War On Meat

12 Replies to “War On Meat”

1. I just smoked a 15 pound brisket on the weekend. Melted in our mouths. A bit expensive but I can’t imagine what it would have cost in Canada.

   1. I buy whole brisket when it’s sale on the large cyro pack and make Montreal smoked meat, beef salami, and beef bacon. Last time it was $4.99/pound and one brisket cost $70. I do the same with sirloin and round steak, buy the large cyro pack when it’s on sale and doing my own cutting and wrapping. I used to buy whole and half sides of beef but the kids are grown up and gone that’s too much meat. I’ve also recently started making my own bologna. These days any meat including luncheon meats has gone out of this world for price.

2. Amen, Amen, Amen Kate!!!

   My fervent hope … every time I look at a package of 4 NY Steaks that I covet at COSTCO with a price tag of $95.00 … is that the package ends up rotting on the shelf. No. I rarely buy anything other than ground beef (parts). It’s unaffordable. And even though I could CHOOSE to afford it … I won’t. On principle.

   It never used to be that way, even when starving in the 70’s with my alcoholic father.

3. As a cow calf operation I remember looking at my winter feed supply and being perplexed that it was worth more to sell, than our calves! We were being robbed as price takers and thousands left the business. About 15 years ago it dawned on those up the chain that if the cow/calf operator wasn’t well rewarded it would spell the demise of the feeder part of the chain and then the processing.
   About 20 years ago the average age of the cow/calf operator was 68!! A disaster was on the horizon.
   Rewards at the ranch should have been much higher many many years ago to have avoided the crunch today. But that would had taken some wisdom.
   Cow/calf operators entering the business has been few and far between as those skills and knowledge have disappeared.

   1. I read an article very recently (might have been here) by Sylvain Charlebois who pointed out that at least some of the insane beef price hikes on this side of the border can be attributed to the small number of packing companies that operate as a clique and engage in what is essentially price-fixing. They did the same thing 20 years ago when the BSE bullshit hit the fan. In both cases farmers AND consumers got screwed.

      Maybe one of these days they’ll get it structured like dairy and eggs where only the consumer is getting hosed.

4. “I spent 4 days at the lake, catching up with family, friends, and neighbours I hadn’t seen in a while.
   You know what was on everyone’s minds? It wasn’t World conflicts, climate change or the future of AI.
   Almost every conversation centered around the cost of goods. Food, insurance, cars, apartments and gasoline were at the top of the list. I also heard a lot of bitching about rising property taxes, shitty government service delivery, and the lack of jobs for our kids.
   The older Canadians in our group were nostalgic about the “good ‘old days”.
   All our problems are self inflicted, and easily solved, if the Liberals would just reverse some of their bad policies of the last decade.”

   https://x.com/Martyupnorth_2/status/1934958736701071594

   1. But, but, but … MartyupNorth? Did you spend any time talking about Orangemanbad and all of us “ugly Americans”? After all … you must have needed at least one moment of self-satisfaction?

   2. “All our problems are self inflicted, and easily solved, if the Liberals would just reverse some of their bad policies of the last decade.””

      Apparently not voting for Liberals is out of the question. Learn to live with it, idiots.

5. In WWII, we went to war against socialists/fascists.

   Now we are ruled, and have been ruined, by them.

6. L- In the credit side of the ledger calculating Saska-Berta Independence: We’d retain ownership
   of our farmland and the local supply of nutrient dense food(beef, pork, venison, poultry, eggs, cheese and milk and protect the farmers that raise livestock and grow crops.

   This, instead of allowing China to proxy buy up our farmland, and leave us with only the gleanings of crops and gophers.

7. Back in the day I was a Canadian Food and Commercial Workers member. I worked summers and some winters in a packing plant while going to university. I was paid really well. Some time after I was employed in business, the unions were broken in the US making Canadian plants uneconomical. 3 of the 4 big packing plants in Edmonton closed. Peter Pocklington tied to keep his Gainers packing plant going by lowering wages. That didn’t work and the plant was forced to close. Alberta’s meat packing all switched to southern Alberta with shit wages paid to workers from shithole countries. The is only one reason for immigration, to drive down the wages of poor people.

   1. And now Brooks Alberta is starting to make Southern Alberta look like South Sudan…