Is it just me or have meat prices already gone up!

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Countryside : One Thread

I just got back from the grocery store(wal-mart) and I was shocked at the price of beef and pork. I've always thought it was too high but I couldn't find anything under nearly $2 a pound and I always buy the cheaper cuts! Seems here lately even the stuff on sale is pretty high too. I've noticed this for about 2 or 3 weeks running but today prices were up overall. I also seem to recall a time when soup bones actually had a tiny bit of meat on them....the ones I saw today were so devoid of meat the bones nearly shined. I'll be so glad when I am able to get my animals up and going so I can have my own source of meat! Oh well I guess we're on a ground turkey diet for a while.....77 cents a pound...can't beat it for price.

-- Amanda in Mo (aseley@townsqr.com), March 14, 2001

Answers

Just another reason to raise are own .Auction prices are up and climbing to .I just got some new calves and feeder pigs .Chicks are coming today .As the old saying goes "I won't be caught with my pants down " I would buy some babies to raise for fall , i see no end in sight for meat prices.The good news is grain prices have dropped because we are not exporting to Europe , they have nothing to feed .Better to be safe and well fed than sorry.

-- Patty {NY State} (fodfarms@slic.com), March 15, 2001.

I agree w/ Patty 100% on this one . I will be getting a few extra animals soon also both for us and to sell. I figure if I keep my prices lower or the same as the store I should be able to sell all the stock I have. I am be eating my words but then again I will be eating healthy meat too.

-- renee oneill{md.} (oneillsr@home.com), March 15, 2001.

Everybody is right on with this one... And its going to be much worse in the coming months. Tuesday the US halted ALL imports from EU countries.

(I am taking this info from our local paper, local and CNN news)

EU is considering an almost literal closing of all the member country's borders - not just goods, but people, too. Scarey... no tourism, no business travel, no moving within their own territories..... World wide economy implications there...They are not actively considering vaccination.

Get this one: McDonalds has ordered all companies it buys beef from in this country to submit certification of their feed practices. Seems that USDA banned all feed containing beef by=products, and our producers have ignored the ban. Mickey D's says it won't buy beef unless the producers can certify they are complying with the ban.

For once something good from McDonalds... See, its the same feed that is blamed for causing Mad Cow disease - and our ranchers are using it. This might drive prices down if they wish to continue those practices, but would we want to eat the meat?????

About Foot (Hoof) and Mouth disease.... I've said this in a number of posts... Ask any older doctor... there is no reason at all for the hoopla -

Foot and Mouth is a viral infection that will run its course and go away within two weeks of symptoms showing. It CAN be transmitted to humans - those very young, very old, or with immune problems. It is NOT fatal, it is more cosmetic... like a coldsore. Now anybody can find referrences to this in any medical book prior to the 1960's. It was common in this country for centuries, as it was in Europe.

Tell me... has anyone actually claimed that this is a different disease? different strain of the same one? I haven't heard anything to that effect. So, this begs the question: Why all the fuss??? It doesn't effect meat quality, milk quality, feed consumption (other than if sores around the mouth ulcerate).... Does anybody even remember that children in this country used to get this all the time? I don't personally, but my mother-in-law is a nurse and confirmed this... Grandma remembers it too....

OH how I wish I was in a position to begin right now (or had already).... I fear that the auction prices will only rise as Amanda said...

-- Sue Diederich (willow666@rocketmail.com), March 15, 2001.


Sue- I've got to say this. No, F&M isn't dangerous to people. BUT it IS to animals- virtually every economically important animal. The worse problem with it is it's incredible contagiousness- it spreads to everything, through channels almost impossible to control. My Mercks manual says that 100% of the livestock in a herd normally are affected, but "only" 6% die- usually. Unless it happens to be a herd where 50% die. Those which don't die often abort. Even worse, there are seven different strains of the disease, with NO cross immunity. What this means to me as a farmer is that, even if my animals got over an attack by this disease, I couldn't draw a deep breath and rest assured that it was over, at least until the "non immune" animals were born and became numerous enough to put the herd at risk again. Nope- the entire group can get it 6 more times, if they are exposed to one of the serotypes of the virus they didn't get the first time. I don't know what the answer is- certainly the practice of concentrating huge numbers of stock on one farm is contributing to the problem now. But we can't just ignore it and treat it like one of the common illnesses, not if we want to eat.

-- Linda (farmer@rockbottom.farm), March 15, 2001.

Our young grandson in Japan had FMD last year. They gave him antibiotics. He didn't seem to be very sick and recovered quickly. It seems to not be uncommon there.

-- Barbara Fischer (bfischer42@hotmail.com), March 15, 2001.


