Kill and Chill: Restructuring Canada’s Beef Commodity Chain

Both horrified and fascinated by a visit with his geography students to the Canada Packers Lethbridge plant, Ian MacLachlan set about writing an account of the Canadian meat packing industry, which is both an economic geography and economic history. This account 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.