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

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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.

On The Subject of the Future of the Printed Word

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While I'm here (before I resume my task of breaking the back of this chapter) (I've succeeded in smashing its kneecaps; the back awaits....), two pieces worth reading on the subject of, um, reading. And writing.

First, this in last Sunday's New York Times Business section, in which columnist Randall Stross asks if books will be "Napsterized." The, uh, punchline comes at the end. Yeah, I'll start giving it away alright. Just as soon as I win the Powerball.

Second, Anne Trubek weighs in at Good on the subject of "speed publishing." Anne is a terrific writer, and I have nothing to add to her comments. Except to ponder my fate as a wordosaur: a dying species that needs years, not weeks or months, to study a subject and then write something coherent about it. Sigh.

Tip o' the mug to Astute Reader Dexter for reminding me of the Stross column.

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

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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."

Jacob Grier On Why He Twitters (Yes, That's A Real Verb)

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Useful ruminations from Jacob Grier on why Twitter is worth it. I agree with his list (*1) And have to say that "socializing" was definitely not part of the equation from me when I started. Yes, I was trying to figure out how to get my books in front of people.

Like Jacob, I've ended up getting to "know" people I otherwise never would have known (or known about). Most important, however, Twitter has significantly expanded my intellectual realm of possibilities. And I mean significantly. I've run into and benefited from people a host of fields (science, journalism, lit crit, younameit). Plus I've been able to follow the ongoing "debate" among and between the food people in a way that I probably would not have without Twitter.

So . . . there you have, from me to you, at the end of a long day during which I continued my efforts to break the back of this chapter.

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*1: Jacob was one of three two people who urged/persuaded, me to try Twitter. The other two were Jeff Alworth at Beervana and David Nygren at The Urban Elitist.) (Which, no, he's not updated recently. I gather he's involved in the move-and-remodel from hell.)