 Hey guys, I know it's a little toasty in here, so we're gonna try and make this panel lively keep you guys awake I know you can do it Just gonna do very very brief introductions and then hand it off to our exciting expert panelists Right here Contestant number one is Chris Leonard. He is a fellow here at the New America Foundation And the author of The Meat Racket, which is a new book that you can buy out in the lobby Which I think you would like me to say to you Or maybe just pick up for free. I'm not sure. No, no, you have to buy it, but it is it's a bargain It's right pay the dollars to Chris Leonard He was previously the national business reporter with the Associated Press He also worked for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, which is Tyson turf. I understand So he's kind of been in and around this issue for a long time and he's gonna share some of his insights from his Book and actually why don't you go ahead and then I'll do introductions as we hit each of the next panel Great. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much for being here I Would like with my time to talk about the tournament system, which is a payment system used for poultry farmers This is the payment system that's used for over 90% of the chicken We eat in the United States and I think it's really emblematic of what happens when you have heavy consolidation in an industry and An open market begins to be replaced by a few companies that have tremendous market power and The tournament to me is the logical end point of this sort of consolidation So it's a very important thing to examine and I'd like to give you a quick overview of how it works and what it is Reporting the meat racket I traveled around a lot to small towns in rural America And I remember passing through this town of West Bend, Iowa Where on the corner of Main Street? They had one of those signs that usually shows the time and temperature But in this town it showed the market price of corn and soybeans per bushel because you know corn is the way of life in Iowa So when you see that price of corn and soybeans which changes by the minute It's a price that's determined on an open market by the push and pull of literally millions of buyers and sellers It's akin to the share of a stock on the stock market It's a transparent price everybody can see in the process of arriving at that price It's called price discovery all these people with their information competing back and forth to determine the price of a thing It's a critical lifeblood of a true capitalist market So how does the price get determined on the wholesale level on the farm level for all the chicken we eat? It's determined through this thing called the tournament and here's how it works as a business reporter I thought chicken farmers would be paid the same way corn and soybean farmers are But they're certainly not what these poultry integrators will do an integrator by the way is shorthand for these big companies like Tyson Foods They will take all the farmers in a local area who delivered chickens to a slaughterhouse in a given week Now as background these chicken farmers never own the actual chickens because of the way this industry is built The company always owns the birds It'll provide the baby chicks and the feed to a farmer who cares for the animals for about six weeks And then delivers them to the slaughterhouse so after the birds are delivered the company Takes you know could be as many as 100 farmers in an area and then it ranks them against one another and the key The key criteria used for this ranking is is how fat the farmer made the birds based on the given amount of feed That the company provides it's called the feed efficiency ratio And then the company will rank these farmers against each other Those in the top half will get a bonus payment extra money Those in the bottom half will get a deduction. They'll get financially punished for being inefficient And this is how the tournament plays now as a business reporter something like this sort of inherently is appealing to me It seems to encourage efficiency hard work even innovation, but when you really dig into How the industry is structured and how it really works a very different picture appears First of all the key criteria for the success in the tournament as any chicken farmer will tell you are the quality of the chicks They're delivered to the farm and the quality of the feed That's your game right there You can do work seven days a week, but that's really what's going to determine how well you do of course those factors are completely out of the control of the farmer and in this way the Tournament can often end up being more like a lottery than a bonus system or or an incentive system Because these things are out of the farmers control and they hope that the company delivers healthy birds to them Another critical element of this system is that it's a zero-sum game the winnings of the top are Inherently taken from the bottom so in this way the system divides farmers against one another it makes them fight each other financially for their paycheck and another critical element of this is the intense Dissimetry of information of the players in the game and what I mean to say by that is the company controls who competes in the tournament the company knows more about these farming operations than the actual farmer themselves and The farmer doesn't even know whom they competed against when they get their settlement sheet They see their name and their ranking and the rest is kept Confidential so the farmer can't compare notes with their neighbor to find out how that neighbor did better in the tournament It is a completely opaque game and the farmer has no recourse the tournament