Act to Halt Meat Market Mergers

JBS Swift, the Brazilian meatpacker has announced its intention to buy both National Beef and Smithfield Beef. If this deal is approved by the Department of Justice, three meatpacking companies will control at least 73% of the daily beef processing capacity in the United States. By itself, JBS Swift will control at least 31% of that capacity.  And that's not all -- in planning to buy Smithfield's Five Rivers Ranch Cattle Feeding operation, JBS Swift would become the largest cattle feeder in the country as well.  The consolidation and concentration in agriculture must be stopped. Sign below to tell the Department of Justice to block the JBS deal.
 
If approved, the merger will result in less competition, less market access and lower prices for small farmers and ranchers. Most importantly, this merger yet again demonstrates that the values of rural communities and family farms are under assault. Those values are under attack from a corporate agriculture model that destroys small farms and ranches while rewarding the giant corporate operations whose only concern is the bottom line. The health of our small towns, the preservation of our natural resources -- at the end of the day, these are not concerns for a multinational meatpacker.

Do we want to see all of our cattle produced in mega-feedlots owned or controlled by these multinational meatpackers? Or do we want to see our cattle produced on small, dispersed family farms and ranches? That is the question at hand. Family farms and ranches have shown time and again that they are just as efficient and can compete with giant industrial operations, but not if they lack market access and face outright market manipulation from meatpackers.

Join our citizen movement to block the merger. Sign below.