– If the groundswell is so massive, shouldn’t the heritage market already be established?

– You also over-estimate the impact heritage production can have on the protein market. Your static-market model anticipates no rational response by the meat industry to changing domestic eating habits. It is not as if the integrators would simply collapse if a few hundred thousand more of us ate heritage. They would just find some other way to move the merchandise. Domestic beef consumption has declined annually, but the domestic cattle industry still increased production and profits through increased exports. [See USDA Economic Research Service, U.S. Beef and Cattle Industry: Background Statistics and Information]. Americans have always had a bias for white meat poultry, and Tyson has for years shipped titanic amounts of dark-meat chicken to other markets that have a preference for it. Integrators have a documented record of accommodating domestic tastes or changing eating habits. If they perceive heritage breeders as a threat at all, they may more easily just mount a market-oriented correction rather than burn political capital on a targeted ban of a few hundred heritage pigs.

I think you misunderstand the way the markets work. The massive groundswell interest in human, organic, local food is exactly on their radar. The CAFO’s know they have no hope of competing for that market. So the only hope they have of maintaining market dominance is to prevent the heritage producers from establishing.

Also, due to commodity economics it doesn’t matter if the number of heritage hog producers is small. All it takes is a small fall in consumer demand or a small fall in the supply of hogs (through more folks like Mark Baker deciding against CAFO production) to tank profits. If the supply of hogs become constrained it will exponentially bid up the price of hogs (to the extent there is any free market left).

I am really looking forward to this CLE. I believe the date is 5/10 and not 5/12.

Best,

Jean