settlement sheets are confidential So if a farmer shares them with an attorney or a neighbor they can be sued for sharing the company's own proprietary information in Essence I found reporting on this that the tournament system is a Machiavellian system that Does many things it divides and conquers rural communities ensures farmers don't communicate with each other and it ensures that they compete against each Other for their paycheck, but at the same time it helps shift Volatility to the farm level the company can predict its overall payments for the tournament pool But the farmer can't and there's also because the system is so opaque. It is rife for abuse If a company has a batch of sick birds, which will inevitably happen on an industrial scale system The the person who receives those birds will be at a disadvantage There is massive documentary evidence including Tyson Foods employees own sworn testimony in court that shows Managers can deliver sick birds to a farmer who might be raising problems raising questions trying to organize and in that way punish them financially and I would like to conclude by pointing out what was most fascinating to me Which is that the tournament is not the inevitable way of doing business I visited hog farmers in Iowa who had more competition and more choice with whom they'd like to do business They were put into a tournament system by Smithfield Foods But thanks to some special legal technicalities in Iowa These farmers had the ability to work with each other and bargain with the company and they opted out of this tournament system So they'd have more predictability The result was a system where these farmers were given financial incentives Bonuses to do well without the financial punishments that put many poultry farmers out of business so that's the overview of this system and and In conclusion, I'd like to say I think it is the result of power rather than simple market Market efficiencies that create the tournament as the difference between hog farmers in Iowa and chicken farmers in Arkansas illustrates, so thank you Next up we have Mike Weaver. He is a West Virginia chicken farmer and before getting into the poultry gig full-time He he worked in West Virginia wildlife law enforcement and also the US Fish and Wildlife Services He is the president and co-founder of the contract poultry growers association of the Virginias That's right. Thank you Appreciate the opportunity to be here and I think new America Foundation for going to this trouble I think this is a tremendous thing that has a lot of potential to help us all Especially farmers, I hope I'd like to Involve everybody in this room here in a situation if you don't mind Let's say I'm a poultry integrator and You're a farmer you're currently a farmer or you own a little piece of land where you could build some chicken houses So I come to you and I say I'd like you to Build a facility which today a standard-sized fill facility. They're asking people to build is right out of a million dollars So I want you to borrow a million dollars against your home and your property and invested in this opera this operation to raise my chickens for me and In exchange for that I'm going to determine when you get those chickens. How many you get What kind of feed you get? How good the the chicks are that you raise and like Chris mentioned earlier 90 even the industry figures show that 97% of making a good chicken is the chicks in the feed But you're gonna you're not gonna have any control over that and Then once you do all this for me and you raise these chickens I'm gonna make you compete against everybody else who sells their chickens for the same week you do No one no one that did half the people are gonna have money taken away from The other half get paid extra. Yes But they have that money that they receive is coming from somebody who gets it taken away from Now who in here would would volunteer to put money a million dollars into that kind of an operation Well, yes, I understand you would and a lot of people do And I'm not saying that that Overall Integrated poultry is a bad thing. It could be a good thing if the profits were shared with the farmers the way they should be In addition to this fortune you to compete against these other farmers I'm not going to give you a pay raise for at least ten years Which I haven't had it's been over ten years since I've had a pay raise now I'll think about that how much the inflation has increased to everything My cost for parts replacements repairs in my my chicken operation Most of them have gone up at least 300% during that time Without a pay increase for me The price I paid for propane to heat my houses Has increased at least 200% This winter is it went up over 500% in some areas But I have to give pilgrims who I grow for Credit they did give us a supplement for our fuel costs increase But it wasn't it didn't cover the increase that we had in cost, but they did give us a little bit of supplement And we've gone to them and taken our expenses to them and said, you know, here's our insurance. Here's our taxes. Here's our mortgage This is kind of money that we're laying out and we need an increase in pay and their response has basically been well Sorry, we have increases in cost too And that's it and this year is it is a wonderful example because they're making more money now than they ever have Tyson's over 700 million dollars in profit. That's after they pay all the expenses and everything 700 million dollars Pilgrims same thing. I believe it was the number was 578 million dollars profit they made this past year, but I haven't seen a dime of it They haven't come to us and said we're gonna give growers an increase And I understand gentlemen back here that