Amarillo Meat Packing Plant, Texas

One of the nation's largest slaughterhouses, this beef-packing plant was built by International Beef Packers (IBP) in 1973. In the 1960s IBP began siting its slaughterhouses closer to the source–at cattle ranching areas instead of cattle yards. This innovation, along with the idea of boxing beef for shipment instead of shipping whole carcasses, and other assembly-line refinements in the packing plants, led to the rapid growth of the company. IBP employed over 50,000 people and had over 60 plants in North America, when it was purchased by Tyson Foods in 2001. Tyson, famous for its chickens, became the largest beef producer in the USA after it bought IBP.