A Fascinating Look at How the Technology, Capital, and Culture of Beef Changed the US
5 stars
This book presents a powerful case for the US beef industry as a microcosm of changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution in the US. Starting with the dispossession of Native Americans and their role in the bison industry, Specht charts how the spread of the railroads allowed for radical shifts in beef consumption. Paired with refrigeration technology and global capital flows, he shows how this accelerated the delivery of beef to ever wider numbers of people and how it facilitated a concentration of wealth and power in chokepoints of this industry - the nascent commodity traders and meat packers.
This book also covers how the period of the "cowboy" and the myth of widespread beef eating began, with essentially no basis in reality given that large scale cattle farming didn't exist before the railroads. The familiar beat of US consumers protesting high beef prices but not working conditions in the …
This book presents a powerful case for the US beef industry as a microcosm of changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution in the US. Starting with the dispossession of Native Americans and their role in the bison industry, Specht charts how the spread of the railroads allowed for radical shifts in beef consumption. Paired with refrigeration technology and global capital flows, he shows how this accelerated the delivery of beef to ever wider numbers of people and how it facilitated a concentration of wealth and power in chokepoints of this industry - the nascent commodity traders and meat packers.
This book also covers how the period of the "cowboy" and the myth of widespread beef eating began, with essentially no basis in reality given that large scale cattle farming didn't exist before the railroads. The familiar beat of US consumers protesting high beef prices but not working conditions in the industry, the desire to return to a "natural" diet, and the increasingly gendered notions of meat consumption demonstrate how timeless these trends are and how little progress has been made in the 100+ years since the manifestation of the large-scale been industry. Highly recommend.