said earlier He's he's glad to be a growing he does a good job And I also see that he's sitting next to a Tom super who works for a national chicken council and The companies aren't Stupid, you know, they they have growers that they cultivate and Growers that they see that they get the best chickens and the best feed And I would do the same thing if I was that And I'm not saying that gentleman is in that position He may be the very best grower does the hardest work of anybody involved in his complex that he grows for And if he is that's wonderful, but I've been in that position too The real travesty of the tournament system is we have no control over the inputs If I could say, you know, if I could go to them say Well, you brought me chicks from an old breeder flock which are known to be inferior chicks or chicks from a real young breeder flock Which are also inferior chicks. You brought me those this flock So I would like for you to compensate me for that and they did it that would be fair, but they don't do it that way If I get inferior chicks and don't make a good chicken out of it They take money away from me and they give it to somebody who they would like to give it to Or in some cases somebody who earns it That does happen There's a lot of other issues about it, too, I'd like to discuss but since we're talking about the term system I guess I'll have to pass it on to somebody else Thank you very much. Next up. We have Albert for he is the president and founder of the American anti-trust Institute after a varied career that includes 12 years running his family's jewelry business and A stint at the Chicago school, so he is going to offer us some insights about how antitrust bears on this debate Thank you In five minutes. There's not a whole lot that I can Tell you about antitrust, but I think you've already gotten an idea through prior speakers of the prevalence of concentration In our industries, and it's not just food industries. It's all across the board Any place where large capital investments are needed? We've got high levels of concentration and these levels have been growing and they've been allowed to grow by the antitrust agencies So we can expect more concentration unless something changes very dramatically Why what's what is it about antitrust that's gone wrong because antitrust was created as a tool not just for consumers and Not just for businesses, but for citizens in order to Have an economy that is consonant with our democracy and that requires diversity and Decentralization of power to a very large extent. We're losing that Let me make a couple of comments one is We've been hearing just in the area of chickens how concentrated power at one level is able to Manipulate competition at another level for ends that are not consistent with with what We value and think is important about competition I think there are a number of reasons here that they can throw out quickly To explain how we get here one is the concept of efficiency The underlying idea for letting mergers go through allowing concentration to increase is that it's very efficient We're going to question that in a couple of conferences in the middle of June 18th and 19th What is efficiency? What do we mean by it? What do we want from it? What concepts does it incorporate and very importantly what values does it exclude? We know for instance that economies of scale and economies of scope are very important to the economy You'd if you ignored those your economy would would disappear in so many ways that would not be Acceptable on the other hand there are diseconomies of too much scale there are diseconomies of too much scope and There are all sorts of other inefficiencies that go along with the search for greater and greater efficiency as as Barry has been a Primary exponent of the idea that you can eliminate redundancies to the point that you create very fragile Systems and that's particularly true in the food chain We don't take any of that into consideration so that's one problem is is Allowing efficiency and the search for efficiency to dominate everything Needs to be Rethought and we need to say to ourselves and to our countrymen How much efficiency is enough and at what point does it become? problematic Another problem in the antitrust field is a very narrow vision that looks at specific markets It tends to ignore the systemic nature of economics that different levels of the market whether it's manufacturing the middle to midstream levels of production and distribution The retail level they all interact That was called to my attention in the Washington Post two days ago in a discussion just reporting of a banana merger that's about to take place And the industry expert who was quoted said this quote Two big fruit companies have felt the downward pressure of the big retail buyers on their margins and Consolidation appears to them to be a strategy for survival Small farmers are under pressure from all sides and big mergers like this can only make them more nervous about the future of their livelihoods That's a pretty quick way of saying the things are systemically related Antitrust does a reasonably good job of stopping Exceptionally large horizontal mergers. It does a terrible job on vertical mergers and it ignores completely conglomerate mergers These are Limitations on what antitrust has been reshaped to to do and not do and it is a cause of the level of concentration That we have I've mentioned the wrong focus by being too narrowly focused on markets. I've mentioned Giving too much credit to efficiency and not thinking about the negatives that come with it I think I can't stop without mentioning money campaign finance freedom Gives too much political clout to the large economic interests