SIC 2011 Meat Packing Plants

SIC 2011

This industry includes establishments primarily engaged in the slaughtering (for their own account or on a contract basis for the trade) of cattle, hogs, sheep, lambs, and calves for meat to be sold or to be used on the same premises in canning, cooking, curing, freezing, and in making sausage, lard, and other products. The industry also includes establishments primarily engaged in slaughtering horses for human consumption. Businesses primarily engaged in slaughtering, dressing, and packing poultry, rabbits, and other small game are classified in SIC 2015: Poultry Slaughtering and Processing. Those primarily engaged in slaughtering and processing animals not for human consumption are classified in SIC 2048: Prepared Feeds and Feed Ingredients for Animals and Fowls, Except Dogs and Cats. Businesses primarily involved in manufacturing sausages and meat specialties from purchased meats are classified in SIC 2013: Sausages and Other Prepared Meat Products.

NAICS CODE(S)

311611

Animal (Except Poultry) Slaughtering

INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT

Meat packing is one of the largest agriculture-based industries in the United States. However, in recent years changing consumer eating habits have impacted the beef and pork industries, which are by far the largest sectors in this industry category. Sheep also are included in this industry. Rapid and widespread consolidation within the industry has placed hog and beef meat packing under the control of just a handful of larger players. Operating on very thin margins, processing plants are under constant pressure to keep costs low and volume high.

Total production for all meat types in 2003 exceeded 69 billion pounds, for a value of $42.3 billion. In January 2005, 1.92 billion pounds of beef were produced from a slaughtered 2.53 million head. Beef remains the protein of choice in the United States. Some 1.7 billion pounds of pork were produced from a slaughtered 8.48 million head. Both were slight decreases from January 2004. Total slaughter was 46.7 million head in 2003 and 45.6 million head in 2004.

ORGANIZATION AND STRUCTURE

The American Meat Institute (AMI) reported that there were more than 1.25 million livestock operations, raising beef cattle, hogs, and sheep destined for human consumption in the United States in the 1990s. The meat packing plants that processed these animals into food and nonfood products ranged in size from those handling small numbers of livestock to operations processing millions of animals a year. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), federally inspected slaughter and processing plants numbered 930 in 1998.

The dominance of a few major companies is demonstrated by the fact that four packers processed approximately 82 percent of the beef, and three packers processed close to 35 percent of the pork. The USDA reports that in 1998, nearly 35.5 million commercial cattle were slaughtered, representing a 2 percent decrease from 1997. Also in 1998, 101.0 million commercial hogs (an increase of 10 percent) and 3.8 million sheep and lambs (a decrease of 3 percent) were slaughtered.

According to the USDA, the U.S. meat and poultry industry is spread among all fifty states. Industry sources indicate that the midwestern states raised about 46 percent of the cattle and more than 15 percent of the hogs in the 1990s, while south central states raised more than 15 percent of the cattle and nearly 70 percent of the hogs. The top five cattle slaughtering states were Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, Colorado, and Iowa. Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, and South Dakota led in the slaughter of hogs, according to the USDA. Pennsylvania, which had the largest number of federally inspected plants, representing almost 14 percent of all plants in the United States, ranked only 11th in production.

BACKGROUND AND DEVELOPMENT

The colonial farmers of New England, who were the first meat packers in the United States, used salt to preserve meat. As the nation expanded westward, slaughterhouses were built near population centers so meat could reach the table before it spoiled. The livestock herds were driven overland or barged to these early packing plants. So many hogs were slaughtered in Cincinnati, Ohio, that the city was called "Porkopolis."

For sanitary reasons, meat packing operations could only be carried out during the cold winter months, with ice used for refrigeration. The development of mechanical refrigeration and refrigerated railroad cars in the second half of the nineteenth century changed this. From late 1865 until the 1920s, Chicago, a hub city for the railroads, became renowned for its array of stockyards that collected and slaughtered livestock, often under harrowing working conditions.

With the turn of the twentieth century came mechanized disassembly and conveyor procedures in the plants, and the 1950s saw major improvements in plant sanitation and packaging. By the 1980s, the meat packing industry had again dispersed. Slaughterhouses moved closer to the feedlots where the animals were raised. Not having to ship them long distances reduced the stress, weight loss, and injury to the animals that was the inevitable effect of long journeys in crowded cattle cars and trucks.

Regulations

Under the 1906 Meat Inspection Act, U.S. pre- and postmortem inspection of meat entering interstate and foreign commerce became mandatory. Meat to be used entirely within a single state may be inspected by that state's agriculture department. The federal program was conducted by the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the USDA. During the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, unfavorable media criticism of the inspection system spurred an overhaul...

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