INTRODUCTION Upon graduating from the University of Wyoming in 1970, I nmediately went into the meat industry with my father, Rudy Stanko, Sr. or fourteen years I worked 80 to 100 hours per week, doing everything om lugging beef, soliciting accounts, and buying cattle, to traveling to >reign countries to establish markets for the by-products of American ;ef. I borrowed as much as $5,000,000 for working capital that would rn over thirty times a year, and established the largest boneless beef ocessing business in America. By 1983,1 was a wealthy, successful, >ung businessman. At one time, I was approached to take the beef >mpanies public, and I was told that 40% of the stock of the companies ould be sold in excess of $40,000,000 on the American Stock Exchange. Therein lay the problem. I had become, perhaps, too successful. In my ,e to the top, I had naively failed to perceive that the real world was unrolled by an elite few. My first inkling of a flaw in the system occurred 1978. At the time I was growing prosperous with three plants in lasgow, Montana; Gering, Nebraska; and Gordon, Nebraska; and, along iih huge profits and a growing family, I was young and felt that the world is my oyster. In that year, however, I had my first major legal run in with ; U.S. government and its judicial system. I was accused by the vernment's attorney general (prosecutor), through the grand jury )cess, of twenty-five violations of federal meat regulations. The jusations were blown up by the press into a possible fifty year jail itence if convicted. The Grand Jury is led by the prosecutor's desires and whims. The xsecutor is the only one allowed to present the case to the Grand Jury, iile the defendant's attorney is not allowed to confront, let alone speak to, : grand jury. To the public, this process appears legitimate; but the Grand y is nothing more than a rubber stamp for the government. I was raged at the system and accusations, but was equally disgusted with the vs coverage. I had not been proven guilty of anything, but already I had ome a notorious figure as portrayed by the press. Later, all of the irges against me in this incident were dropped if I would plea to a •demeanor, and I would then receive a small fine of a $1000 dollars and months probation. While I will develop the particulars of this case in a r chapter, the reader might find it amusing to note that the crux of the o centered on whether a 6000 pound shipment of "beefalo" sent to a jerky nufacturer should be labelled "beef or "buffalo." But, for the first time ly life, I was really confused about how the system worked and to INTRODUCTION whose advantage. Why should the U.S. Justice Department, of the country I adore fanatically, pursue an industrious American businessman who paid millions of dollars in taxes; employed hundreds of people; did nothing but make the system better; and, on top of it all, improved the cattle market for the cattle producer and lowered the price of meat to the consumer through an increase in competition? More interestingly, why should the government and the press be so anxious and willing to leap before they looked? Was there more to it than met the eye? During the next five years, however, the companies continued to grow and to prosper, and, in fact, succeeded far beyond what I had expected, .. especially for a young man in his mid-thirties. In 1981,1 leased/purchased a modern slaughtering and processing plant in Denver, Colorado, from Monfort Packing Company. Eighty-five percent of the plant was newly built, with great potential right in the heart of the populace and distributing center of the Midwest. The best demand and the highest dollar for fresh boneless beef is almost always received inland and in the metropolitan areas of Denver and Kansas City. These inland cities are not as severely affected by the large influx of boneless beef imports from South and Central America, or Australia and New Zealand. From Denver, I knew I could give instant service (a marketing advantage lacking in the rural plants of Nebraska), and disperse product to all the large commercial outlets located in Denver, who then distributed to the surrounding areas: Safeway, King Soopers, Wendy's, and many other distributors and end users. In addition, my company would become the largest manufacturer of ground beef for the federal school lunch program and largest supplier of ground beef for the U.S. military. (This was because Denver had huge storage and freezing facilities.) The combination of my ambition and the background of three generations in the meat packing business gave me the expertise to produce a premium quality product at a lower cost than my competitors. In 1983 things were going, well and each plant had adequate management and continued to grow in volume and profits. Then, on September 18,1983, when I was on a Canadian fishing trip, the bomb fell. . That Sunday afternoon, NBC's First Camera, a new program patterned after CBS's Sixty Minutes, launched its premiere show, supposedly to expose the inadequacies in the inspection service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Actually, it turned out to be an attack on Cattle King Beef Company. They accused Cattle King of unsanitary processing conditions, rat infestation, unfair labor practices and other illegal