The Meat Racket
The Secret Takeover of America's Food Business
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Narrated by:
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John Pruden
About this listen
How much do you know about the meat on your dinner plate? Journalist Christopher Leonard spent more than a decade covering the country's biggest meat companies, including four years as the national agribusiness reporter for the Associated Press. Now he delivers the first comprehensive look inside the industrial meat system, exposing how a handful of companies executed an audacious corporate takeover of the nation's meat supply.
Leonard's revealing account shines a light on the inner workings of Tyson Foods, a pioneer of the industrial system that dominates the market. You'll learn how the food industry got to where it is today and how companies like Tyson have escaped the scrutiny they deserve. You'll discover how these companies are able to raise meat prices for consumers while pushing down the price they pay to farmers. And you'll even see how big business and politics have derailed efforts to change the system, from a years-long legal fight in Iowa to the Obama administration's recent failed attempt to pass reforms.
Important, timely, and explosive, The Meat Racket is an unvarnished portrait of the food industry that now dominates America's heartland.
©2014 Christopher Leonard (P)2014 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Glass House
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Story
The Anchor Hocking Glass Company, once the world's largest maker of glass tableware, was the base on which Lancaster's society was built. As Glass House unfolds, bankruptcy looms. With access to the company and its leaders, and Lancaster's citizens, Alexander shows how financial engineering took hold in the 1980s, accelerated in the 21st century, and wrecked the company.
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Enough
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For more than 30 years, humankind has known how to grow enough food to end chronic hunger worldwide. Yet while the Green Revolution succeeded in South America and Asia, it never got to Africa. More than 9 million people every year die of hunger, malnutrition, and related diseases every yearmost of them in Africa and most of them children. More die of hunger in Africa than from AIDS and malaria combined. Now, an impending global food crisis threatens to make things worse.
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It's Time For Us To Be More Compassionate
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A Man and His Mountain
- The Everyman Who Created Kendall-Jackson and Became America's Greatest Wine Entrepreneur
- By: Edward Humes
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist tells the story of the self-made billionaire who built the Kendall-Jackson empire from nothing into the biggest-selling brand of premium wines in the U.S. Jess Stonestreet Jackson was one of a small band of pioneering entrepreneurs who put California's wine country on the map. His life story is a compelling slice of history, daring, innovation, feuds, intrigue, talent, mystique, contrarianism, and luck, offering a unique window on the elegant, adventurous, and cut-throat worlds of Jackson's two passions: wine and horseracing.
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Required listening for any wine maker
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By: Edward Humes
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Hershey
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In this compelling biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael D'Antonio gives us the real-life rags-to-riches story of Milton S. Hershey, a largely uneducated businessman whose idealistic sense of purpose created an immense financial empire, a town, and a legacy that lasts to this day.
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The Benchmark for Chartiable, Rich Men
- By Boyd Tschaggeny on 01-30-19
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The King of California
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J. G. Boswell was the biggest farmer in America. He built a secret empire while thumbing his nose at nature, politicians, labor unions, and every journalist who ever tried to lift the veil on the ultimate "factory in the fields". The King of California is the previously untold account of how a Georgia slave-owning family migrated to California in the early 1920s, drained one of America 's biggest lakes in an act of incredible hubris and carved out the richest cotton empire in the world.
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Interesting story of California Ag history
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The Tycoons
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The modern American economy was the creation of four men: Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan. They were the giants of the Gilded Age, a moment of riotous growth that established America as the richest, most inventive, and most productive country on the planet. Acclaimed author Charles R. Morris vividly brings these men and their times to life. The Tycoons tells the incredible story of how these four determined men wrenched the economy into the modern age, inventing a nation of full economic participation that could not have been imagined earlier.
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Good book wrong title
- By Hectoris on 10-06-16
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Crash Course
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Overall
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In Crash Course, Ingrassia answers the big questions: Was Detroit's self-destruction inevitable? What were the key turning points? Why did Japanese automakers manage American workers better than the American companies themselves? Ingrassia also describes dysfunctional corporate cultures (even as GM's market share plunged, the company continued business as usual) and Detroit's perverse system of "inverse layoffs" (which allowed union members to invoke seniority to avoid work).
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Contemporary History at Its Best
- By Roy on 04-19-10
By: Paul Ingrassia
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Cheap
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- By: Ellen Ruppel Shell
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From the shuttered factories of the rust belt to the look-alike strip malls of the sun belt---and almost everywhere in between---America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little examined obsession is arguably the most powerful and devastating market force of our time---the engine of globalization, outsourcing, planned obsolescence, and economic instability in an increasingly unsettled world.
