Capture, commodify, kill: Legitimized harms and industrial meatpacking in the United States

Abstract Slaughtering and processing animals on an industrial scale are complicated activities that are both highly prominent in the food system and intentionally concealed from the public. The structural violence enacted within this industry deserves attention as a direct form of state-corporate harm. To this end, this paper invokes Tombs and Whyte’s imaginaries of corporate crime to understand what they might call the “ceaseless repetition” through which harms against workers, animals, and the environment in the meatpacking industry are enacted. From this application in the context of a Marxian analysis of primitive accumulation, we have determined the importance of capital’s ability to capture, commodify, and kill (CCK) – concepts we offer together as a heuristic device to highlight the types of harm done to labor, animals, and land, and to explain how these harms are accomplished. Drawing on the copious literature on meatpacking, as well as our own direct observations of the industry, this paper emphasizes the role of food systems for white-collar and corporate crime specialists interested in policy and social change.