Last February, RSCC reported^[1] on the role private industry often plays in ensuring that regulations have the intended effect. The article discussed how Intel reacted to new disclosure requirements in Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act^[2] by mapping its supply chain and determining the best way to gather the information required by Section 1502.

Intel discovered that smelters represented a bottleneck^[3] in its supply chain where downstream and upstream information could be consolidated and organized. That discovery led to the development of a reporting template, the Conflict Minerals Reporting Template, that has since become the industry standard.

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed similar chokepoints in the food supply chain that could present similar opportunities for innovation and, perhaps, regulatory refinement. In the United States, slaughterhouses have emerged as the point between upstream and downstream companies where things converge. According to a report from The New York Times,^[4] roughly 50 plants account for as much as 98% of slaughtering and meat processing in the U.S.