How Would You Like That Burger? Safe? Or Cheap? Part 2

PART 1 PART 3

The Times article noted that Cargill and other “big” suppliers of pre-packaged meat try to keep the price of the meat as low as possible. In this case, Cargill paid about $1 a pound for the beef,

or about 30 cents less than . . . it would cost for ground beef made from whole cuts of meat

and then sold it in a package of eighteen pre-formed, frozen beef patties (one-third of a pound each). I visited the Sam’s Club site to see if I could find that specific brand. I did not, but I found a similar item. (That’s how Sam’s Club works, by the way: What’s for sale at the store at any given moment is whatever they found that met the company’s price expectations, which means the brands change often.) By my calculations, the six pounds of meat in the package works out to $2.30 per pound. I buy ground beef at my local grocery store for the same price: typically $2.30 per pound. (Sometimes it’s on sale, but the normal price is about $2.30, depending on wholesale prices and market conditions.) The difference is that

• if I were to use it for burgers, I’d supply the labor to turn a lump of ground meat into burgers; and
• the beef is ground from the trimmings at the store where I buy it. None of it comes from Uruguay or wherever. (Yes, my grocery store’s meat comes from “factory farms,” presumably in the midwest.)
• And the meat is fresh, not frozen.

So --- why does the fresh meat I buy cost the same per pound as the supposedly “cheaper” meat that Cargill packaged and sold in convenient pre-formed patties? After all, Cargill spent $1 per pound for the original meat.

The other $1.30 cents is easily accounted for. First, Cargill needs to earn a profit. (Don’t EVEN bother to email me telling me that Cargill doesn’t deserve to earn a profit. Don’t bother.) (Oh, and before you get all bent out of shape about “greedy corporate America,” please take a look at your mutual fund holdings.)

Second, Cargill used equipment and labor to grind the meat and form it into patties. Third, and probably most expensive, Cargill paid someone to design the package, and paid for the plastic and cardboard in which the meat was wrapped. That last alone likely cost, what?, thirty cents per package? At least?

Next: The high cost of cheap and convenient.

How Would You Like Your Burger? Safe? Or Cheap? Part 1

PART 2 PART 3

Last Sunday’s New York Times contained a long report about e-coli bacteria in beef. The story focuses on a young woman who ate some tainted beef and is now paralyzed. The reporter uses traces the beef she ate to point out how and why tainted beef is sold in American grocery stores.

No surprise, the story’s point is that tainted meat enters the food supply system because of failures of government oversight and because of greed.

I think there’s more to the story.

First let me say that what follows is in no way an attempt to minimize the suffering the woman has endured, or that I am blaming her or her family for what happened. (So don’t send me any snarky emails claiming that’s my intent. It’s not. Period.)

The Times report traces the origin of the meat in a package of frozen beef patties. The meat was packaged by Cargill, and sold at Sam’s Club as “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” In this case, consumers were obviously misled: The package is labeled “Angus Beef,” but as the Times story notes, the patties contain little, if any, “angus” beef.

. . . confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

According to the report, this scenario is common in the U.S.: large corporations that sell pre-packaged frozen beef often buy from multiple suppliers, but there’s no way to check for sources of e-coli. The article does not say, but implies, that the problem is with pre-packaged, “factory”-packaged ground beef, rather than fresh beef ground on-site at grocery stores.

No surprise, the Times story has provoked outrage and hand-wringing and attacks on the FDA and Big Corporate Food and farmers (who somehow always manage to get blamed when something goes wrong with food.) (A few weeks back, I read a blog entry whose author blamed farmers for the national “obesity epidemic.” Go figure.)

Okay. Fine. I’d like to point out another side of the story: Americans are getting precisely the kind of meat they want, because what Americans want is cheap, convenient food; indeed, I’d go so far as to say that Americans DEMAND cheap, convenient food.

Next: The price of "convenient" and "cheap."

But While I'm Away . . .

. . . read this, perhaps the best essay I've read yet about the culture clash between the "profood" and "profarm" contingents unfolding in the US today.

It's a bit wordy (as Frederick the Great said to Mozart after hearing one of his symphonies: "Too many notes") but he's definitely made a concerted effort to explain the otherwise inexplicable animosity and wrath the profooders have unleashed upon their targets.

More Meat History Deja Vu

Gee whiz, but this is, um, so not new. SO not new. Shades of 1885. No difference. At all. Seriously, I could take his text and simply dump it into the chapter I'm writing at the moment. Ya know: The more things change, the more they stay the same. (How's that for a cliche?)

What's [Not] New Under the Sun (Or the Moon Over Which Jumped the Cow)

Whoa. Just had THE weirdest case of historian's deja vu.

