Kill and Chill : : Restructuring Canada's Beef Commodity Chain / / Ian MacLachlan.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UTP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2015
• VerfasserIn: MacLachlan, Ian,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©2001
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

Both horrified and fascinated by a visit with his geography students to the Canada Packers Lethbridge plant, Ian MacLachlan searched for a book that would explain the main features of the Canadian meat packing industry. Finding very little available, he set about writing an account of the industry that is both an economic geography and economic history.Comprehensive in its treatment of the whole system surrounding the Canadian beef industry, Kill and Chill offers a history of the structural changes in Canada's cattle and beef commodity chain, beginning with calf production and cattle feeding on farms and feedlots. It goes on to describe the changes in cattle marketing, the historical development of meatpacking-in particular the emergence of Canada's 'Big Three' meatpacking firms-and the rise of meatpacking unionism. Carrying the story almost to the present with the takeover of Maple Leaf by the McCain family in the mid-1990s, the work concludes with a discussion of current trends in retail beef marketing.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Tables -- Figures -- Introduction -- PART ONE: PRODUCING CATTLE -- 1. Calf Production: Breeding Beef Cows -- 2. Feedlot Alchemy: Turning Grain into Beef -- 3. Cattle Logistics: From Stockyards and Cattle Cars to Auction Marts and Cattle Liners -- PART TWO: PROCESSING BEEF -- 4. Industrialization, Regulation, and Canada's Early Beef Packers -- 5. The Kill Floor at Mid-century: From the Knocking Box to the Hot Box -- 6. Canada's Beef Trust: The Rise and Fall of the Big Three -- 7. Organizing Kill-Floor Workers and Pattern Bargaining -- 8. An Industry Transformed: Meat-Packing Metamorphosis -- PART THREE: MARKETING BEEF -- 9. Marketing Meat: From Branch House to Postmodern Retailing -- 10. Conclusion -- References -- Index