Where's the Beef?

Let's see, if people are out of work, underwater on their mortgage, maxed out on their credit cards, or otherwise severely financially stressed, they also can't afford to buy a good steak anymore. How "unexpected." Here's the Chicago Tribune with the details:

For the past decade, cattle ranchers and meat packers watched with despair as America's beef consumption steadily declined, ceding ground to leaner meats as well as vegetarian trends.

Most recently, high unemployment in the world's wealthiest nation had cash-strapped Americans avoiding restaurants where beef is a common entree and had them switching to lower cost non-meat dishes at home.

USDA estimates 2011 U.S. per capita beef consumption at 57.4 pounds, down 13 percent from 10 years ago and about 25 percent from 1980. In 2012, USDA predicts, Americans will eat 54.1 pounds of beef on average.

The beef industry is coping with these changes by developing new cuts that will satisfy appetites for steaks at a lower cost. Also, it has benefited from a huge recovery in beef exports particularly to Asia and Russia, where consumers are upgrading their diets and concerns about mad cow disease fade.

Beef companies, such as Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill,and National Beef, are carving up beef carcasses in interesting new ways. Carcass portions once meant for ground meat or roasts, such as rounds and chucks, are now sliced into cheaper cuts of steaks.

I don't know about you, but the idea that they are carving up the cows in "interesting new ways" scares the living shit out of me. I don't even want to know what kind parts are now going into the allegedly prime cuts. Maybe it's time to join my wife, who has been a lifelong vegetarian.

Naaaaaaah.


Bonus: Just in case you are too young to remember or were living under a rock back in the mid-1980s