We're stymied on what to do about it because the Supreme Court has bought off on the concept of corporate personhood and Carried it to an extreme that may get even more extreme if Corporations are said now in the next few months to have Religious freedom under the First Amendment as well as the speech freedom that allows them to buy By politicians and political outcomes. So corporate personhood is another issue that we need to focus on and and finally If we're gonna have real food sector reform and if antitrust is gonna be part of it We need co-olitions. I remember the song in Oklahoma, at least I think I remember it which says the farmers and the Ranchers need to be friends That's not so much the problem at the moment. I think the problem is that consumers and smaller producers Need to be friends and need to find additional friends to coalesce and Bring the political pressure that that might change things But my message is there's a larger interest that we have as citizens and That until as citizens we take back some control We're giving it all up to the highly concentrated industries that are going to be increasingly concentrated in the absence of some sort of of Essentially a citizen revolt Thank you. Thank you. And last up. We have Renee Bowser who is the assistant general counsel for the United Food commercial workers She's gonna give us some insight on what labor law has to say about all this Thank you. I've been asked to briefly talk about the National Labor Relations Act and the law's relationship to farmers and also The relationship between workers and farmers the NRA looks to the status of the worker and his or her relationship to the operation in question to determine whether the worker is an employee and under the NRA their protections only extend to workers who qualify as employees under the law and specifically the definition of employee in the law is To exclude any individual employed as an agricultural laborer or any individual having the status of an independent contractor and To understand what those terms mean By law Congress has directed the board to look to the definition of agriculture in the Fair Labor Standards Act or the FLSA and the FLSA has two definitions of farming There's a primary meaning of farming which includes And there's also a secondary meaning of farming and the primary meaning of farming is all the things that talk about tillage production of Producing raising animals and Then the secondary meaning of farming includes any practices that are performed either by a farmer or On a farm or incident to a farming operation. So independent growers who raise animals and and crops on their own farms are engaged in primary agriculture and thus are excluded From the coverage of the NRA also independent growers would also be excluded from the NRA because the NRA doesn't cover independent contractors so and a vertically integrated employer can have workers who are employees under the NRA but also Can have workers who are excluded from the NRA's protections because they work their employed in farming operations But I'd like to expand the discussion a little bit to say that the U of CW See similarities between the conditions of contract farmers and the conditions of employees who work for the big consolidated packers We believe that we both have somewhat of a common enemy With Walmart because Walmart because it's the largest retailer in the world and the largest grocery retailer With greater sales than I think the combined five closest competitors Has huge buying power over its suppliers and that includes the big packers and so and if food Producers such as even the ticens the cargills the JBS and pilgrims need to sell their products They need to sell their products to Walmart because I think Walmart Has more than a quarter of the grocery market And it may be even higher now Because that was based on Statistics from a couple years ago. So Walmart says sets direct Dramatically one-sided terms under which suppliers produce and sell goods to Walmart And they're digging further and further into the supply chain. They shift the cost to the suppliers So as to make of course more profits for Walmart and in turn the suppliers crowd exert downward pressure On farmers and on workers. We have a situation now where we have a big packer Who is trying to shift the The the cost of health care way on the workers without even Upward swing in in pay So they're there could the big packers are continually trying to push down and the farmers get it But also the workers in those packing houses whether beef pork lamb or poultry who are doing Backbreaking and the most hazardous work in the nation. So we Need to change that dynamic For the benefit of workers and farmers We in the labor movement we want allies and there should be issues upon which we can try to work together UFC w My union is concerned about and working on reforming the federal procurement system And that's the system where you have federal contractors some of the biggest are tyson jbs pilgrims pride cargo Selling to the federal government for schools and other for military And what we want to push for is And also these big contractors like tyson Like pilgrims pride and jbs. They're on the list of the biggest violators of of labor law the government puts out a list and Ticens on it jbs is on it pilgrims pride is on it And so we want to push for labor standards And that's for the violation of the fair labor standards act and osha occupational safety and health act UFC w was pushing for We want to push for Labor standards in those federal contracts And maybe there could be other standards in those federal contracts if that the the original producers of the of the food Can get a better better deal So those