30 ROCKY MOUNTAIN ROCKY MOUNTAIN are no different than the operating procedures of the local meat market. The USDA has assumed this police authority and delegated this power to classroom scholars. Through the use of 38,000 regulations, the USDA has curtailed, stymied, and now eliminated the production of the small, rural meat packer. This assumed authority and encroachment by the USDA has created a high priced meat product for the consumer and benefited the monopolistic ironment of the "supermen" in the meat cartel. In other words, our USDA, through the federal meat veterinarians, unconsciously has been trained to stymie and control the meat business for an "elite few," or a meat cartel. If this is not true, then where is the competition that existed in the early 1950's? The big four-Swift, Armour, Cudahy, and Wilson-have closed most of their plants or scaled down their operations and merged with the international conglomerates. The owners of the small, independent slaughtering and processing plants that existed in all rural areas, like the Sheridan Meat Company (my uncle's plant on my mother's side of the family) and the Rocky Mountain Packing Company, have given up the ship. The pressure from the USDA in Washington, DC, via the federal vets is not worth the battle. My mother's family's sixty-year-old Sheridan Meat Company closed its doors in 1985. It was the last wholesale meat company in the state of Wyoming. Thirty years ago ten such companies existed in this state. The great livestock state of Montana is also practically void of these commercial meat operations. In 1970, Nebraska turned its responsibility of meat inspection of over a hundred commercial meat companies to the USDA. Dr. Roger Krull, a past circuit supervisor for the USDA in the state of Nebraska during this transition period, stated: "My bosses told me to sig-um."^ Krull's bosses were Dr. Breeden and Dr. Shannon, USDA federal vets stationed in Lincoln, Nebraska; and sig-um is the term used in telling a hunting dog to fetch the wild game. After a year, Krull had a guilty conscience in closing or making the requirements so rigid for almost all of the independent meat companies in the state of Nebraska-which subsequently closed down-that he quit his military job. He later stated: "I was told to close the doors on hard working Americans, and these were the type of Americans that built this country and made it great."^ These four states: Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, and Wyoming are typical examples of what has happened or is happening in all fifty of the United States of America. The Big Four and the rural independent meat companies have been replaced by large international merchants or metropolitan independent meat companies. Members of certain cartels have historically dwelt in urban areas, which are centers of trade. .However, in the early 1900's, the founder of Swift and Company, Gustavus F. Swift, stated that his past company success centered around building his slaughtering plants near the source of supply. The expense of transportation would verify his conclusion. Why not slaughter and process the animals at the source? The answer is simple. The meat cartel can more readily centralize its monopolistic structure by communicating and organizing its members in the urban areas where they live. Their association governs the USDA in Washington, DC, because their combined wealth and membership has the professional political influence over key appointments within the federal government's administration. This creates a government entirely separate and under little influence from our elected politicians. Once the rural competition was eliminated, the city cartels expanded into the competitive-free rural areas. At present they dominate the entire meat market of the whole country. Now that the rural competition has been practically eliminated, the USDA has used my original suggestion. In the early 1980's, the USDA initiated and implemented a new program called TQC (Total Quality Control), which now will benefit only the remaining operators, the meat cartel. Under this program, the USDA veterinarians and their inspectors will no longer be responsible for most of the 38,000 regulations concerning production in the meat-packing industry. Decisions as to the edibility of meat after the USDA veterinarian has placed his stamp of approval on the slaughtered animal will he left up to the quality control personnel under management's jurisdiction. The professional meat buyers and the consumers are the ultimate meat inspectors. The customers of the meat companies will not purchase a dirty or an unwholesome meat product. If they have a dirty shop, these independent meat companies will be without customers. Word of mouth is the best or the worst advertising, depending on how clean you keep the meat packing operation. Rocky Mountain Packing Company was a clean business, as testified by its customer rapport. Yet Rocky Mountain Packing Company, a typical, expanding meat company from the 1950's through the middle 1970's in the rural United States, was forced to close its doors for the benefit of the "meat cartel." Marvin Dinner, a cattle trader from the Denver area familiar with the