From the Lever’s reader supported newsroom. This is Lever Time. I’m David Sirota. With the presidential election less than six months away lawmakers are hoping to pass one more major piece of legislation. The farm bill. The Farm Bill’s a gigantic law that’s passed every five years and has massive consequences for the food on your plate. The farm bill’s historically provided aid to independent farmers, but in this era of mega monopolies, it’s now a lifeline for the few independent farmers left who are struggling to keep up with Big Agriculture. Like much of the American economy, our food system is controlled by a small number of firms that have manipulated public health, decimated farms and harmed their employees and the communities they live in. Today on Lever Time, senior podcast producer Arjun Singh looks at the rise of one firm JBS, and how they literally bribed and bought their way into becoming the world’s largest meat processor. Then, he looks at the consequences of that consolidation on the welfare of animals, and poses the question…in this kind of a system is it ethical to eat meat at all? Austin Frerick You is one of the cruelest, darkest things I think in modern the modern American food system. So imagine they're just these metal sheds the stuff a bunch of pigs into them in Iowa usually underneath them are these manure lagoons. So the hogs defecate, and that's falls through these slots in the floor into this big thing underneath. There's no windows usually, there's these massive fans on the ends because these things put off so much toxic gas, they need to remove it or else picks up Okay, actually what they did during COVID on Coke versus they shut the fans off. And that's how they exterminated the pigs or they trying to heat up Tuesday would die quicker. Arjun Singh This is Austin Friedrich, a journalist and the author of the book barons money power and the corruption of America's food industry. What Austin is describing is a hog confinement facility in Iowa, Austin Frerick it was truly horrendous Neighbors reported hearing them squeal from miles away so you have these metal sheds and then you have corn that comes down to the ceiling the water so the these animals live inside the metal shed their whole life. Arjun Singh Austin told me this story a few days before recording this podcast, and it was grimly appropriate. Just before taping I had spent Memorial Day weekend like a lot of Americans eating meat. I don't want to get too philosophical about hamburgers, but as an American it's kind of hard not to since I was a kid I feel like meat was everywhere. It was in pop culture. Welcome Kel Mitchell to good burger home once again. Burger Canada take yod Samuel L Jackson This is a tasty burger Seymour Skinner though. No I said steamed hams that's what I go hamburgers, Superintendent Chalmers UConn hamburgers, steamed hams? Yes. Arjun Singh It even showed up in presidential election. Walter Mondale I'm picking up strength because the real question is who's going to be the best president? I'm going to win that debate. How much do you give credit to your new campaign model? Where's the beef? That's helping a lot. There's no beef there. Arjun Singh I mean, hell, the former president literally used to sell steaks on TV Trump Steaks Donald Trump are by far the best tasting most flavorful beef you've ever had, truly in A League of Their Own. About Arjun Singh a month ago, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania caused a little bit of a ruckus when he tweeted out that he would never eat meat grown in a lab because he supposedly backs American farmers. Here's the thing though small independent farmers have nearly gone extinct in America. The meat industry is actually controlled by mega corporations. One of those companies is called JBS foods mean Austin Frerick they are now the world's largest meat packer. They're Number One beef number one and chicken number two and pork number one leather. They operate in all the major meat production areas. And that's just because they got cheap capital and they aggressively just bought a bunch of companies. Arjun Singh JBS is based out in Greeley Colorado, and there they've polluted the water supply use child labor and produced one of the largest COVID 19 outbreaks in the state back in 2020. Like a lot of American based food conglomerates, JBS is family owned, in this case by the Batista family and that's led by two brothers named Joseph Lee and Wesley How did the Batista family create a meatpacking Empire? Austin Frerick They stood up bribed away club monopoly level status. Arjun Singh That's right. In other words, good old fashioned corruption. Austin Frerick I mean, I'm not even talking campaign contribution. We're talking like they pled guilty to bribery to bribing over 1800 Brazilian politicians, including like a multi million dollar New York City apartment to essentially get access to cheap capital to aggressively roll up and expand in the meat industry Arjun Singh JBS his story begins in Brazil, which is where the company was founded by Jose Batista, the father of Joselyn, Wesley but in the mid 2000s, the brothers went on a multibillion dollar buying spree, partially financed by cheap loans they got from Brazilian government controlled banks. Eventually, JBS would move to Colorado where they continue to grow and break more laws. So Austin Frerick they