we are hoping that we can work together on a lot of these issues because It's unbelievable how we're being Squeezed the workers are being squeezed Even though they're doing the most back banking work in the nation Thank you very much. I'm going to exercise moderators prerogative and Take the first question because I have the microphone But then we will uh, we'll open it up to questions from the crowd We're sort of we're very lucky to have a genuine farmer here on our on our panel. And so I wondered if you could Just Kind of describe the decision process Why do you grow for pilgrims? I mean you certainly have Layed out the reasons that it's not always not always a fun time to do that You know, why don't you why don't you grow for ticens? Why don't you grow for? Um, you know, why why don't you go totally independent? Could you just kind of describe how that decision is made on the on the kind of ground level? Well, play it simple in my case. I don't have any other choice Pergums is the only integrator in my area. So it's either grow for them or don't grow uh Let me say too that when I first bought this poultry farm the money was fairly good Uh, it was at least enough to pay my bills But that was 13 years ago And that's all changed in the meantime Like I mentioned earlier, I said it'd been over 10 years. I haven't had a pay raise since I bought that farm You know, how many people in here we have documentation that as far back as 1975 Indicating that growers made more per pound for their chicken then than we do today I'll think about that How many older guys in here like me would like to be living on today on what you made in 1975? Wouldn't be very easy, would it? So play it simple. I don't have any other choice Chris could you talk a little bit about the kind of broader answer to that question in terms of, you know Why is pogroms the only choice in his area? Yes. Thank you. Um To follow up on that, you know, mr. Weaver's situation is representative of what's going on And it's very important the points he just brought up We saw in the 1970s 80s and 90s a sweeping wave of consolidation Tear through rural america as these big poultry companies and other meat packers were allowed to merge with one another And make the industry more consolidated than it's been at any point in us history And the impacts of that have been almost exactly as you just described The towns that I visited to report this book farmers were lucky if they had a choice of two integrators to work with But even when you're in a market with a choice of two, that's not a real choice You you would have okay foods and Tyson foods But when the two competitors know that they're the only show in town There's not, you know, vigorous need between them to entice the farmer to do business with them and it's a real Uh barrier to competition, but I'd like to point out one of the most fascinating studies on this Which is in the book was done by bill heffernan in louisiana. It's a longitudinal study over 40 years Where where in he interviewed poultry farmers about their relationship with the integrator And the results are fascinating. What you see is that over 40 years As competition dwindles as the firms get bigger and as there are fewer choices for farmers The terms of the contracts slowly become more and more disadvantageous to the farmer and more and more advantageous to the integrator which is really just common sense in terms of business anybody who Has bargaining power will write a contract in their own interests And I think that that illustrates exactly what you're talking about which is that the economics of this business Are are closely tied to the level of consolidation and competition in the market And we've seen that that as that has dissipated life has gotten harder and harder for chicken farmers I can't tell you everything you just told me resonates exactly with what i've heard from interviewing many many people for this book I like I like to add too that along with what christius said It's the industry is pretty much standardized it across the nation Uh, I can I can go to a texas chicken farmer just like me and he makes the same amount of money. I do Now why is that? You know, we we had people from uh pilgrims come up to our complex in morpheus west virginia And we laid out our information form about what our expenses are and they admitted to us that our fuel costs are higher There than any other complex in the nation But they don't compensate us an extra penny for that at all Now how is that fair Mr. Ford can you talk a little bit about the word monopoly? I noticed you didn't use it in your remarks It is in the name of today's program And in particular when we're talking about the situation which You know some farmers do have a choice of two companies to work for and yet the term seems so similar What's going on there? Well monopoly has a Uh specific definition in the antitrust Uh literature, but that's not the common definition and what I think we're talking about most of the time Is is is power It's uh, it's dominating a market. You may not be the only one there Which is literally what a monopolist would be But it's dominating in such a way that you have uh really excessive marketing power now whole When when antitrust was first developed and microeconomics was was come was Becoming a science The idea was you'd have a lot of suppliers and a lot of buyers At different levels of of the chain And what we have today is is not like that. We have lots of consumers and used buyers And we have lots of independent farmers a dwindling number, but both of those fit The classic uh category, but what we're faced with in reality Is high levels of concentration Up and down everything in between now monopoly Is is not