A cyber attack May 30 struck JBS, the world’s biggest meat packer, headquartered in London and Brazil. The result included the shutdown of most or all of JBS’s 47 slaughtering, food-processing and livestock operations in Australia, accounting for 20% of the beef processing there; and similar scale shutdowns in North America, closing dozens of mega meat and processing facilities from Alberta to Colorado to Texas. JBS issued a statement yesterday, committing to reopening as fast as possible, and some operations are now resuming.
Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALFUSA, said today, “JBS controls 23% of all cattle slaughtered in the U.S. today … and JBS, plus the next three largest packers, Tyson, Cargill and National Beef, control 85% of all fed cattle marketed in the U.S.” Bullard said, “The cattle industry is being vertically integrated. The beef cartels control the cattle where they enter the feedlots and that is how they control the price.” We have lost 83,000 cattle ranchers, 75%, in the last 25 years. Bullard has reported on this at Schiller Institute conferences over the past year.
Meat prices will be spiking for the consumer, allowing for big profiteering by the processors and retailers. The cattle and other livestock being turned away from the packing plants are a financial and logistical hit on the farmers and ranchers, as prices are already at a 10-11 year low. Ranchers will have to continue to feed their cattle, the feed costs will go up on cattle ready for market, and it breaks the supply chain to consumers, and retail prices go up. There are no other processing plants that can pick up the lost capacity from JBS. The longer JBS plants are closed, the more the backlogs, the greater the impact on the rancher’s costs and the consumer’s prices. Meantime, it is notable that JBS—along with fellow cartel packers, e.g. Cargill—are big investors in the new greenie shift into fake meat, and of greening livestock production, according to investment rules set by UN de-carbonizer, Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance Mark Carney.
The first response from the White House has been to blame Moscow for harboring ransomware perpetrators, who have “likely” carried out this hit on JBS.
Note that this incident turns a spotlight on how concentrated the control is over key links in the world food chain. And how prone to collapse it is. This system of a very few mega meat plants completely broke down a year ago, under the COVID-19 spread. The livestock ranchers took a hard hit; and hundreds of food-processing workers lost their lives, because of the protection and perpetuation of the cartel system by government and Wall Street/City of London bankers.
