Are These End Times For Meat?

I’m happy that last week’s bacon shortage turned out to be something of a hoax, as critics like Slate’s Matt Yglesias took pains to make clear. Not that anybody was really that alarmed; the news was fodder for all kinds of comedy. Hailed as the “aporkalypse” by the Huffington Post, it was greeted by Stephen Colbert as an Obama-borne stalking horse for sharia law. The story passed into and out of the news cycle in approximately three days, or one-fourth the time of Lady Gaga’s muffintop.

But while the bacon panic wasn’t real, there is a crisis in our meat supply and it’s no joke. We produce a lot of meat, but we feed a lot of Americans, and more all the time, thanks to the simple laws of multiplication, along with the simple addition of immigration. There is a drought, so there is less grain and corn for the animals to eat. Most of the producers are marginally profitable at best, and Americans refuse to pay more for meat than they do for Froot Loops, despite the fact that no one has to raise and feed and kill and process Froot Loops. I’m not kidding about this: go to the supermarket and see how much a package of pork chops cost, or half a chicken, and then compare that price to a box of Froot Loops.

More