The 5 Top Producers of Beef

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"Yuck."

That was my response after reading Consumer Reports' recent footing-beef product rubber test. The non-profit visitor went red-meat crazy by purchasing 300 packages of beef from supermarkets, large-box stores, and organic food retailers across the country. They then tested the meat for all manner of unhealthy leaner.

The results weren't appetizing. Tests showed a basic level of fecal contamination, the kind that can cause blood or urinary tract infections, in 100% (!) of the footing beef. Furthermore, 20% of the meat tested positive for a bacteria that causes a million cases of food poisoning each year. And about 1% independent salmonella, the microorganism behind 19,000 hospitalizations and 380 deaths in the U.South. per yr.

Consumer Reports recommended that meat fans melt ground beef thoroughly and attempt to buy sustainably raised beef wherever possible, since information technology has a lower prevalence of these dangerous bacteria. They as well highlighted a major structural risk of the meat industry, that it'due south dominated past just four producers accounting for over 80% of all beef processing in this country.

Those leading cattle-slaughtering companies are:

1. Tyson Foods (TSN 0.79%), the nation's largest beefiness producer. Tyson facilities can process upwards to 175,000 cattle per calendar week. The company booked $16 billion of beef sales last twelvemonth alone.
2. Cargill. With 153,000 employees and $120 billion of annual sales, Cargill is one of the largest privately held companies in the world. Subsidiary Cargill Beef processes 8 one thousand thousand cattle and eight billion pounds of boxed beef per year through its eight plants in the U.South. and Canada.
3. JBS USA is a subsidiary of Brazil-based JBS S.A., which is the largest beef packer in the globe. JBS USA operates nine cattle processing plants across the Midwest.
4. National Beefiness is the fourth-largest cattle processor, with marketplace share of 13%. After a failed acquisition attempt by JBS S.A. in 2009, National Beefiness is at present a subsidiary of property company Leucadia National (JEF 3.38%).

Why information technology matters
The controversy over such a big concentration of beef production centers effectually pricing and condom worries. Since massive processing companies behave so much weight in the market for cattle, they tin bulldoze prices down for ranchers and feedlots, hurting their businesses in the process.

And to a higher place on the value chain, the lack of competition at the grocery-store level can push button prices up for consumers. That'southward why the U.S. Justice Department challenged the proposed buy of National Beef by JBS S.A., saying "contest in the auction of boxed beef to grocers, nutrient service companies and ultimately American consumers" was at risk.

But the bigger concern is over food prophylactic, as Consumer Reports just highlighted. Since and so much supply is being handled past and so few companies, the potential for regional or even national outbreaks is enhanced. Albert Foer, president of the American Antitrust Found, recently told The Wall Street Journal that mergers are adding fragility to the nutrient supply chain. "As y'all get more than and more consolidated, with fewer and fewer redundancies, the opportunities for catastrophic breakdowns aggrandize," he said. And that's true no affair how important food safety standards are to these 4 beef giants.

What you tin can do nearly it
Red-meat fans have a few options available to them if they want to reduce the gamble associated with eating beef. You can enquire for well-done burgers at restaurants and buy more than sustainably raised beef during your next grocery shopping trip. You can also shift consumption away from footing beef and toward whole cuts like steaks and roasts. Since bacteria tend to exist only the surface of these cuts, as opposed to throughout mixed footing beefiness products, the cooking process is more probable to remove all of them.

But the tendency of increasing concentration of beefiness processing isn't likely to reverse. Just equally in any industry, scale efficiencies requite the big players major advantages over smaller rivals. And the leaders will e'er seek to maximize those benefits past growing bigger all the same.

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Source: https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/09/17/yup-80-of-our-beef-comes-from-4-producers.aspx

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