a defining if not singular role in reshaping a much larger agro-industrial environment. The industry’s needs helped define the nature and shape—quite literally, in terms of animal requirements —of the livestock that were slaughtered and processed. The industry’s meat and other by-products also helped fill consumer niches and even created new consumer goods.1 Before the meatpacking industry began reshaping the animal industry, as well as consumers’ preferences, the introduction of cattle into the Great Plains during the late nineteenth century overturned the ecological balance that had existed there for millennia. The North American bison had evolved with the plant species that it depended upon,and both flourished there.The Plains Indians evolved cultures that helped maintain the balance between these animals and their environment. When the bison were slaughtered after the Civil War, and ranchers moved into the vacant ecological niche,the environmental balance was upset.Cattle took the bison’s place, but some, such as Dan O’Brien in Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a CHAPTER 10 The Cost of Fodder Reshaping the Agro-Industrial Environment Black Hills Ranch, argue that cattle have eroded the ecological diversity and health of the Great Plains. While O’Brien’s focus is on returning a small part of the Plains to a Buffalo Commons, Frank and Deborah Popper’s 1987 article envisioned a return of a much larger segment of the Great Plains to a Buffalo Commons due to environmental problems and depopulation of the region.2 Some historians have hinted at the meatpacking industry’s transformative influence . In Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, William Cronon argues that Chicago’s development as a manufacturer of agricultural commodities altered the city’s surrounding hinterlands, especially those to the west. He briefly describes how the making of beef and pork products reshaped how animals were raised, as well as how consumers made their meat choices. Brian Page’s work on the agroindustrialization of the meatpacking industry suggests that “rural agrarian production was enmeshed with the urban industrialization process.”From its development in and around Cincinnati during the antebellum period through the twenty-first century,the meatpacking industry systematically attempted to control the biological and natural animal inputs as well as to organize the distribution, retailing, and consumption of its output. Although never a smooth evolutionary process, the movement toward a vertical integration of the industry has been evident through much of its history.3 As the earlier chapters in this book demonstrate, meatpacking’s role in changing the Midwest’s economy, culture, and environment has been considerable. This chapter examines some of the industry’s distinct agro-industrial transformations in terms of backward and forward linkages. Meatpacking’s role in transforming cattle and hog breeding is emphasized to illustrate its backward linkages. The forward linkages surveyed here focus on the historical development of the industry’s use and promotion of animal by-products—leather and hides; edible by-products; fats, oils, and blood; and glands and other organs—that are central to the pharmaceutical industry and the animal-food industry. Backward Linkages For much of the country’s history, cattle have been raised in two basic stages, which agricultural specialists refer to as stocking (including breeding) and feeding (or finishing). Generally, after the feeding stage’s end, neutered male cattle, steers, and females that had not calved (heifers) were slaughtered for meat. As Terry G. Jordan has examined in depth, Anglo-Celtic traditions shaped the cattle-raising process the cost of fodder 183 [44.203.58.132] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 13:13 GMT) that later became dominant in the Midwest. These traditions...