A little background: I've spent the week reading testimony from a series of Congressional hearings held in late 1888 and early 1889. The subject was the transportation and sale of meat products. Livestock producers complained about low prices for their cattle. They blamed a collection of meatpackers that they called the "Big Four": Armour, Swift, Morris, and Hammond. The farmers told senate investigators that the Big Four colluded on prices at stockyards, driving prices into the ground and cattle producers into bankruptcy.

As I read the hearing testimony, however, it became clear to me that there is and was little historical evidence of these charges and that the true culprit was over-supply of livestock and decreasing demand for meat (mostly in export markets).

Moreover, this downturn in prices came only after record high prices which, no surprise, had led many investors to buy land and cattle (investors who, for the most part, had no experience and no idea what they were doing). They then flooded the market with (mostly poor) livestock and prices plunged. Anyway, the cattle producers were dead certain there was a conspiracy against them and had no interest in hearing any facts to the contrary.

So today I'm reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about rising milk prices. Same deal, except with milk rather than cattle. Dairy farmers want a federal probe of prices because, they say,

they have too few buyers and too little competition for their milk. The industry is dominated by two players: Dean Foods Co. of Dallas, which is creating a national brand in what had been a fragmented industry, and Dairy Farmers of America Inc., a Kansas City, Mo., cooperative that buys milk from farmers and sells some of it to Dean Foods.

Only toward the end of the article do we learn anything to the contrary:

Many economists doubt that Dean Foods -- which benefits from being able to buy plentiful supplies of cheap raw milk to make everything from bottled milk to cheese to ice cream -- is to blame for this year's depressed milk prices. Indeed, the company's market clout wasn't enough to stop the prices farmers received for their milk from hitting record and near-record high levels in 2007 and 2008.

Yes, I realize this is milk, rather than cattle, but the principle is the same: When the going gets tough, food producers are quick to blame "monopolists" for the sharp price gyrations that are a normal part of the food industry.

Moral of the story? Hmmmm. Beats me. Those who don't know history are bound to repeat their mistakes? We should all read more history? We should all listen when historians speak? We should step back and take the long view? I dunno. (Hey! It's the best I can do on a Friday afternoon after a looooooooooong week.) (Long week, you say? Aren't they all seven days long? Not mine, buddy. Not this week. MY week ran 75 days.)

Tip o' the mug to Dan Mitchell of Daily Bread.

James E. McWilliams' New Book Just Food

I rarely recommend books (frankly, what appeals to me may not to you, and vice versa), but I'm going to do so now.

First some background on the author: James E. McWilliams is a historian at Texas State University. He's written several books, one of which, A Revolution In Eating, is hands-down the single best history of American food written by anyone. (Alas, it's a history of colonial American foodways. I sure wish he'd write a history of 19th and 20th century food.) (*2) (*3)

His latest book is Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly. The subtitle is misleading --- the chapter on "where locavores get it wrong" is just that: a single chapter in a 200-plus page book. (*1)

Instead, this is a brilliant, thoughtful analysis of the complexities of the modern global food system, with equally thoughtful ideas about how we can change the food system in order to improve the quality of the climate and thus life on planet earth.

Those looking for a Pollanesque polemic (or a paean to the pleasures of gardening, heirloom tomatoes, and farmer's markets) will have to go elsewhere. Instead, Just Food explores the substantive research, scientific and otherwise, being conducted around the world as farmers, economists, agronomists, and the like try to figure out where modern food systems went wrong and what to do about it (oh, and still feed the world.) (No problem; we'll have the answers by Friday...)

Yes, because I was familiar with McWilliams' earlier work, and because I am a historian myself, I was predisposed to this book even before it came out. It does not disappoint (plus, McWilliams is a terrific writer; in other hands, this might have been a cruel snore; in his hands, it's a lively engaging narrative).

But because he is a historian, he approaches his material the way we historians do: by taking the Long View of the Big Picture. As a result, his analysis and his conclusions are considerably more substantive and thoughtful than what usually passes for discussion about the "food situation." (*4)

So --- if you're interested in learning more about the "food situation"; if you're wondering why Time magazine's recent cover story was about food; if you're interested in the climate crisis or life on planet earth, or, hey, your stomach, read this book.

_____________ *1: It's entirely possible that McWilliams didn't even choose that title. You'd be amazed at what happens once a book goes into production. I was surprised as hell to by the subtitle of my beer book.

*2: There are several excellent historical studies of American food in those eras, but I'd still love to see McWilliams' take on it.

*3: Full disclosure: I do not know McWilliams; I only know his work.

*4: As I've noted here before, I avoid using the phrase "food crisis."