The High Cost of Red Meat
 

We don't eat much red meat. There is seafood and poultry served at the BamaVol table, and quite a number of meat-free meals. We also dine out frequently - usually on fresh local seafood. So imagine my surprise recently when I shopped for something different.

First was a package of hamburger a week ago. I looked for relatively low fat content (I know it has less flavor but really need to keep the meals lean for the sake of my waistline) and a package of 4 pre-made 10% fat burgers was $10. I think the weight was around 1.2 lbs. The last time I bought hamburger, I would swear it was half the price.

The second shock came Friday. I though lamb would be a nice change of pace and with Easter it should be plentiful. A 2 lb partial leg was $40. I was again expecting something about half the price.

I did buy the hamburger but passed on the lamb in favor a small ham at around $6 a pound.

When did this hyper-inflation strike the red meat business and what is behind it? Enquiring minds want to know.

I bought a 6lb boneless leg of lamb at Wegman's for Easter. $35.00. They even trimmed and butterflied it for me. Yum! You must be getting some special lamb!

There were only 2 left. Maybe there's a shortage here. I was wondering if it had anything to do with drought.

For some reason all our favourite meats are the cheapest,

Pork belly, pork fillet, lamb neck, shoulder of lamb, pork shoulder, chicken, mince beef, sausages. Only one cut is now expensive but use to be cheap and that is rib of beef. Our only steak extravagance is cote de boeuf or rib-eye.

Shhhhh. Someone might be listening.

Back in the 70's my brother in law introduced me to beef flank steak. I got the impression that if we didn't buy them, they would get turned into dog food. They became our go-to birthday dinners - each of the 4 kids would request flank steak. Somewhere along the line, maybe 10-15 years ago, somebody else discovered them and they started rising in price to the point where I began looking for something else to grill. I still buy a few once or twice a year when the kids visit, but they're not the bargain I had gotten accustomed to.

No to be flippant or anything of that sort, but if you would read, watch, whatever the news on a regular basis you would have seen plenty of stories on this.

That's true; between recent blizzard and droughts, US meat prices have been widely forecasted to be high this year. Still, the prices the OP mentioned are crazy.

$4.99/lb is the regular price, not the sale price, for (Australian or New Zealand) boneless leg of lamb at Costco. I have a 4-lb leg of lamb in the fridge that I got at Costco for $20, two dinners for two at least. The high-end grocer near me had (US) leg of lamb for $6.99/lb before Easter.

Lately I have been buying beef chuck roast when I see it for $3.99/lb; I haven't seen it for less than that it in quite a while. If you have a meat grinder or Kitchen-Aid grinder attachment at home, that's the way to stockpile burgers and ground beef in the freezer.

I haven't bought any kind of round for years, considering it too tough to bother with, but if I saw some at less than, say, $3.50/lb, I might buy some just to grind and mix with ground chuck for burgers and such.

I expect beef prices to be high all spring, summer, and fall this year, and plan to keep an eye peeled for sales and pounce on relatively low prices when possible.

p.s., I heard something on the radio this morning about the new water restrictions in California: 25% cuts, but not for agriculture (meat and produce) production, which supposedly counts for 80% of water consumption in California. I'll say no more on that because there's a thread going already in Omni and I don't want this one merged or moved there. I just wanted to comment that the radio story ended with "so we can expect higher prices for beef and wine this summer," and I thought, what makes you think we all get our beef and wine from California?

Television and radio news irritate me. I read a local newspaper and ocasionally glance at stories I come across on the internet. I had not seen this discussed. I am aware that the West has had years of drought conditions and wondered if that might be the cause. It doesn't seem to have had the same impact on poultry and pork, however. Vegetables and seafood still seem reasonably priced as well.

The California beef market does not operate in a vacuum. If costs rise in CA it could make import of TX, OK, KS, etc. beef to the west more cost effective. That will increase demand for TX, OK, KS, etc. beef - and increased demand typically means increased prices.

Heh, my mom used to make flank steak and skirt steak with some regularity. I love them!

On the other hand, I'm planning on getting better at vegetarian cooking partially for this reason.

No problem. How about a government source:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-product...-findings.aspx

Thank you, that was excellent. And nowhere in that article was I scolded or subjected to celebrity gossip.

I haven't noticed... The price of venison hasn't changed. It's free in my freezer, and the licenses and processing fees have stayed stable. :D

Packages of burger? They're easily and cheaply made without the prepackaging.

In terms of the beef industry, it's highly subjective to the global economic marketplace and that's further impacted by the primative financial capabilities of many farming companies.

Meat became very expensive after the last great recession. When the economy was down, many farmers culled their herds due to the costs of keeping them being higher than market price. Then the economy comes back. It takes a long time to increase the supply, so the price of beef really spiked.

THat said, there should be lots of information available online on cattle futures. I don't think you need to rely on a travel site for the information.

If you are going to buy ground beef, it is always cheaper to buy bulk than pre-made patties. But even so, beef prices make me cringe every time I am in a grocery store. Even a chuck roast costs a forture these days.

Indeed - and tastier with higher quality.

Cargill, ADM, and Monsanto have primitive financial capabilities? :confused:

Another option...
 

For the last several years, we've been getting most of our proteins direct from farmers and ranchers - initially, by buying large amounts at a time (e.g., a quarter or half of a cow, a half a pig), and more recently, joining a protein CSA in our area (where we get a share of the bounty over a year, including animals like chickens and lamb, and nuts as well).

The advantages are many, including price, knowing where your food is coming from, and supporting the local economy. Also, at least with the beef, you can decide how it gets butchered (specific cuts vs ground beef, etc). The downsides are quantities (we have a chest freezer, and it's definitely necessary), and that although you know what the animals are going to be, you don't always know how much and when.

