ABSTRACT
It is not unusual to find the Colorado State University campus teeming with livestock producers, representatives from the feeder industry or generally anyone involved in the animal protein business. Thus, the fact that there was a public forum on campus on 27 August 2010 concerning the concentration of the meat industry didn’t surprise me. Who was hosting the event, however, did. On this sunny, warm Friday, approximately 1500 people crammed into the university’s student centre to participate in a forum co-hosted by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the US Department of Justice (DOJ). The sessions held on that day were jointly chaired by none other than US Attorney General Eric Holder and US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, the ‘top cop’ in the US and the face of US cheap food policy, respectively.
