Bill Kurtis takes audience on a journey through industry history

The keynote speaker at the Meat Industry Hall of Fame Inaugural Induction Ceremony in Chicago on Oct. 27, when 21 leaders of the industry were honored, was broadcaster and television journalist Bill Kurtis. In a dynamic 30-minute speech, he summarized more than a century of industry history. Kurtis suggested that we pause to appreciate what the giants of the meat industry have achieved, noting that the location—Chicago’s Union League Club, was organized to elect Ulysses S. Grant as president.

He talked about the unique tasks that faced fellow Illinoisian Abe Lincoln upon taking office in 1861, when he learned that half the country did not merely dislike him, but were going to form their own country. Using Grant as a yardstick, he noted three things we can learn about success—Timing, Preparation, and Vision, followed by execution. These are qualities he said every one of the Members of the Meat Industry Hall of Fame has displayed!

Kurtis traced the history of beef in America to what he called “the real start” immediately after the Civil War, and it was always connected to Chicago. Here is a transcript of his remarks:

Southern soldiers who had lost their savings during the war became entrepreneurs in cattle—wild longhorn cattle that had been turned out of the Spanish missions into the Texas mesquite. By rounding them up for a dollar and driving them 600 miles north to Kansas, they could fatten them on the lush grasses of the Flint Hills and make 10 dollars. Then they’d put their cattle on the railroad for the ride to Chicago, and it made Chicago the largest stockyard in the world.

The cattle drive was a business risk that any cowboy was fool enough to take, although if you were 25, you were almost too old to make the trip.

The big cattle drives lasted a little over 10 years which means America’s favorite story—the one we’ve chosen to pin our identity to—the cowboy—tempered by weather, hostile forces, and wide open lands, is a small part of American history. But it sure made a big impression.

 

The entrepreneurial spirit

My favorite story is of Joseph McCoy of Abilene, Kansas. He was a livestock trader here in Chicago, where he saw the new technology of the day developing—the railroad. But how could he make money with it? Like any good entrepreneur, he applied that technology to an old business, the beef business. He knew the railroad was heading west and southwest out of Chicago and the cattle drives were heading up the trail from Texas. McCoy figured they would meet around Abilene, Kansas. So he spent $5,000, a fortune in those days, on advertising and riders to carry posters to the drovers.

He promised that he would pay more per head in Abilene. All he had to do was persuade the trail bosses to turn their herds.

Just like John Wayne in Red River, a lot of the big herds—2,000 strong—did just that. He was so true to his word it became the “real” McCoy.

Between 1867 and 1881, McCoy shipped more than two million cattle from Abilene to Chicago, and that was just part of the birth of big beef.

My second favorite story is that of Gustavus Swift, who came to Chicago in 1875. At first, he was a cattle buyer and then, to avoid freight costs (sound familiar?), he conceived the idea of slaughtering the cattle in Chicago and shipping the dressed beef to Eastern cities. Some said that was a crazy idea—it would spoil before it got there. His partner sold his share of the business.

But Swift took the risk, perhaps having in his back pocket knowledge of a new technology that hadn’t yet been applied: the refrigerated rail car. Swift applied the technology, and it soon became the accepted method of transporting beef.

Swift’s revenues jumped from $20 million a year to $200 million. Gustavus didn’t care much for money—he liked to work. He died in 1903 at the age of 63.

Stockyards and meatpacking were generating fortunes. If you travel 43 blocks south on Halsted St., you’ll come to the old stockyards—they built Chicago. Now they are long gone. But you can still see the famous names of Swift and Armour around the shell of what once was ground zero for the beef business in America. It’s still the home of Allen Brothers.

I said ground zero, because three years after Swift died, the meat packing industry was hit by its most serious challenge—an investigative reporter named Upton Sinclair followed the conditions of the workers inside the Chicago slaughterhouses. The workers were mostly Eastern Europeans, Lithuanians, Poles, Croatians; many of the families still live in Chicago. They often lived 12 to a single room, and it didn’t take a lot for Sinclair to galvanize the nation against the beef industry. Sinclair was a socialist and wanted to expose the working conditions of what he called: “Wage slavery.”  Instead, the public focused on food safety, shocked at stories of workers falling into rendering vats and being ground up into hamburger. Foreign sales of American meat fell by half.  It caused Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act which later became, in 1930, the Food and Drug Administration.

The stockyards survived, and remained much the same for the next 40 years, and meat continued to build America.

 

A new era begins

After World War II, we entered a new era, one in which we thought we could do anything. We’d won a world war, we’d ended a Great Depression, and our productivity was soaring. New technology, new ideas were being applied to every industry.

Three forces would change the beef industry—and they all had to do with corn.

First, we wound up with more corn than anywhere in the world—the result of hybrid species created at outstanding agricultural colleges that could withstand climate and pests.