they will legit red meat inspectors they were alleged to use child labor. They were alleged to price fixing, like every protein there and like, they just pay fine. It's just a cost of doing business. And it's Arjun Singh not like the government didn't notice. Like Austin said JBS has faced fines and the corruption scandal all came to a head long after they arrived in the US. But in 2019, they still got a $78 million contract from the government. Even though the company has been mired in a brazen corruption scandal. In a declassified letter. The Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said the company was just too big for the government not to buy from. That means that the same meat that appears on school lunch trays most likely came from JBS I'm actually more Austin Frerick mad at Vilsack than I am at them, because it's like, he let them happen. His failure to do his job to be a public servant and look out for the interests of American people is why they are they're using child labor. That company keeps pushing on love because they can. Like, where's the red line here? I don't see a red line with them. They're the closing I have I think we have to monitor criminal organization in America. The fact that we let them keep their Monopoly Empire not only keep it, but also like, I mean, Vilsack even, he still gives him yesterday contracts because they're just too big. Like there's no punishment at Arjun Singh JBS his story is outlandish, to say the least. But their growth and dominance of a critical portion of our food chain is part of a trend that we've seen in the economy since the 1980s. Big companies just keep getting bigger and bigger, often with the government's approval. And the rise of these mega corporations has changed America, both economically and physically. For Austin, that's a story that hits close to home. See, he grew up in Iowa, where he watched how food conglomerates muscled out independent farms around him, Austin Frerick you see the collapse of the family farm, most people now are low wage workers for these barons. And keep in mind too, when one of these industrial animal facilities get built next to you, it just destroys your quality of life, your home value falls apart. You can't afford to move to where your kids are. And I increasingly view real America as extraction colonies. So we shouldn't be shocked to see right wing radicalization, you know, fill these voids and like justify that anchor. Instead of blaming corporate power. They blame minorities Arjun Singh or frequent casualty of monopolistic companies or independent businesses. And that's a story Austin knows well, because of his mom's own bakery business. Austin Frerick So my mom, she went to beauty school, she ran a hair salon for a while. And her dream was always to have her own bakery. And they saved up because my parents spent a few years they went to different trade shows. And when I was like, maybe eight years old, they opened it. And I just remember because it's like the fanciest I've ever seen. My dad doesn't wear suits. It's like, I'll have my life. And my dad wear a suit. Arjun Singh In his childhood. The bakery wasn't just a second home to Austin. It was a way he connected with his neighbors. Austin Frerick You know, like any child of a small business owner, I was always you know, we were always there. You know, it sounds weird to say like I really good arithmetic, because my mom would always make me work the register. I still see former customers to this day. You know, people I recognize people, we go out to any store grocery store near my mom, always people recognize her. They come on mom is also a very social person. She loves chatting with people in so much of that businesses, it's repeat customers. It's the group of all men that was come further, you know, 7am coffee, that BS for two hours. Arjun Singh Eventually, the cost of running the business became too high. And she made the tough decision to sell it. You know, Austin Frerick you only went uphill for so long. We never lost money. My mom is very proud to always say that. But this margin is so tight. And then she had my little sister and then doing 70 hour weeks barely getting by just wasn't worth it. You know. So we sold the business off. Arjun Singh When Austin's mom returned to the workforce, she went to work for a Starbucks. And that's where Austin really saw what the loss of locally owned businesses meant for the community he grew up in, Austin Frerick she wasn't allowed agency. For example, next to her Starbucks is a big General Mills facility where a lot of your roll ups or golf shirts or Cheerios are made. And a lot of those workers a third shift. There certain celebrations are super important. My mom would want to merchandise in certain way do certain things. And she just wasn't allowed to cheat get fined by like the district manager like Oh, you shouldn't do this. Like this is not what the planogram says. And it's just like, she's a professional. She's been in coffee or for most of her life. She knows that this community in Washington knows these people personally yet, you know, someone in a cubicle and excel sheet and Seattle's telling you know, just thinks they know better. But I had someone tell me this once it always stuck with me is it's local places that really make a place a place. They're the places that maintain tradition, the