I agree that meat prices are on the rise. I am not able to really raise much meat here. We only have 1.3 acres and I have 3 horses. The horses give me alot of pleasure and I've actually made a bit of money selling foals so they are keepers. I did buy a nice goat a couple months ago and hope to breed her ASAP. If I can get someone to help with the slaughtering we will probably have goat meat. I also have a few chickens for eggs and may get some meat birds to raise as soon as it warms up a bit. As for grocery store shopping...watch for sales and stock up. I can usually find roasts buy one get one free which equals out to about $1/lb. Also this week many stores have corned beef brisket on sale fro St. Patt's day. I just bought one for 77 cents/lb. There was a limit or I would have bought more, but I just saw another local store had the same price plus you got a free head of cabbage so I think I'll get another & freeze it. I am not a huge fan of corned beef, but we can eat it for that price!

-- elle (eagle-quest@juno.com), March 15, 2001.

This beef thing is really scary! I'm mostly worried about those of us who raise our own beef, lamb, pork and goats. My husband and I have our own auto repair business here and there are many times when customers are waiting for their vehicles to be repaired I offer to take them around our homestead to see the goats, chickens, pigs,etc. Should I have these folks disinfect their shoes now?? We don't worry about prices in the stores as we buy beef from a local livestock dealer. But you can be sure we will reserve our beef early this year!!!!

-- Marcia (HrMr@webtv.net), March 15, 2001.

I was listening to NPR this afternoon and they interviewed a woman from Wales about the FMD that had struck her dairy farm. Her gruesome account of what had happened to their 228 cows was heart wrenching. Don't think that it's just a few blisters around the mouth. She told of how in just a few short hours one perfectly healthy cow suddenly began to drool and then the skin literally began fallling off her tongue, then blistering around her udder and hoofs, and the skin began giving way there too. Within the next 12 hours half of her herd became ill. Then the Ministry of Agriculture came in and began to slaughter the whole herd. I wanted to cry for this woman. In spite of the size of her herd, she was not the commercial agriculture type. She spoke of her love of farming and how she and her husband were third generation farmers. She spoke of how much the cows meant to her, and how she knew them all by name. She spoke of being unable to watch as they were shot by Ag officers, but hearing the shots from the house. And then she spoke of how she made herself go to the burnings because she owed it to the animals she had loved so much to be there for them. This woman spoke with so much dignity and grace about the total devastation that had come to them. My heart just bled for her. In all of our bustle to protect ourselves from the onslaught of all the illnesses going around right now like MCD and FMD, and because it's so far away, we forget to think about the horrors encountered by the people living through it. It was an eye-opener to listen to what this woman had gone through. For those of you that pray, add an extra one for those poor folks.

-- Julie (rjbk@together.net), March 15, 2001.

The human disease several posts above are referring to is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the animal "foot and mouth disease = FMD" that's causing all the fuss, despite the confusing similarity of the "common" names.

The human illness that, for example, the youngster in Japan had is "hand, foot and mouth disease" = "enteroviral vesicular stomatitis with exanthem" and as noted above is not uncommon in children. It occurs worldwide. It is most often due to infection with one of the Coxsackie viruses but can be due to several other viruses.

Coxsackie is a *very* common infection of childhood, causing a range of symptoms from nothing at all to (rarely) severe heart problems. The virus group was named for its first discovery from samples obtained from a person from Coxsackie, New York, south of Albany NY (as an aside, I lived for two years just outside the town of Coxsackie when I worked at the NY State Dept of Health).

Again, these are *completely different* infections. You're comparing apples and oranges but the result isn't fruit salad. Please see some of the posts from the last few days here on GICC. I have cross-posted information about the animal disease in several recent replies that may be helpful to you.

--Andre Weltman, M.D., M.Sc., public health physician

-- Andre Weltman, M.D. (aweltman@state.pa.us), March 16, 2001.


See these threads here on GICC:

Foot and Mouth Spreads to Middle East,

and

U.S., Canada ban EU animal imports to keep out F&M disease,

-- Andre Weltman, M.D. (aweltman@state.pa.us), March 16, 2001.



The URLs didn't come through just now, here it is again:

See these threads here on GICC:

Foot and Mouth Spreads to Middle East,

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=004nqV

and

U.S., Canada ban EU animal imports to keep out F&M disease,

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=004nV6

-- Andre Weltman, M.D. (aweltman@state.pa.us), March 16, 2001.


The way things are going, I wonder if veggies will be infected by something or other. Did you get to watch 60 min -2 tues night? they are saying the U.S. is not doing what needs done to protect our meat supply. The price of a baby calf here is around 250.00 This for something that weights around 100 Lb. And then you must watch over it really carefull .

-- lexi Green (whitestone11@hotmail.com), March 21, 2001.

Moderation questions? read the FAQ