Second, President Roosevelt’s Depression-era subsidies to corn farmers were proving to be very effective.

And third, liquid nitrogen fertilizer increased our yields from 20 bushels an acre to 200 bushels.

Mountains of corn were piled outside the elevators already full. We needed a new market for the corn.

There had been some history of feeding corn to cattle but never on this scale, and it proved a marriage made in heaven. The subsidies meant corn would stay cheap; the cattle grew fat quickly and tasted good.

By the 1950s, giant feedlots could feed thousands of cattle at a time. But now we needed a new market for all the beef. By 1958, Ray Kroc bought an idea from the McDonalds Brothers in Bakersfield, California, and was applying a “new technology” of clean crews, fast service, good value and tasty food to the changing American culture. It was moving to the suburbs, commuting to and from work, going to movies in cars and now eating in cars.

America’s cattle herd increased from roughly 36 million head to nearly 100 million. Today, McDonalds alone buys 1 billion pounds of beef a year. Beef became America’s No. 1 source of protein, its No. 1 meat.

For fifty years, it was a good run, but not without bumps along the way. Red meat took a hit for its saturated fat, and cardiologists took it off the diet of heart patients. Funny how history seems to cycle around and appear to repeat itself.

Of late, another investigative reporter, Michael Pollan, has captured the imagination of the public by tracing the life of a calf through a feedlot. He, along with special interest groups, have targeted the use of growth hormones as causing early puberty in young girls; they’ve criticized the use of so many antibiotics for livestock as causing resistant strains of bacteria, including E. coli O157, they’ve highlighted the problems of concentrated waste, contaminating ground water and have identified methane from cattle as the worst greenhouse gas. And YouTube video of downer cattle being lifted by a forklift has put the beef industry on the defensive. I call that our Abu Ghraib.

The issue once again is, like The Jungle, food safety. I think this time, the issue is more complicated. And it won’t be solved by safety legislation  For one thing, beef, poultry and pork are just part of a larger criticism of the Western diet. We are killing ourselves with food. Obesity is the No. 2 cause of self-inflicted death. Our Western diet is filled with over-processed, over-salted, over-sugared food.

It’s given rise to a movement in this country that no one in food can ignore. There are growing numbers of people who want healthier food. Words like “natural” and “organic” have given rise to Whole Foods. They are the fastest growing sections of supermarkets. Our big food manufacturers have created natural lines.

These customers want nutrition as well as safety. And they still want taste.

I represent one of those alternatives beyond natural and organic—grass-fed beef. And perhaps I was asked to deliver your keynote tonight because of a curiosity about it. To date, no one has been able to achieve the taste or the supply levels to be taken seriously. I’m proud to say that I think we’ve done both.

We won’t ever challenge the big numbers of corn-fed, marbled beef. But we can be an alternative, a useful alternative that can expand the beef market, not hurt it. We can provide another choice. Just as regular coffee didn’t go out of existence when decaf came in, grass-fed beef can serve those looking for an heirloom taste. It also can address many consumer concerns now being leveled.

Humane treatment? We follow NCBA and Dr. Temple Grandin guidelines and have no feedlots to criticize.

Antibiotics? We don’t use any sub-therapeutics.

Growth hormones? We use no synthetic, unnatural hormones.

Concentrated waste? Our waste is applied directly back to the pasture by the cattle themselves to fertilize next year’s crop of grass.

Methane? E. coli? Grass-fed cattle are inherently lower in acid resistant E. coli, although no cattle are E. coli-free. They don’t have the starch build-up. (We all know what that feels like).

Saturated fat? That clogs arteries? Most of grass-fed fat is poly-unsaturated fat. Doctors, including cardiologists, and oncologists, now recommend it. It’s lower in calories, total fat, cholesterol and high in B vitamins and Vitamin E, omega-3 fatty acids, CLAs and more. And they are not fed corn or grain.

Even if we find fault with those findings, those attributes shouldn’t be ignored from a marketing stand-point, because they come from the articles written by the critics.

Michael Pollan has opened an industry vein that’s hemorrhaging, but he’s also given us an answer that the PETAs of the world can’t contest—grass-fed and finished livestock.

We’re just following history, and applying the latest technology. McCoy had his railroad, Swift had his refrigerated rail car. We have DNA to guarantee the quality and traceability of our food, in my case, it’s grass-fed beef. For the beef, poultry and pork industries, it’s continued research to test for E. coli, and provide the food safety our public deserves.

Many of the inductees on the list before us fall into an age category even beyond me, but they have left a legacy of accomplishment that brings the rest of us to our knees.

With giants like these, I have no doubt that these industries will thrive and continue to feed America better than any place in the world.

Congratulations.

—Courtesy of Rosemary Mucklow, Meat Industry Hall of Fame Trustee and National Meat Association Director Emeritus