The Growing Reform Movement in Ranch Country (by Matt Singer)

The Associated Press has a great story on Leo McDonnell, a Montana rancher whose actions and organization are shaking up the beef industry. McDonnell is the President of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF), an organization helping lead the charge on trade issues and corporate accountability. For years, the meatpacking industry has simply dominated the ranch issue discussion in America. R-CALF, thankfully, is changing all of that.

R-CALF right now is fighting against the importation of Canadian beef, a fight that is pitting them against the heaviest hitters of the food processing industry, but that has inspired help from the National Farmers Union and sixty-six other organizations.

But this fight doesn't stop at the edge of farm country. For labor unions, human rights organizations, and consumer safety groups, organizing against food processors should be a major point for an urban-rural coalition, a blue-green coalition, an American populist coalition. The major food processors like Tyson (which now owns IBP, the largest beefpacking company) are notorious for running shops hazardous to workers' health. The factory-like slaughterhouses are disgusting from an environmental perspective. To boot, the workers are often unionized or represented by company unions, ensuring little respect, bad pay, and likely violations of American labor law. Even as Wal-Martization takes hold of the economy, it's been embedded in the food processing world for years.

Luckily, groups like R-CALF are standing up. A coalition between red state ranchers and urban workers could prove a formidable political force.

--Matt Singer