'In Meat We Trust'

choi

Charles R Morris, Carnivore Nation; By the 1960s, cattle-feeding was controlled by punch cards that mixed precise formulas of corn, plants, meat, vitamins and antibiotics. Wall Street Journal, Dec 17, 2013
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303482504579177742158078278
(book review on Maureen Ogle, In Meat We Trust; An unexpected history of carnivore America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013)

Note:
(a) "In the depths of the Great Depression in rural Georgia, Jesse Jewell contemplated the ruin of his seed business—like many businessmen in that unhappy time, he had lots of inventory but only destitute customers. So he persuaded a local bank to finance a risky purchase of young chicks, which he distributed to local farmers along with seed and meticulous instructions on how to feed them. When the chickens reached market size, he brought them to Atlanta—some live, some slaughtered and packed in ice—sold them all, and paid off the farmers who raised them. A quarter-century later, Jewell's business had evolved into a comprehensive chicken-manufacturing operation, from raw-material production—seeds, eggs and chicks—to slaughtering and packing. He still contracted chick-raising but specified the semi-automated facilities that would do the work and tightly controlled the feeding and watering regimens. Chickens, which were rarely seen on urban American tables earlier in the century, became a staple."
(i) Carl Weinberg, Jesse Jewell (1902-1975). New Georgia Encyclopedia, Jan 14, 2005 (last edited by NGE Staff on 09/10/2013)
www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/arti ... se-jewell-1902-1975
("widely credited with making Gainesville the 'poultry capital of the world.' He pioneered vertical integration—the combining of all phases of the business;"  At the helm of JD Jewell, Incorporated, for more than twenty years)

Quote: "When his stepfather died in 1930, Jewell began managing the family business. As the Great Depression drained the company's receipts, he tried a new approach to boost feed sales. He bought baby chicks and supplied them, along with chicken feed, on credit to cash-poor farmers. Once the chicks were grown, Jewell bought them back at a price that covered his feed costs and also guaranteed the farmers a profit. More and more Hall County farmers began to contract to grow chickens for Jewell.

(ii) Gainesville, Georgia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gainesville,_Georgia
(county seat of Hall County; was named in honor of General Edmund P Gaines, a hero of the War of 1812)

is ~50 miles northeast of Atlanta.
(A) Gainesville, Florida--home to the University of Florida--is also named for the same person.
(B) The English surname Gaines (of Norman origin): "nickname for a crafty or ingenious person, from a reduced form of Old French engaine ‘ingenuity’, ‘trickery’ (Latin ingenium ‘native wit’)."

(b) "The evolution of beef production illustrates the process. All major towns once had abattoirs near railroad stockyards, which slaughtered the arriving cattle and supplied carcasses to local butchers. But train trips left cattle battered and underweight, so refrigerated trains allowed the slaughtering to be shifted back to Chicago, leveraging its position as a national rail hub into leadership of the meat industry. Then, to satisfy ever-fussier consumers, a 'feeding' industry evolved that took grass-fed cattle from ranchers and cornfed them to the desired weight and taste. The feeders eventually became the power center of the industry. Much like Jewell, the feeders contracted with ranchers to bring them standardized cattle, then slaughtered the cattle at the feedlots, butchered the carcasses and packed the cuts in consumer-size containers—'boxed beef,' it was called. Because of the reduction in handling and travel time, boxed meat was fresher and tastier than the average conventional butcher's. Supermarkets sprouted meat counters. Pork, poultry and other meat industries all followed more or less the same path."
(i) stockyard (n)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stockyard
(ii) feedlot
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedlot
("They appeared in the 1950s and 1960s as a result of hybrid grains and irrigation techniques; the ensuing larger grain crops led to abundant grain harvests. However, the first known feedlot was designed and built by Gustavus Swift [who founded the meatpacker Swift & Co in 1855 at Chicago, illinois] in 1876 on the south side of Chicago")

Please read the entire Wiki page, whose reference 1 is
Animal Feeding Operations. US Environmental Protection Agency, undated
("AFOs generally congregate animals, feed, manure, dead animals, and production operations on a small land area. Feed is brought to the animals rather than the animals grazing or otherwise seeking feed in pastures")
(iii) The proceeding Wiki page mentions "out-wintering pads."

Guidance Document for the Design, Siting and Operation of Out Winter Pads. Department of Agriculture, Republic of Ireland, Feb 7, 2007,
www.agriculture.gov.ie/media/mig ... 132OWPGDfeb2007.pdf

Go to
(A) Chapter 5 Out wintering pad design and view the graphic on page 26; and
(B) Chapter 6 Out Wintering pad construction, to view
* Figure 6-1 Compacted subsoil ridges in a subsoil-lined OWP effluent collection system (page 33), where the yellow tube is the "slotted drainage pipe" in p 26, as well as
* Figure 6-2 Typical OWP underdrainage system configuration (page 34), where the (yellow) "slotted drainage pipes" in parallel--in the troughs between soil ridges--empties into a bigger-diameter drainage pipe.
(iv) Winter Management of Feedlot Cattle. North Dakota State University, April 2011
www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/ansci/beef/as1546.pdf
("Beef cattle adapt to colder temperatures during gradual changes in the season by growing longer hair, changing metabolism and hormone secretion (NRC, 1981), and depositing insulating fat if the energy level in the diet allows")  
(v)
(A) For "boxed beef," see IBP, Inc
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBP,_Inc.
(B) beef
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef
(section 5 Aging and tenderization: Boxed beef, stored and distributed in vacuum packaging, is, in effect, wet aged during distribution)

(c) "The ultimate standardization was confinement—raising large numbers of animals outdoors left them vulnerable to predators, fighting and other uncontrolled variables. Moving them inside into automated feeding stalls was the obvious answer. Within about a decade, starting in the late 1950s, virtually the entire industry adopted the practice."

I do not know how this notion squares with feedlots.

(d) "Although Ms Ogle generally cheers the consolidation impulse, her graphic description of catastrophic flooding of hog lagoons—lake-size excrement catchments—suggests that we may be reaching the limits of consolidation. The locavore movement is clearly not the answer. Green markets brighten big cities, but they are mostly an upper-quartile phenomenon."
(i) drainage basin
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drainage_basin
(or watershed (North American English usages); or catchment, catchment area)
(ii) greenmarket (n): "See farmer's market"
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.
www.thefreedictionary.com/greenmarket