really the issue the issue is Is high levels of concentration technically it's oligopoly and on the Buying side it's it's monopsony or oligopsony A few number a few really big buyers that have tremendous power. I mean Walmart is not a monopolist but It has uh the buyer power of a monopolist and then you have to look at Markets so when you have no choice in your market because of transportation costs and things like that How long an animal can survive in transportation? You've got to look at narrower Markets and you've got to say what are the choices? well Mike doesn't have any choices And that's that's the essence up and down the system whether we're talking about farms Or anything else you want to you buy if the Consumer or the producer does not have a reasonable range of choices the It's the equivalents of some sort of serfdom and all the power has gone to the guy with the big size and the cloud Choice let me just say We've moved away from where our concerns need to be marginal cost and price To a concern about having choices It's different from what the antitrust laws are focused on but it's where we need to go I'm going to take some questions to the audience despite my desire to keep asking questions of my uh Standing up in the back Oh, wow Wow, dr. Heffernan, can you stand up for a second? That that's amazing. Uh dr. Heffernan is That's amazing. Um everybody. Please take a minute to talk to bill heffernan He's the godfather of academic study of Concentration in agriculture You can't research this topic without inevitably being steered back to dr. Heffernan and he's been a tremendous resource for Research on this topic and i'm just so glad he's here today. That's amazing. And he's a really nice guy laughs all the time I feel like I need to get something to just like cool chris down. Yeah, sorry a little fanboy moment up here Yeah, what can I say dr. Heffernan, do you by any chance have a question for any of our panelists? No, you're gonna All right, he's gonna he's gonna rest on his research laurel Hi, Dave Lovell again to serve first of all, I apologize for being so arrogant earlier Just so much of what i'm hearing today is so contrary to what I've personally experienced for the last 22 years To uh to um mr. Leonard the We do have uh We do know who we compete against frequently not all not everybody but quite you know We get the sheets that show you know the the list of all the growers who were competing against And you know in a small community like i'm from at least We can pick out who's who just by the numbers And quite frequently sometimes we'll look at somebody and go. Ooh, that's joe over there I don't want to compete against him next time. I'll lay out an extra week Just so I won't have to go to head to head with him. So it's we have some control over it Have you ever in your life gotten a tournament sheet that has anybody else's name on it besides yours? No No, we do not get names, but like I say in And again, I'm speaking 100 percent on my experience. I you know, I don't know what mr. Weaver's been through Um or you know growers in other areas. I'm talking about 100 percent about me and me only Thank you very much. I am not cultivated to be here. Um, I don't even think my integrator knows that I'm here I am you know, if anybody who knows me to tell you he's not cultivated at all um Also the about the tournament system our whole nation is built on the certain tournament system It's a free enterprise system the person who does the best job gets paid the most the person who does the worst job Gets paid the least and probably eventually goes out of business. That's called free enterprise Could you um phrase your question as a question, please? I'm another one of those uh Additions to the panel. I'll be done very quick. You're a bonus panelist. We definitely it's always good to have a bonus panelist But uh, mr. Weaver, I don't I I don't know what you've been through and I'm sorry that I have had pay raises um And you you and I've probably both been called away from Christmas dinner with an alarm or call out in the middle of a night Like last night, which was miserable um You know, I I see where you coming from Um, it's just not the experience of every chicken farmer out there And I just want to everyone to know that that's not the case I'd like to make a comment if you don't mind Uh, let's actually just take another question for the audience since we're almost running out of time, ma'am Oh, or where's it? It can't stand up. Um, I will quietly identify myself as judy heffernan and I However, I want to bring up a point that has not yet been mentioned In all of this though I agree with a great deal of what has been said And I guess I'll phrase it this way It has come to my attention over a number of years Working as a rural sociologist and then for 17 years with the faith community Trying to respond to issues in rural america It is I have finally concluded that many of the decision makers In these firms have done wonderful jobs getting their law degrees from the finest schools And their business degrees from the final school finest schools, but they failed sunday school Whether it was held in the synagogue or in the churches and the reason i'm saying that is because some of the others have referred to it It seems like decisions are being made with total disregard For things we might call in general creation the church would call it creation We would call it the environment Without regard for the for the land and the use and so what are we doing with waste? Well, we're polluting every well in iowa and virtually other places as well Without regard for the fairness to farmers Without regard and the faith community has been livid about the treatment of farm workers To