culture. I think that's what's been lost. It's something something I noticed in my travels is just the homogenization the American food system and the collapse of tastes and it's really driven by this consolidation there. Arjun Singh On top of the economic impact, the industrialization of livestock farming has had a lasting influence on the health and the environment and your where these facilities are kept in Iowa where Austin grew up. Residents and some local officials have noticed an uptick in cancer rates, something they believe is linked to the increased use of pesticides, use on the crops to feed these hogs in so much water has been polluted that A recent report from the state's Department of Natural Resources said more than two thirds of Iowa's lakes and streams are unsafe. And for the animals who are forced to live and die in these facilities, it's an even bleaker story. So after the break, we're going to look at the other side of factory farming the animals and hear how factory farming spurred one philosopher to rethink his outlook on life. In 1970, Peter Singer, the world renowned philosopher was a 24 year old student at the University of Oxford one day he was having lunch with a friend. And he was surprised to hear them ask if there was any meat in the dish being served. I Peter Singer said, So what's your problem with meat? It's hard for younger people today to realize that I had gone through my entire undergraduate and some graduate study without having had a conversation with a vegetarian about why they were a vegetarian. And that's because I don't really think I'd met a vegetarian what Richard said, which was simply, I don't think that it's right to treat animals, the way they're being treated to be turned into meat for us, led me to look at how they were being treated. And that was a bit of a shock to realize that many of the animals I'd been eating had never been outside they'd been crowded into into Arjun Singh sheds. That moment changed the singer's life Peter Singer that got me reading some of the past philosophers, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, what they'd said about animals and they all seem pretty hopeless in terms of justifying what we were doing. So then I started to think this reminds me a bit of what the people involved in slave ownership was saying about the justifying owning slaves. And obviously, specious pleading, because it's convenient for them, they don't want to change. And so that's, that's what really got me looking at the treatment of animals from an ethical perspective. Arjun Singh This eventually culminated in singer honing a philosophy that he called Animal Liberation, which was the same name of a book he published in 1975. In it, singer argues that while animal rights are not the same as human rights, animal suffering should be taken into account when we consider their treatment Peter Singer by Judge actions by how good or bad their consequences and not so much in terms of starting from right, so I do think there's a place for rights, but it's not the foundation of my ethical views, I chose the term animal liberation, because this was the 1970s, when what we now think of as feminism was known as women's liberation. There was a gay liberation movement, there was a black liberation movement. And I wanted to convey the idea that here to was another serious movement here, there was a group of oppressed beings who were not given what they should be given in terms of ethical status. And we have a whole set of beliefs and ideology, which justifies this and makes it more possible for us to think that we're not doing anything grievously wrong in the way we treat them. So, you know, some people thought when they saw the title of the book, animal liberation, oh, you just want to open the cages and let all the animals out. And that's obviously not a good idea, and for a variety of reasons, including what would happen to the animals themselves. But it was rather that I think we need to liberate ourselves from our preconceptions about animals, and about our position, visa vie animals. That is, for example, the idea that we are just justified in making use of them for our own purposes. A little Arjun Singh while ago, David Sirota and I had the chance to speak with singer and one thing singer said had long horrified him is factory farming and the industrialization of the meat industry is a meat eater myself, it was hard not to wonder what singer thought about eating meat. So we asked him, I'm Peter Singer talking about animals capable of suffering, all vertebrates are capable of suffering, and that includes fish, and some invertebrates. We have very good evidence about octopus, for example, being being capable of suffering. And the British UK Government recently amended some of its legislation to recognize not only cephalopods that's octopus and squid, basically, but also some crustaceans as being sentient. So lobster and crabs, roughly speaking, so I think that we should definitely avoid them and give them the the assumption that they can feel pain. The bigger issue is those sort of more ethically raised or certified you mean, animals that people might want to eat or animal products? It varies from where you are. But let's say here in Australia, I can walk into a supermarket. And there will be three kinds of eggs available. There will be an there'll be labeled, so