Reprinted from the March 2010 issue of the Ester Republic

New England is known for a number of food traditions: lobster, clam bakes, brown bread, baked beans, and my childhood favorite, red hot dogs. Red hot dogs are most commonly encountered in Maine. They’re made fresh by local butchers without any nitrates or corn syrup, packed in real, dyed-red intestine casings, and sold in links. They are also sometimes called ‘red snappers’ for the sound they make when you bite into a freshly grilled one. The ‘red’ does not mean that they are spicy, like the red hots made in the South, just that they are fresh, juicy, and delicious, especially when served in a traditional New England-style, split-top hot dog roll (these guys will not break down the center like the style they sell here!).

In Maine, the number one packer and proprietor of red hot dogs was Jordan’s Meats, a third-generation family business that had grown to be the state’s second-largest employer. They did not just make hot dogs, of course; they also produced sliced meats and cooked roast beef for the New England market. But it was the red hot dogs that they were known for, and on which they had built their success. I can still hear the radio jingle proclaim: “Hot Dog! Its Jordan’s.”

You might notice that I am speaking about Jordan’s in the past tense. This is because Tyson, everyone’s favorite international protein conglomerate, shut down Jordan’s Meats in 2005 after acquiring them a few years earlier. The Jordan’s story is one of hundreds that have played out over the last quarter-century or more in service of the industrialization and consolidation of the American food system. Closing Jordan’s was simply a cost-cutting and efficiency measure: Tyson has other production facilities in New York, Iowa, and Wisconsin capable of handling the additional capacity. While the loss of some regional cultural icons may be unfortunate, in Tyson’s vision, the net-benefits of a streamlined corporate food system, including lower prices as the result of greater standardization of products, outweigh any such losses. As for serving the local market for fresh meats and red hot dogs? Tyson is not in that business.

This notion of superior economic efficiency is another of these myths of industrial agriculture. Indeed, Tyson’s price-per-pound for chicken is about half that of a locally-raised roaster. I have argued in this column before that such cheap food price tags hide countless ‘invisible losses’, however, and Jordan’s is a case in point. Jordan’s Meats was not merely a small-time butchery and regional cultural icon; about 500 employees lost their jobs when Tyson shut the processor down. The whole situation sounds way too much like a B movie cliché: the uncaring corporate bad-guy pursuing goals of cost cutting and efficiency at the expense of the lives and livelihoods of the workers. In their press release, Tyson actually encouraged those losing their jobs to seek out employment opportunities at Tyson facilities elsewhere in nation. As if it were as simple a matter to move people and homes as it is to reallocate the production of roast beef and hot dogs!

Five years later, Jordan’s 2-acre facility in Portland, Maine’s largest urban center, remains vacant, having changed hands twice (the second sale closed in February of this year). The new owners have no immediate plans for the property, which is in the middle of Portland’s waning Eastern Waterfront district. And the impacts to the Maine economy not stop there. In 2006, Money Magazine rated Portland as in the top 100 places to live, with Jordan’s still listed as a noteworthy employer. In 2007, Portland had been dropped from the list. Usually, it is the rural places that we hear of suffering the scorched-earth campaign of agricultural industrialization and consolidation, but here is an example of an otherwise-thriving urban center still coping with numerous long-term impacts in service to corporate efficiency.

It is not entirely clear whether the folks at Tyson are aware of the consequences of their business practices, or ignorant to them in some blind faith and dedication to their business model and the ‘market’. Given the public relations face they put on their commitment to social responsibility I will hope for the latter. Nevertheless, a healthful and thriving 21^st century American society requires leaders in business dedicated to building local institutions and economies, not tearing them down. Running a thriving business and providing for thriving communities are not mutually-exclusive propositions; they simply require that these old and simplistic metrics, such as growth and efficiency, be replaced with a vision where the health of one’s community is the most important indicator of success. Building local communities as an employer-citizen and as a cultural icon are legitimate and time-tested recipes for successful enterprise. I believe that even Tyson is capable of making and thriving through such a transition.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 8th, 2010 at 6:24 am by Philip Loring and is filed under Feature Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.