Following the expansion of the last 5 years, the herd has rebounded to almost 32 million. Cargill, Tyson Foods, JBS USA and National Beef control over 80 percent of the nation's processing capacity and supply to the whole sale market, which the complains says "allowed for the conspiracy to occur, continue and prosper."
JBS USA is based in Greeley, Colorado. Its competitors include Cargill, Smithfield Foods, and
Tyson Foods.
JBS USA.
| Type | Subsidiary |
|---|
| Founded | 1855 |
| Defunct | 12 July 2007 |
| Headquarters | Greeley, Colorado , United States |
| Key people | Andre Nogueira, (CEO) |
Slaughter: 'They Die Piece by Piece'
After they are unloaded, cows are forced through a chute and shot in the head with a captive-bolt gun meant to stun them. But because the lines move so quickly and many workers are poorly trained, the technique often fails to render the animals insensible to pain.Cargill, Tryson, National Beef, and Swift are the top four companies controlling the beef supply. They control more than 80% of the market.
The greater part of the entire meat industry is termed meat packing industry- the segment that handles the slaughtering, processing, packaging, and distribution of animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep and other livestock.
Those leading cattle-slaughtering companies are:
- Tyson Foods (NYSE:TSN), the nation's largest beef producer.
- Cargill.
- JBS USA is a subsidiary of Brazil-based JBS S.A., which is the largest beef packer in the world.
- National Beef is the fourth-largest cattle processor, with market share of 13%.
JBS was initially established as a slaughtering business by rancher José Batista Sobrinho, a rancher in Anápolis, Brazil, in 1953. (The company's name comes from the founder's initials.)
South America has excellent beef (especially Argentina and Brazil) followed by UK, Australia, USA and Canada. If price is not a concern, then the winner has to go to Japan, beyond any shadow of doubt. Their wagyu (?? literally Japanese cattle) is a true legend.
Texas has the most cattle in the United States followed by Nebraska and Kansas. Thirty (30) states have over 1 million head of cattle.
The bottom line. Unprocessed and properly cooked meat has many nutrients and may have some health benefits. If you enjoy eating meat, there is no compelling health or nutritional reason to stop. However, if you don't feel right about eating animals, you can also stay healthy by following a well-balanced vegetarian diet
Brazil has the largest cattle inventory in the world followed by India and China. More than 100 countries (104) have a cattle inventory in excess of 1 million head. The United States has the 4th largest cattle inventory in the world, behind China and a head of Ethiopia.
The report urged that meat consumption be reduced in half by 2050. Per capita consumption is down about one-third since the peak in the 1970s. However, sales of plant-based “meats” have risen by 31% in grocery stores alone over the past two years.
From inside the United States, it is hard to pinpoint exactly where beef is produced, since beef is grown in almost every state in the country. However, the top states in beef sales in 2013 were Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, California and Oklahoma.
Feeding 326 Million Americans
The meat and poultry industry is the largest segment of U.S. agriculture. U.S. meat production totaled 52 billion pounds in 2017 and U.S. poultry production totaled 48 billion pounds in 2017.There are many serious safety and health hazards in the meat packing industry. These hazards include exposure to high noise levels, dangerous equipment, slippery floors, musculoskeletal disorders, and hazardous chemicals (including ammonia that is used as a refrigerant).
The 2018 Top 100 Meat & Poultry Processors
| Rank | Company | No. of Plants |
|---|
| 1 2017: 2 | JBS USA Holdings Inc. Greeley, Colo. Andre Nogueira, President/CEO | 44 |
| 2 2017: 1 | Tyson Foods Inc. Springdale, Ark. Tom Hayes, President/CEO | 111 |
| 3 2017: 3 | Cargill Meat Solutions Corp. Wichita, Kan. Brian Sikes, Corporate Vice President | 36 |
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle: Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to expose the appalling working conditions in the meat-packing industry. His description of diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat shocked the public and led to new federal food safety laws.
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. New York, Doubleday, Page & Company, 1906. While several of Sinclair's other novels were banned due to their explicit language, The Jungle came under scrutiny by Senator Joe McCarthy for its Communist sympathies in 1953.
Headquartered in beautiful Greeley, Colorado, JBS® USA processes, prepares, packages and delivers fresh, further-processed and value-added beef, pork, and poultry products for sale to customers in more than 105 countries on six continents.
The U.S. meat industry began during colonial times. Initially, colonists depended on wild animals for their meat supply. As the supply of domestic livestock increased, colonists became involved in trading meat with the West Indies in exchange for molasses.
Who owns JBS meat packing plant?
Total import duty on U.S. beef is now 47%. China has solidified its position as the fastest-growing beef import market in the world in 2019, with Oceania and South America the dominant suppliers. In 2018, the first full year of access for U.S. beef, exports to China totaled about 7,300 mt valued at $60.8 million.
No matter what brand you buy, you can be confident that the US Department of Agriculture does not allow any pork or pork products to enter our country from China.
Red River Cattle Feeding is one of the largest cattle-feeding operations in the world, with about 920,000 head of cattle kept in 11 feedlots located in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and Idaho.
Smithfield Foods, Inc., is a pork producer and food processing company based in Smithfield, Virginia, in the United States, and a wholly owned subsidiary of WH Group of China. It was the largest Chinese acquisition of an American company to date.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, Chinese imports of pork from the United States more than tripled from 23.4 to 93.4 million pounds from January 2019 to August 2019, with the imports generally increasing throughout this period.
Food safety and quality issues
The beef products were produced on April 21 and 22, 2009, and were shipped to distributors and retail establishments in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin.Processing plants run by Sanderson, Pilgrim's Pride Corp and other companies also have been cleared to ship U.S. poultry to China, according to USDA. Tyson will probably not ship poultry to China from all its plants, Adcock said.
Corporate Profile
WH Group owns subsidiary companies of Henan Shuanghui Investment & Development Co., Ltd. ("Shuanghui Development") (), Asia's largest meat processing company, and Smithfield Foods, Inc. (), the biggest pork food company in the US.In recent years, the United States has been either the world's largest or second largest exporter of pork and pork products, with exports averaging over 20 percent of commercial pork production in most years. Currently, U.S. hog operations are heavily concentrated in the Midwest and in eastern North Carolina.