there'll be cartons that say eggs From caged hens, there'll be cartons that say ban laid eggs in the US that's referred to as cage free. And there'll be free range. And that's a legally defined term here, I think it's not in the United States. But that means they have to be have access to the outside. So if you really want to eat animal products, if you really feel you need animal products or can't avoid them, I think getting eggs from hens who really can range outside on pasture is probably about the best of the reasonably widely available products, animal products that you can find. You might say, Well, what about dairy cows who are allowed to raise out and run in pasture? The problem with the dairy industry is cows like humans, don't give milk unless they've recently had a baby. So you have to make these cows pregnant every year, and you have to take the calf away from them, if you want to have what's a normal commercially viable product, because otherwise a calf will drink most of the milk, and there won't be enough left to sell. And the rest of it I think better not, you know, strangely because many people will say I'm against our hunting, one of the more relatively more ethical kinds of meat that people could eat is from hunting animals who otherwise going to overpopulate their region. An example of this. There are deer around Princeton is there are in much of the United States. The predators no longer that neither wolves nor indigenous peoples, and they are likely to get killed by motorcars on the roads, or if they avoid that the weaker ones are likely to starve in winter. So if you're a good shot, and you go out in October in the hunting season, and you can confidently put a bullet through the head of a deer, and it'll drop dead. You know, that maybe that's defensible this you know what you're doing, you take full responsibility for it. So yeah, I'm not an absolutist on saying that you can't eat meat. But I think you have to be very careful about what you're doing. What you're supporting. Arjun Singh In 2023, singer published an updated edition of animal liberation. This time he called it animal liberation. Now, in that same period, between the publishing of his two books, independent farming has been wiped out and replaced with factory farms. So I asked him if he was cynical, did it feel like anything's even changed? I Peter Singer think there's been a big change in attitudes, especially in Western countries, I can say everywhere in the world. For one thing, some of the people that I did quite a bit of media in 1975, about the book. And some of those hosts talk show hosts really just wanted to ridicule the idea. Animal Liberation, what will these crazy people think of next, comedian and the cows, I was speaking to the cows. And the milking machines are set at 36 pulsations, and it's painful. You're used to having a 28 He says he's right. I'm gonna put it back. Look at this, he said, and I was speaking to the sheep. Those liars don't believe Peter Singer they gonna say that I can't slap a mosquito. He just one of the Comedian raw vegetable trees. It looks like the bottom of a hamsters cage. A Peter Singer lot of it was this kind of jokey ridicule, how absurd sort of attitude. And that's pretty much gone. Because everybody recognizes that there is an issue here, they may disagree with it, they may not accept that animals have rights or moral status. That means we shouldn't use them the way we are, but but they don't ridicule it anymore. So that's the important thing. Then the other thing is, I think there's now widespread recognition, firstly, of the existence of factory farming of concentrated animal feeding operations as the official term is, but basically, putting animals inside crowding them in and producing them as quickly and cheaply as possible. And there's not many people defending it really anymore, Arjun Singh is we're living in what feels like a peak period of corporate power, though, it feels like mega corporations are here to stay. But when I brought this up to singer, he told me something interesting. He told me that he still has faith that things can improve. Peter Singer The tobacco industry was a very powerful industry. And they were challenged, they lied about cigarettes and cancer, and tried to hide the data that they themselves had. But essentially, the tobacco industry lost. And I think things can change a lot with regard to the meat industry. But I think it is also good to focus on the health aspects and the climate aspects and build a broad coalition, particularly against against factory farming. Factory farming seems to me to be the real atrocity that is just ongoing, and on such a vast scale. Billions I think the US is still producing something like no On billion chickens a year. And that's more than Titan than the entire population of the world. Chickens are now in terms of mass chickens and our, like two thirds of all the birds in the planet. That's really where we need we need to act. And I think it's possible to get people to see that Arjun Singh Thanks for listening to another episode of Lever Time. This episode was produced by me Arjun Singh, with help from Chris Walker, and editing support from Lucy Dean Stockton and Joel Warner. Our theme music is composed by Nick Campbell. We'll be back next week with another episode of Lever Time. Transcribed by https://otter.ai