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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

This seems like too much consolidation:

> The U.S. meat industry is so consolidated that with JBS basically offline due to a cyberattack, the USDA can't publish wholesale price data without potentially revealing proprietary information about JBS’s competitors

From https://twitter.com/sjcasey/status/1399822226313076737

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Overbearing regulation by the federal government is the direct cause of the dangerous consolidation we have in the meat industry.

The greater the consolidation, the greater the damage from bacteria outbreaks, or in this case cyberattacks.

Consolidation is the natural tendency of all businesses, independent of regulation. Powerful businesses may capture regulation to further entrench their consolidation, but don't confuse cause for effect here. Regulatory capture doesn't happen until after you have a powerful enough cartel to start buying politicians.

Regulations usually carry a fixed cost, regardless of scale, so the easiest way to reduce their impact on margins is to consolidate. Big businesses are often in favor of regulations because they create moats which small businesses cannot cross.

Spot on. Also worth noting that regulation and government administrative law are the only ways to restrict consolidation. (Anti-trust, FTC merger approvals)

We have more stringent food regs in EU and yet we have less consolidation

> Overbearing regulation by the federal government is the direct cause of the dangerous consolidation we have in the meat industry.

This is the kind of statement where I need to ask this even here on Hacker News: source, please?

In The Omnivore's Dilemma, author Michael Pollan presents USDA meat processing regulation as excessive with respect to actual meat production, but successful at preventing small independent meat processors from being economically viable.

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