the point where some members have left our congregations because the church has spoken up too much And certainly without regard to animals and so Then as if that isn't bad enough that people then we are asked because of course social safety nets are being cut But the faith community is then asked to remediate What is happening in rural places? So how many little tiny churches out in the middle of nowhere have food banks? Because farmers are hungry or growers aren't Aren't able to keep food on the table now the price of grain the last few years has changed that somewhat But let me just give you one more example of this The folks in nebraska at the highest levels of government worked very hard Not to get Kawasaki to build their plant In lexington nebraska, but rather to get iowa beef processors to build their plant and the ibp sent Videos to mexico with recruiting stories about how wonderful things were in lexington nebraska Well, there was no place for people to live when they got there Absolutely no place and by the way ibp didn't pay them until they'd been there at least two weeks Nor did they provide them money for the boots they needed on the floor And all of this. So what do you think happened? The faith community went together bought a house hammered together bunk beds for for workers People gave old freezers and when the lady hired to go To run the place called haven house in lexington nebraska when she went to ibp and said I have empty freezers I need to have food in there for for your workers. They said we're sorry. We we can't certainly do that This came to national attention because haven house Lexington nebraska was named one of george bush's thousand points of light The church picked up the tab for ibp So I you know this the reverberations for this are numerous and oh by the way We're also going mission teams into the places From which the migrants came here to remediate situations here like some of our trade agreements Ma'am i'm sorry that left them. Do you have a question? No, no question there either Okay, last question should be a question. Does anyone have a question? A genuine question Down in front here yellow shirt take the microphone and make it short and snappy Pervert for I thought you were quite eloquent explaining how principles of anti-trust have been lost over the years But just a specific question Would you also have suggestions for enforcers today? For example, perhaps mergers that have been pending or what you'd like to see current enforcers do state and federal I'd like to see current enforcer enforcers Be much more aggressive in the handling of mergers I'm very disappointed in the american airline us air situation Although there is a plus hiding there, which is that the government actually looked at the whole system They came up with a remedy that I think is not going to work But they looked at a system for the first time We've got all kinds of food mergers going on us foods and sisco ought to be stopped Um The banana thing that I mentioned, I don't even know about it yet But that's another one that's going to create a dominant firm in the world On on bananas you've got Safeway and albertson, which is further going to consolidate at the supermarket level And uh, uh, you've got Well a number of others that are going on Uh food and wild and water watch has done a great job in In bringing some of these to the public's attention and working out the analysis. We're working with them on several Uh, the point is though the remedies It's very easy for government agency to say we've done something We've brought a complaint or we forced a remedy But the remedies are typically allowing more and more concentration And not necessarily being effective as remedies. So, uh, this it's within the realm of possibility that the government can step up And be more aggressive and take some chances with courts that don't like these cases and are not supportive We'll lose a lot of them But we've got to make the try We're unfortunately out of time. So we've got uh lunch I think waiting for us we're going to have some concluding remarks and special thanks to our guest panelists from the audience Thank you Catherine just a couple of final words, um, I just wanted to uh, sort of Get sort of say thanks to Kirsten Holtz who was running around with the microphone and did an amazing amount of work in preparation for this And uh, one little word about uh, dean gold who is uh on our first panel who didn't show up I got an email from him. He's a restaurateur here in dc. He's in the process of moving his restaurant from cleveland park to shaw They've been doing a bunch of moving of equipment And this morning his wife broke her finger So he took her to the emergency room rather than coming here But great restaurant and when it opens in april go there And I just as a last word I just wanted to play off of something that uh burt said, you know, which is Burt put out, you know, he said that, um You know, it's really an issue of maybe it's time for a citizen's revolt And what that really means is using you know 1962 a book was published by a fellow named melton freedman and he said, you know what? Don't vote with your vote. He said vote with your foot if you don't like something just go buy it somewhere else That might have worked in the market structure of 1962, but it sure does not work now Now you better well vote with your vote because voting with your foot just ain't gonna work So anyway, uh, in in terms of using your feet next, there's a bunch of food outside Uh, this food is from someone named kit wood. She's a green plate catering. Uh, there's a a few, uh, Vegan sandwiches out there and there's also some roast beef. So choose what you want And and thank you all for coming