Now, I'm in the Portland area, so this is certainly like an episode of Portlandia, but I'd bet it's an option in other places, too.

I'll edit my original response to be nice here. The companies you mentioned run cattle farms or are they agricultural companies? Which was I referencing in my post. In my post, did I say that all farming companies, not that the ones you mentioned are farming companies, or did I say some? Did you have any information that disagrees with my point or are you just nitpicking?

Shhhhhhhhh........ My Char Siu. Nothing cheaper. That piece of meat was less than £3 and could have fed three or four ...

Nothing Better. :)

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...99752CB745.jpg

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...512D7BDCA3.jpg

What type of meat and where you buy them made a big difference too. I just got a new BBQ and had been grilling steaks for the last 3 to 4 weeks. Places like Whole Food or Sprouts sell the most expansive meats. Ribeye steak could go from $7.99/lb to $12.99/lb (grass fed). When Stater Bros have Ribeye on sales, they would go down to $4.99 or even $3.99/lb. I get them for the freezer when they are on sales.

There is definitely no shortage of deer. In fact, I would guess that their numbers are at a record high. Every morning I play russian roulette, between the monster potholes this year, and the freaking deer darting out in the road. In packs...

:) We try to do our part to reduce the deer population.

At least yours are still in a hurry, around here they know the cars will stop so they leisurely stroll across the street often waiting for the whole group to be in the road before any of them step onto the other side.

Our country is overrun with deer, turkeys and wild hogs... I know the FDA isn't fond of people selling game meat, but could a nonprofit process it in bulk and donate it to food banks and soup kitchens?

I feel like someplace I lived in the past harvested fresh roadkill for use in feeding county prisoners. By roadkill, I mean deer, but I suppose the right cook would use whatever he was presented.

Locally, there is discussion of a bear season. The damn things are a bigger nuisance than the deer and have gotten out of hand in 3 or 4 counties. Is bear considered red meat?

The problem is that there are those who don't like the idea of culling herds, so they usually protest any attempt made by municipalities to have sanctioned hunts.

There are nonprofits that work with deer processors so that if a hunter wants to donate their harvest, the hunter doesn't have to pay a fee, and the processor doesn't have to eat their normal labor costs.

In PA, at least, one of the issues is that many of the deer can be found in areas where hunting is prohibited (safety zones, private property that is posted no hunting, neighborhoods that have restrictions on hunting). The lack of deer in areas accessible for hunting reduces the number of hunters, which means that less deer are harvested each year. Deer harvests dropped by 14% in last year's season, although the game commission will claim that harvest numbers had been increasing in prior years (hunters doubt those claims), so this was in part "by design."

I think it is. I don't know--I'll probably know at the end of May. :)

Funny that you should ask....I was just reading an article the other day on bear meat. It had to do with harvesting bear and matching the location of the bear to the taste of the meat.
So...if your bear is from the mountains, it has been dining on berries. If your bear is from the coast...its diet has been mostly fish. The author favors mountain bear, as coastal bear tends to have more of a pungent quality. He then went on to discuss the making of bear burgers with the meat (claiming that it is good eating).
So, there you have it. Bear is truly the other red meat....

Funny you mention this.

I did notice the high cost of meat after doing grocery shopping as a vegan.

I'm trying this out just to see what will happen and so far, I saved $80CAD on two week groceries. Let's see how sane I'll stay without having grilled meat.

Ours are coastal for sure, no mountains anywhere close to Florida. Maybe this makes bear meat seafood. Actually, the pesky ones seem to live off garbage. That might not taste so nice.

I thought I saw this in the news within the last week or so, but in any event:

"Why becoming a vegetarian really IS just a phase: 84% go back to eating meat again - many within just three months"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...ee-months.html

Is the country overrun with deer, or overrun with people who have invaded the deers' original habitat? (And what is the proper possessive there since the plural of deer is deer???)

We now return you to the original topic of discussion...

Overrun with deer. There are fewer hunters these days.

FWIW, I abhor any mistreatment of animals, but the deer population needs to be dealt with.
As 'humanely' as possible, but dealt with.

To answer your question, nearly all of deers' natural predators have been eliminated by human activity. This has thrown off the natural balance of course, and the result is that deer populations have exploded.

Because of this overpopulation, many starve off-season and there's nothing 'humane' about that either.
Can we lace deer food with contraceptives?!

Some tender and juicy supermarket bought bife de chorizo steaks last night....100 pesos a kilo which is about $11. Not as cheap as they used to be.

Getting back to the original topic.... I've noticed over the past few years that cheaper cuts of beef have gotten significantly more expensive but the pricier cuts have risen only modestly. For example, I used to buy 80% lean ground beef at $1.99/lb a few years ago. Now it's typically $3.49 - $3.99/lb. Top sirloin used to be $4.99/lb, now it's $6.99. At these prices I prefer to pay just a little more for NY strip -- it's usually $8.99/lb and occasionally on sale as low as $6.99.

Mostly, that seems right. I had to make an emergency beef stew Saturday. I got to the store early enough to grab the stew beef that was about to pass its sell-by date and paid under $5/lb. The short ribs were in the same price range. I could have bought tenderloin for $12.99, but that seemed like a waste.

That is one way to spend less on meat... Get the ready to expire beef. :D

The reference prices for meat in this thread seems very much late 90-ish level.

When did you guys shop for groceries last ?

Wednesday. However, I must state that I have no idea what anything costs, except lemons, as I just buy what I need for whatever I am cooking.

Nothing wrong with that. If you're not going to broil it rare,
the old stuff is better for almost all purposes.

When we didn't have a freezer of venison, I'd stock up on about to expire meat, and would freeze it. It saved us money, and it was usually rather yummy.