The Ken Setter Interview: The Meat Barons

By Claudette Vaughan

Ken Setter is a veteran of the Australian animal rights movement. He was responsible for instigating surveillance equipment subsequently used in the first animal liberation raids ever seen in NSW. Here he speaks to the Abolitionist-Online about the meat barons, the dumbing down of Americans since the seventies and the connection between the poor, the disenfranchised and nonhuman animals.

Claudette: The barons of the meat business have said that America leads the world in producing meat at the lowest cost, and to abolish them would hurt the poor who could not afford meat and poultry. How does that argument sit with you Ken? Isn’t the meat business more like the mafia business? Profits before all else?

Ken: To say “America leads the world in producing meat at the lowest cost” is probably true, the Americans have been world leaders in high volume low cost manufacturing since the first ‘T’ model rolled off Henry Fords Detroit assembly line.

However it doesn’t follow that ‘abolition’ of the meat industry, should such a possibility exist, which I doubt, would only harm the poor. This is an argument at least as old as Karl Marx who in Volume one of Capital demolished the industry spokesman, Professor Nassau William Senior’s case; that all profit was made during the ‘last hour’ of work. Thus, by reducing, the hours of work from 12 per day to 11 profits would be lost, the enterprise would lose its raison d’être, life would lose its meaning, and the sky would fall in, as they would say these days.

The meat industries Barons are arguing the same old spurious position with a twist; all the ‘benefits’ (of cheap meat) so-called flow to the poor. The meat Barons and their overpaid spin-doctors overlook the most obvious fact that poor people buy very little meat. The profit comes not from the poor but from those most able to purchase their products.

Someone, more skeptical than I, might ask; since when have the meat Barons shown any interest in the poor, have they been privy to some form of revelation unknown to the ordinary man and woman in the street, have they walked the enlightened path to Damascus?

If so, I would be the first to congratulate them.

However, I can remember the Chicago meat industry as revealed by Upton Sinclair, (The Jungle) he it was who exposed to cruel and inhuman workings of the meat Barons. He told of the long hours, the infrequent hours, the freezing conditions, the on and off fears inherent to casual employment, the brutality of the animal treatment, the ill-treatment, the suffering of man and beast at the mercy of the most tyrannical employers in America.

The killings did not stop at the production lines, many a dead union worker was found on some deserted parking lot, or crushed beneath the hoofs in a overcrowded holding yard, as ruthless employers hired gangsters to destroy any union organisation.

Do I think the meat industry can be likened to a Mafia industry? Yes I do, it stands alongside the New York garbage removal business and the infamous construction industry as a lucrative money earner for the strong-arm boys. However should the reader think my evidence is somewhat dated I recommend they read the study, "Blood, Sweat and Fear: Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants," by Lance Compa, professor of industrial and labor relations at Cornell University, reported in the New York Times of January 25th 2005 and I quote

‘In a report issued today, (January 25th 2005) Human Rights Watch, often echoing Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," found that jobs in many beef, pork and poultry plants were so dangerous that the industry violated international agreements promising a safe workplace’.

‘Noting that the industry's injury rate was three times that of private industry over all, the report describes plants where exhausted employees slice into carcasses at a frenzied pace hour after hour, often suffering injuries from a slip of the knife or from repeating the same motion more than 10,000 times a day. The report describes workers being asphyxiated by fumes and having their legs cut off and hands crushed’.

"Meat packing is the most dangerous factory job in America," said Lance Compa, the report's author. "Dangerous conditions are cheaper for companies - and the government does next to nothing."

"Every country has its horrors, and this industry is one of the horrors in the United States," said Jamie Fellner, director of United States programs for Human Rights Watch. "One of the goals of Human Rights Watch is to promote the understanding that workers rights are human rights. The right to organize and the right to have a safe place to work are human rights no less than the right not to be tortured."

The American meat packing industry remains as brutal as ever for workers and animals. It is dominated by casual migrant labor, much of it illegal, and its levels of injury are among the highest of any other occupation in their country.

If these are the conditions of meat workers in America, one can only despair at the suffering of the animals.

Claudette: The full effect of the corporate propaganda apparatus will probably never be known but with animal rights, how do we get our message moved out from the margins to the centre?

Ken: Ah yes the big question, there is of course no easy answer. There are no definitive answers.

All I can do is stand cap in hand at the roadside and peer through a fog of unknowing in a vain attempt to interpret the barely visible sign posts, only the future will translate their meanings with clarity and assurance as we still search for the right direction, however we have a few clues.

Firstly; our side can learn a few lessons from big business.

Secondly; our messages need to be ‘framed’ in a way that our ‘values’, which are the same as most people. A reverence for life, kindness as opposed to cruelty, consideration as opposed to contempt, respect for nature, and love not war, become instantly recognisable by the wider community.

Still fog bound I recognise the partial value of the above, yet instinctively I know there is nothing that can replace the hard day to day work of ‘putting out fires’, ‘bridge building’ and the personal contacts one makes with an open heart and mind, continues to be most productive.

But first an understanding of where we are and how it was we become fog bound would seem appropriate.

During the late 1960’s early 70’s America was deeply embroiled in the bloody and brutal war in Vietnam with widespread opposition, especially among those most likely to be drafted. The war, anti war action, civil rights and environmental activism occupied centre stage on nightly TV.

As Bob Dylan reminds us The Times They Are A Changing

Business saw the writing on the walls of their oak paneled boardrooms; they understood well that an educated public was a dangerous public so they set about ‘dumbing down’ America. The solution as they saw it was to restructure, formulate a long-term strategy and organise.

