Cattle Industry Leader Fears "Chickenization" of Industry

The US cattle industry continues to see a decline in the overall number of feedlots year over year. According to R-CALF, United Stock Growers of America, CEO Bill Bullard. He says from 2020 to 2022, the cattle industry has lost 2000 feedlots in the US.

“As an independent feedlots dropped like flies. The segment of our industry that continues to grow and it's growing very fast is the mega feedlot, the feedlot with a capacity of over 50,000 head.”

Bullard says the decrease in number of independent feedlots further concentrates the beef industry, which he claims is what the people in charge of influencing the direction of the cattle industry want.

“They want this industry to look a lot more like the hog industry in the poultry industry. And of course, what that means is you don't need the number of cattle producers that we have today. If you're allowing our industry to move in the same direction as the poultry hog industry, which are vertically integrated. They require fewer producers. They require much larger producers, and they require far less competition than is necessary, you know, to continue engaging in the free enterprise capitalist type system that we have today.”

Bullard says that the meat packers and organizations that represent the beef industry are failing to encourage Congress to make changes to the 2023 farm bill to restore competition to the marketplace. He fears the chickenization of the cattle industry if changes are not made