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You Get What You Pay For?
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The Asylum
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Overall
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Performance
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They were a band of outsiders unable to get jobs with New York's gilded financial establishment. They would go on to corner the world's multitrillion-dollar oil market, reaping unimaginable riches while bringing the economy to its knees. Meet the self-anointed kings of the New York Mercantile Exchange. In some ways, they are everything you would expect them to be: a secretive, members-only club of men and women who live lavish lifestyles; cavort with politicians, strippers, and celebrities; and blissfully jacked up oil prices to nearly $150 a barrel while profiting off the misery of the working class.
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A far better book than its come-on implies
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The Idealist
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Jeffrey Sachs - celebrated economist, special advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, and author of the influential best seller The End of Poverty - disagrees. In his view, poverty is a problem that can be solved. With single-minded determination he has attempted to put into practice his theories about ending extreme poverty, to prove that the world's most destitute people can be lifted onto "the ladder of development."
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Sachs tries hard but the system is not there
- By Amazon Customer on 11-13-15
By: Nina Munk
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If you asked most people what forces led to today’s unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Reserve. For most of its history, the Fed has enjoyed the fawning adoration of the press. When the economy grew, it was credited to the Fed. When the economy imploded in 2008, the Fed got credit for rescuing us.
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Pointless book
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The Tycoons
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In The Ancestor's Tale, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins offers a masterwork: an exhilarating reverse tour through evolution, from present-day humans back to the microbial beginnings of life four billion years ago. Throughout the journey, Dawkins spins entertaining, insightful stories and sheds light on topics such as speciation, sexual selection, and extinction. The Ancestor's Tale is at once an essential education in evolutionary theory and riveting in its telling.
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Please do an unabridged version!
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What listeners say about The Meat Racket
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Mark
- 06-24-21
Great Book
I learned quite a bit from this book. The author explains the essential story of how the small livestock farmer has been driven out of business by giant corporations. From individual anecdotes to big picture trends, the author lays out the case in clear terms. Well narrated. A worthy listen.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Alex Martinez
- 02-09-19
OMG: I had no clue -- insightful and unsettling!
I liked this book very much because the information was well presented, well performed and interesting. This book left me with the impression that John Tyson was to agri-business what Bill Gates was to IT. Moreover, the story of the Tyson dynasty is an example of what can be achieved in a great capitalist society as well as the tragedy that can result from unbridled ambition; the history of Tyson illustrates the best and the worst potential in all human endeavor.
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- Anonymous 8888
- 02-04-15
Hits the nail on the head.
if you needed to know more about the American meat industry, this is where you start.
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6 people found this helpful
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- ASC18
- 03-27-23
Terrifying but excellent
The book is excellent—well researched and written. Absolutely terrifying though. I haven’t eaten meat in 19 years and here’s yet another reason why that was a good choice.
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- A. Howell
- 04-16-16
Mixed verdict on Tyson
Mr. Leonard has written an important book about the industrialized meat industry, combining it with a corporate history of Tyson as well as some social commentary on the impact of Tysons methods in rural America.
This book does not have a definitive feel to it. The other meat companies are only considered in passing, and Leonard does not go particular far in his research on the many ways that changes in the industry have changed our social fabric. But he makes a great start and puts it in a crisp readable format. Definitely worth a read.
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- Eagle4Life69
- 12-30-18
Amazing Story
I was shocked by what I heard and the writing is very compelling. I had no idea this is how it is done and shows how much our government and way of buying is not controlled by us the consumer it is controlled by the mega corporations.
If you want your eyes opened read this book.
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- Demetrius Walker
- 06-24-19
The Book Big Ag doesn't want you to hear
Incredible insight into the history of factory farming/big agriculture and the policies that keep Americans trapped by its unchecked power.
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-30-22
Great Book Overall
it's very insightful to learn more about how we get inexpensive food on our table. While it could be argued this cheap food makes the country great, its at the expense of the ruin of many.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-21-19
A MUST READ
This book is a must read for anyone and everyone who has ever, or who will ever, eat meat, especially in America. No need to go on any further - the book speaks for itself.
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- Josh Holt
- 03-21-18
Very insightful read.
Excellent listen on a story of just how well the free market works for one company that learned and mastered the art of playing the hand they were dealt. Terrible stories regarding the farmers who went bankrupt as a result of Tyson’s business practices, but that can all go back to the adage of: if you lay down with a snake, you’re likely to get bit. 10/10 will recommend to others.
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