Here's some spicy political dressing and economic gravy for tomorrow's turkey

(By Keith Srakocic, Associated Press)

"Turkey is America's most political meat," Christopher Leonard, former national business reporter for The Associated Press, writes for the New America Foundation, where he is a senior fellow. "The president pardons a bird in the Rose Garden. And Ben Franklin even compared the turkey favorably to the bald eagle . . . The turkey tells a story about our nation. But today, the story of turkey in America has seen independence replaced by servitude, and open markets by opaque contracts. If the Pilgrims had seen this coming when they sat down for the first Thanksgiving, they would have lost their appetites."

Leonard notes that four companies produce more than half the country's turkey, and only three produce half the chicken. Red meat is more concentrated; four companies have 84 percent of the beef market, and four have 64 percent of the pork trade. And while turkey prices have risen 47 percent since Thanksgiving 2007, and meat companies' profit margins grew during the Great Recession, "Poultry farmers are living on the edge of bankruptcy. . . . A lot of them took raw deals with the companies for no better reason than they loved their home towns and there weren’t any better opportunities around."

Leonard gives thanks for Sonny Meyerhoffer and farmers like him in and around Hinton, Va., who were about to be left high and dry when Pilgrim's Pride closed the local slaughterhouse and canceled their contracts. They formed a cooperative, borrowed $8 million from the Department of Agriculture, and bought the plant. "If other pilgrims follow Meyerhoeffer’s example, it could inject competition into the meat business and give farmers more freedom," Leonard writes. "And that’s something to which we should also raise a cup around this year’s Thanksgiving table." (Read more)