The Building of America's Beef Industry

While the United States celebrates 250 years, the beef industry has been a staple of the land for 505 years.

We can be proud of the rich history of our industry and its influence in building America into a thriving nation whose impact is felt around the world. Starting in the early 1500s, Spanish explorers brought cattle on their expeditions primarily for hides and tallow production.  Next came the first European settlers in the 1600s who brought cattle to North America as a source of food. Cattle were typically harvested on an as-needed basis and sold by local colonial butchers in their communities. In 1662, the first known meat packing business began to trade packed pork for molasses in the West Indies.  Fast forward to post-Revolutionary War times, settlers migrated west with their livestock in tow. Fueled by the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, the demand for meat increased with the populations of eastern cities. The Ohio River Valley eventually became the center of livestock production, and in 1818, Cincinnati opened the first meat packing facility west of the Appalachian Mountains. Since pork could be salted, cured, and sent over long distances, it became a top commodity.

On the contrary, beef was difficult to preserve, and river transportation was too slow for shipping fresh product, so beef processing remained local.   With the advent of the railroad, suddenly an efficient, dependable, and cost-effective method of shipping cattle opened up new possibilities. By the late-1800s, cattle producers north of Ohio and east of the Mississippi River were able to ship their livestock by rail to the Eastern packing houses. With this new method of transportation creating new markets, net prices for cattlemen increased. Coupled by the vast open prairies in the west that were ideal for large herd grazing, cattle numbers grew 61% between 1850-1860. Near the end of the Civil War, around 1865, the westward expansion of livestock production and more extensive railways pushed Chicago past Cincinnati as the leader of the packing industry. When the Union Stockyard opened that same year, it connected the railways from the east and west. The new connection marked the beginning of cattle drives from Texas to the Flint Hills of Kansas to be shipped by rail to Chicago for harvest.  By reducing transportation concerns, it quickly became more economical to harvest animals closer to the starting point. Soon the largest Chicago packing companies expanded into the Great Plains through branch plants in Kansas City, Omaha, Sioux City, Wichita, Denver, and Fort Worth to name a few. Instead of breeding cattle to withstand long drives across the prairie, cattlemen started selecting for meat quality.

The change in product was so great that the United States began exporting beef to previous world-leader in quality, England.  Fresh beef was still a challenge to ship until artificial refrigeration was invented in the 1850s. The first refrigerated rail car was designed by George Hammond who sent the first shipment The South Dakota Cattleman 19of dressed beef from his packing plant in Chicago to Boston in 1869. Those shipments were expanded even further after Gustavus Swift, a cattle buyer from Massachusetts, moved to Chicago and improved the refrigerated rail car design in 1874. Just fourteen years later, two-thirds of the nation’s dressed beef supply was accounted for by four men; Gustavus Swift, George Hammond, Philip Armour, and Nelson Morris.  In the early 1900s, meat packers reached one billion dollars in annual sales which surpassed the annual budget of the U.S. and made them the nation’s largest industry.

Feedlot systems became more popular as urbanization increased, and land availability decreased. With this growth came new opportunities to meet increased consumer demand and process a greater number of livestock from the stockyards.  Conveyor systems were developed in processing facilities to maximize productivity and efficiency.  Challenges arose during the growth period especially around sanitation and safety protocols. The infamous Upton Sinclair book, ‘The Jungle,’ put a new spin on production practices and led to a sharp decline in meat sales. The federal government addressed consumer concerns by passing the Federal Meat Inspection Act in 1906, mandating federal government inspection of meat processing facilities that conducted business across states. Meat processors opposed the initial act, but they supported revisions that resulted in the Wholesome Meat Act of 1967, which required states to have inspection programs “equal to” that of the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the United State Department of Agriculture.  

In 1978, an amendment to the Federal Meat Inspection Act requires that “meat inspected and approved under such Act be produced only from livestock slaughtered in accordance with humane methods and other purposes.” Since this Humane Slaughter Act was put in place, processing facilities are required by law to ensure proper and humane death for all food animals.  Today, many processing facilities are still located near the source of cattle in the ‘beef belt’ states. While a common misperception is that meat processing is becoming more centralized, it’s shifted to primarily rural areas closer to the high concentrations of cattle and feedyards.

Currently, 80% of beef production is accounted for by four major meat processors, as opposed to the 90% of beef controlled by the ‘Big Five’ in the early 1900s.  For 250 years, agriculture has remained the backbone of America. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, on average, one U.S. farm feeds 169 people in our country and abroad in one year. Over 1.9 million farms call the United States home and 95% of those farms are operated by families. As the leading industry in South Dakota, agriculture continues to be a key component of the state economy, driver of local communities, and generations of cattlemen and women. Lots of things have changed since 1776, but the family legacies, love for the land, and mission of feeding the world have remained the same for the cattle industry and will continue to drive us into the next 250 years.