Has anyone bought a pound of ground beef lately?
If you have then you have noticed just how expensive even something as mundane as hamburger has become…..in my area that a pound of that cheap cut of meat is about $5 and it goes p from there.
There are plenty of cows for the industry then why is it so damn expensive?
Of course there are many reasons for the increases from food shortages for th animals to unjust pricing in the distribution….below is just none of the things that the government should be looking into….
A former grocery executive told a progressive media outlet in a video released Tuesday that “people fucking need to go to jail” over a long-running scheme in which dominant U.S. meat industry players have used information provided by a little-known data analytics company to increase prices and pad their bottom lines.
“This is probably one of the top five food scandals of the 21st Century, and we can’t underplay it,” said Errol Schweizer, the former vice president of Whole Foods’ grocery division. “People need to go to jail for this shit.”
Schweizer’s comments come at the start of a nine-minute video produced by More Perfect Union, which tells the story of how Indiana-based Agri Stats, the seemingly bland data firm, “built a network used by the nation’s largest meat companies,” including Tyson Foods, Hormel, and Cargill.
“Inside that network, America’s meat barons share secret data,” says More Perfect Union‘s Eric Gardner, the video’s narrator. “It’s alleged that Agri Stats organizes and then launders that information across the industry. Companies weaponize it, restricting output, manipulating the market, ultimately raising your prices.”
Watch the full video:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/meat-industry-price-gouging
The government, well the Senate, has proposed the Price Gouging Act of 2024…..
In response to the pervasive issue of skyrocketing prices on essential products, a group of US Senators, including Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman and Bob Casey, have taken a bold step by introducing the Price Gouging Act of 2024. This legislation, spearheaded by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, aims to curb the practice of charging customers grossly excessive prices, particularly during periods of exceptional market shock.
The proposed bill demands transparency from public companies, requiring them to disclose any changes in pricing and provide a clear rationale for such changes in their Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. Senator Fetterman emphasized the necessity of halting the exploitation of consumers, stating, “For too long, corporations have gotten away with jacking up prices to line their shareholders’ pockets with the hard-earned dollars of working Americans. This bill will put an end to that.”
One of the key focuses of the legislation is addressing the exploitation of crises, such as the ongoing pandemic, by certain corporations to bolster their profits unfairly. Moreover, provisions within the bill seek to safeguard small and local businesses that may be compelled to adjust prices in good faith.
US Senators Introduce Price Gouging Act of 2024 to Tackle Excessive Pricing
This is a valiant effort but I fear it has an uphill battle for success if that….At least they are trying to do something to help with these rising prices….but will it help?
Thoughts?
Let the weekend begin!
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
Agree with the part about more transparency is needed. And if there has been price fixing, then there should be prosecution. Price controls by the government does not have a good record working or improving matters. Laws against gouging sounds a lot like price controls. Hard to define and enforce. Free markets are the best way to set prices. Competition drives prices down. But the markets have to be free and competitive to operate.
Lack of adequate oversight and regulation facilitated the corporate price gouging which is so pervasive today. Time to try something else. This proposal seems like a reasonable one. As a pragmatist I’m indifferent about whether it cleaves to the “free market” religion or not. What matters is results.
First thanx for the visit and comment….Results do matter and I await them….I do not have much confidence that this will make it….there have been great ideas that have died on the dung heap that is the Congress. chuq
I agree that it won’t get through the current Congress with the Republicans in control of the House, unless a few populist republicans defect. But the prospects may be better after the coming election.
I hope you are right but I am not at all optimistic. chuq
Can you say “monopoly” boys and girls?
JBS, Tyson, Cargill and National Beef alone control almost the entire US beef market.
Smithfield, JBS, tyson and Hormel alone control almost the entire US pork market.
Tyson, JBS, Perdue and Sanderson control almost the entire US chicken market.
And it’s our own fault. Until we the people finally see what’s going on and vote out the rat bastards in Congress who have been bribed for decades to erode the anti-monopoly laws nothing is ever going to get done about it.
I agree but the way things are today I do not see that vote coming….do you? chuq
I don’t either. Especially when something like 75% of the people here in Wisconsin couldn’t be bothered to turn out to vote on two amendments to the state constitution last week that would have given control of how to allocate federal money in the state to a handful of small committees in the legislature that are controlled by a half dozen legislators who are firmly in the pockets of whoever gave them the most money that day.
Are you sure you are in Wisconsin…..sounds a lot like Mississippi. chuq
No. I haven’t bought it in forever. I get salmon, if any flesh, and barely that.
I am old so meat is a primary concern of mine….I do not eat fish….thanx for the comment. chuq
One pound of 5% fat-content ‘Lean steak mince’ is around £3.50 here. That is an increase in price of around £1 since they started to use the ‘excuse’ of the war in Ukraine. That said, it is very good quality.
Best wishes, Pete.
The lower fat content here is about $7 per pound and it is not very good quality from the chain stores. chuq
The ultimate retail evil in our area now charges $7.00 per pound for simple chuck and as much as $8.95 for ground sirloin.
Dear sweet lord, seriously???? $7/lb for hamburger? Ranchers are only getting about $1.80/lb for live cattle at the moment, for heaven’s sake. Let’s see, a 1,000 steer would yield about 600 lbs of usable meat. 600 X 7 = $4,200 if the entire carcass was processed into hamburger. Considering a lot of that weight is going to be more expensive cuts like steaks and roasts, the actual value is going to be considerably more than $4,200.
This is Kroger whose aspiration apparently is to combine with Albersons and have the monopoly on American groceries… they are also experimenting with surge pricing so that they can electronically change the price tags on the shelves for their crap minute by minute or at any time they choose.
That seems to be everywhere….so the ‘free market’ BS is just a slogan. chuq
Yeah, I saw that Kroger is trying to merge with Albersons. The FTC is suing to try to stop it. Normally this would be a no brainer, but with the courts the way are these days it’s probably a 50/50 chance it will go through
I wes reading about the surge pricing thing and that’s downright scary. I used to be in the point of sale business servicing grocery stores and even, oh, 20 years ago they were talking about doing something like this but the technology back then was still way too expensive. Electronic LCD display tags would replace paper tags on the shelves, with the tags remotely updated by computer. The stores claim it would save them labor. They wouldn’t have to send employees out to change the tags every time there’s a price change, and that’s true. But the ultimate goal is, according to some of the stuff I’ve been reading, is to link the pricing systems to an AI somewhere that is linked to facial recognition cameras in the stores to identify you and find financial data about you. The AI would then change prices right before you got to a shelf tag based on what it thinks you might pay for the product. If it thinks you’re more affluent it will jack prices up just for you. Weather predicted to be hot? Jack up the prices of soft drinks, beer, water and ice by 50%. Big storm coming that might knock out power? Quick increase prices on staples like toilet paper, packaged foods, etc. It’s price gouging at its worst.
Kroger, of course, denies it would ever do such a thing. Yeah, sure it wouldn’t…
That is as scary as it can get….chuq