Why there is a glut of meat and dairy

Hi- I ran across this article on vox.com about why there is a glut of meat and dairy in the US right now. There is a glut of meat because China is putting a tariff on all US meat that is coming into the country because we are imposing tariffs on their products.

Right now there is a glut of cheese in this country because dairy farmers started using cows that were bred to be more productive, and so there is too much milk being produced, and a lot of the excess milk is being used to make cheese. Here is the article.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/ ... visualized

This is also true of our fisheries. Although I feel terrible for the fishermen, I'm really looking forward to some low priced lobsters in the near future.

Selective breeding for more milk production is hardly new. The big percentage increase started in the 1950s when artificial insemination became widespread. This allowed one bull to breed more cows so that improved bulls could have a wider impact. Fairly soon frozen semen expanded capacity because semen could be stockpiled from young bulls until their progeny could be evaluated. It takes about three years from when a cow is bred until her daughter first produces milk and thus almost four years until the daughter completes her first lactation. Consequently, it takes at least four to five years from when a bull can breed until there is any good data about the productivity of his progeny. Then the stockpiled frozen semen can be used in breeding or dumped.

Another factor is the rapid adoption of artificial insemination is that dairy bulls, particularly Holsteins, have a reputation for nasty temperament relative to beef breeds. Getting rid of a bull or bulls was very appealing, particularly for someone like my grandfather who had been gored by his bull. That you could afford to use better bulls was frosting on the cake.

Hi,

Vienna Beef uses bull meat in their hot dogs. Getting enough bulls is now an issue due to selective breeding.

A cheap food of the past was veal, which was a convenient way to dispose of excess bull offspring.

Regards,
Cathy2

I heard something somewhere a few weeks ago on either tv or NPR, where we should encourage people in the US to eat more seafood. For those people who are worried about over fishing, currently about a third of the seafood in this country is shipped some where else, and they were saying that the seafood that is imported can just remain in the US, and then we won't need to over fish.

According to this article currently in the US there is a surplus of 1.39 billion pounds of cheese, and 2.5 billion pounds of chicken, turkey, pork and beef. Apparently in Canada the government limits the production of milk, and so there is not a glut, and farmers are not given subsidies like they are here.

NFriday wrote: For those people who are worried about over fishing, currently about a third of the seafood in this country is shipped some where else, and they were saying that the seafood that is imported can just remain in the US, and then we won't need to over fish.

Nancy, I'm not clear on what you are saying here. Can you explain some more? It sounds like you are saying that (a) about 1/3 of the seafood produced in this country is exported and (b) seafood that is imported into the US stays in the US, which seems self-evident. What either of these points, if I understand them correctly, has to do with overfishing, by either the US or other countries, I don't get. Thanks. Appreciate your informative posts as always, so surely there's something I'm just not grasping here.

Hi- I am sorry I did not make myself clear. I meant that 1/3rd of the seafood caught in this country is exported to other countries. Some people are worried that if we encourage people in the US to eat more seafood, that it will get over fished. If the majority of the seafood that is exported to other countries remains in this country instead, then we have enough seafood to meet the increased demand in this country.

NFriday wrote:Hi- I am sorry I did not make myself clear. I meant that 1/3rd of the seafood caught in this country is exported to other countries. Some people are worried that if we encourage people in the US to eat more seafood, that it will get over fished. If the majority of the seafood that is exported to other countries remains in this country instead, then we have enough seafood to meet the increased demand in this country.

It's not that straightforward. Much of what is exported is done so for processing. That processed product is then IMPORTED and consumed in the US, so we actually consume a substantial portion of our US-caught seafood. We also import the majority of our seafood (mostly tuna for canning) because of demand for a broader range of product. While we can raise nearly all types of livestock, a lot of fish can only be found outside US Coastal Waters.

spinynorman99 wrote:Much of what is exported is done so for processing. That processed product is then IMPORTED and consumed in the US, so we actually consume a substantial portion of our US-caught seafood.

Thanks for sharing. Wow, never heard this before. Just ridiculous...

If I understand correctly, canned salmon (don't know about tuna) falls into this category. Wild Alaskan salmon is caught in Alaskan waters but sent to other countries for canning. Still makes for a product that's far superior in quality to farmed salmon or, worse, a lot of other fish and seafood products farmed/processed in southeast Asia. Again, that's if I understand correctly.

Katie wrote:Still makes for a product that's far superior in quality to farmed salmon

There's a lot of excellent farmed salmon out there (and other farmed fish as well). Indiana, Illinois and other Midwestern states are starting to produce shrimp at commercial scale.

A few years ago, I ran across some salmon that was caught in Alaska, but was processed and made into salmon burgers in China and shipped back to the US, and I asked here why anyone would do it. Several people here told me that it was because they pay the workers in China a whole lot less than they would have to pay the workers in Alaska. It still seems to me that if you factored in the cost of transporting the salmon to China and transporting it back to the US, you would not save much money

NFriday wrote:It still seems to me that if you factored in the cost of transporting the salmon to China and transporting it back to the US, you would not save much money

Shipping is cheap (per lb of product) relative to the other costs.