In 1971 Lewis Powell was to write a memo, (to become known as the Powell Manifesto) for the US Chamber of Commerce. The memo was to remain ‘secret’ for many years while big business silently went about implementing its recommendations. Lewis Powell was later appointed to the US Supreme Court.

The Chamber and the corporate activists took Powell's strategic advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades.

Powell recommended the foundation of ‘think tanks’ to act as “universities without students”, to organise conferences, seminars and workshops, publish books, briefing papers, journals and media releases. The strategy was to deny the existence of environmental problems.

No matter how strong the scientific evidence, one or two dissident voices (often raised by industry stooges) was enough for the think tanks to scream “unproven”, and brand advocates of change as politically motivated ideologues, they would denounce governments as being hostages to “minority interest groups” (e.g. the environmental movement).

They established the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, Accuracy in Media, and others, together they become the voice of the corporations.

By the 1980s; America, and much of the western world, had its "hands-off business" philosophy.

Conservative think tanks became powerful tools for the corporations in an assault on environmentalism, animal rights and a host of community groups. Advertising and public relations companies flourished supported by lawsuits designed to intimidate and silence environmentalists.

Corporations used “green washing” strategies designed to co-opt environmentalists and to win public acceptance by painting their operations as environmentally sound, economically sustainable and if wisely used the environments resources could be could be exploited for the good of all.

They employed hoards of bright young graduates to speak for and on behalf of business, corporate law firms with specialist expertise on environmental and labour law firms were established with high salaries and offered opportunities for promotion.

They liaise with bureaucrats, consultants, interest groups and lobbyists. They seek to provide advice directly to the government officials in policy networks and to government agencies and committees.”

The aim was to shift the values of ordinary Americans, to build a pro-business movement, and nullify opposition to the corporations, and they succeeded. In total they changed public attitudes and opinions they built a movement. Surely this is our aim also. True we never put it these terms, somehow they seems alien to us, but they work, so if we are fairdinkum, why not. In a world of double speak and weasel words, where a modern forestry practice is said to “help preserve wildlife habitat”, that happy chickens live in cages, that Australia is a nation of relaxed and comfortable shareholders, is excepted by a large section of the population is it any wonder we stumble directionless in a fog.

So what does all that stuff have to do with us I hear you ask?

Plenty, the success of Corporate America was based on a clear recognition of the ‘enemy’ (that’s us folks) they then established a strategy that was based upon the need for unity and a coordinated effort.

It is true that suspicion and distrust exist on ‘our side’. That is only to be expected, as various sections of the movement with limited vision seek direction. Our individual aims do not at times sit easily together.

Yet if we consider the way business works is to undercut opposition by any means necessary to increase market share. I find it remarkable that they have recognised that self-interest must, at times, be surrendered for the common good.

I think we could learn a few lessons from that.

So what are the lessons?

Professional campaigns aimed at a clearly identified target audience.

Above all we need to recognise that we are one single part of a wider movement that includes people from the environment, the not in my back yard campaigners, the wilderness people, the protectors of old growth forests, conservationists, trade unions, and a host of people who rightly feel ill at ease, friendless, alone and alienated from society as it is currently constituted.

Claudette: I see in today’s paper an Australia Bureau of Statistics report on nationwide well-being gives a poor view of the natural environment. Biodiversity shrunk as more plants and animals were made extinct, endangered, or vulnerable. The Measures of Australia’s Progress report found the number of lost and threatened land-based birds and mammals rose by 30%, from 120 to 167, between 1994 and 2004. I’d like to hear your analysis on that finding please Ken.

Ken: I’m not sure where a measure of ‘happiness’ or ‘community well-being’ comes on the quality of life scale, nor do I recognise that the lot of humans have improved over the past decade.

Australia today has a widening income gap. The very rich commute between the delights of downtown Manhattan, Paris and Sydney, the fearful affluent live in gated suburbs; and the poor now occupy a parallel world with dialect factories where displaced workers find themselves surrounded by cheap imported goods they once produced.

Society is dead; long live the economy. The only concern is the bottom line, where only shareholders are stakeholders. Where workers are expendable, and age-old trees are clear felled for wood chips, where native habitat counts for nothing; is it any wonder that our furry and feathered friends get the rough end of the pineapple.

As long as our government allows, no allows is too weak a word, as long as our government acts in its present criminal fashion, by surrendering publicly owned trees for private profits, by encouraging environmental vandalism, by encouraging mining and greenhouse damaging industries, and its refusal to recognise international treaties, what can we expect?

Measures of Progress should consider that more than half the worlds population survives on less than a dollar a day, most people have never used a telephone. Closer to home our own aboriginal population has a life expectancy of 20 years less than white Australians. The Aboriginal female death rate from assault is between seven and 13 times greater (depending on the age group) than for non-Aboriginal women, while the male rate is six and 22 times higher.

Up to 70% of female murder victims are killed by their male partner. Each night in our towns and cities there are over a hundred thousand homeless, a third of them children. While a recent survey showed that of the 16 OECD countries Australia spends less on social security payments in proportion to Gross Domestic Product than an except Japan, Ireland and the US.

Where is the fair go in that?

By way of conclusion I leave the last word to George Monbiot to reminds us that:

‘the struggle between people and corporations will be the defining battle of the 21st century. If the corporations win, liberal democracy will come to an end. The great social democratic institutions, which have defended the weak against the strong- equality before the law, representative government, democratic accountability and the sovereignty of parliament – will be toppled. If, on the other hand, the corporate attempt on public life is beaten back, then democracy my re-emerge the stronger for its conquest. But this victory cannot be brokered by our representatives. Democracy will survive only if the people in whose name they govern rescue the state from its captivity.’

-Captive State: The Corporate Takeover Of Britain. p17