So the meat market is generally pretty healthy with an oligopoly at one stage of the supply chain? That actually sounds a lot better than I thought the meat market was. "Carving up" like that is also not a big problem unless they collude to do it, and it's a natural thing for an oligopoly market to do: each of the companies focuses on the niche they are best-equipped to serve, keeping in mind that their competition can come in if they get too greedy.

It's also a lot better than the ads market is, with literally one dominant player that monopolizes all stages of the supply chain. This is literally what Standard Oil did, controlling the wells, the refineries, and the distribution railroads to shut out competitors.

If you look at financial exchanges, there's a very good reason for the brokers and exchange to all be different companies.