A comparison...

[grassfarmer]

That's the catch - the small guys local abattoir has a tough row to hoe with high costs of regulation and the relative inefficiency of a small plant. The big plants can probably still kill and fabricate for $200 so they are $650 a head better off in your model if it were all to be ground - which of course it isn't as there will be higher value cuts coming off a good cull cow too. The big plants have efficiency of scale plus they've had countless infusions of taxpayer money to make them more efficient. That's why small or startup slaughter plants have a tough time - not because there isn't a margin between live animal and beef product. The winners were picked in this game a long time ago and it isn't the rancher or the small processor.

[the big wheel]

Maybe it would be better instead of big subsidies to the large packers to assist the local
Smaller plants. Wouldn’t there be a created increase use of local beef? Good for smaller towns good for the rancher. Get a price similar to the supermarket or better We haven’t bought beef at the store for a a long time. Quality is rhe reason.

[grassfarmer]

Yeah, that ship sailed a long time ago - when the AB Government enticed Cargill to High River and agreed never to allow any competition.

[GDR]

Thanks bucket
So $2.99 ground beef on sale is a good price then
Abbotoir doin ok on that ?

To add to buckets and grassfarmers posts you butcher that cow you still get tenderloin, stew meat, soup bones, tenderized steak etc and the biggest difference is the burger is not like your regular store bought, it will be more like an extra lean more pricey burger, likely better. Retailers put a lot of fat and trimmings and water in their burger that you would not get doing your own.

We butchered (not for burger)a 4yr old cow last fall that was in good condition gave her a bit of barley for a month and it is as good of beef as any young steer we have done yet if I'd have sold her she would have been the 80 cent cow. Wouldn't try that with a 20 yr old beast though!

Another difference on the individual vs the packers they sell the hides, bone meal,blood meal etc where they can and make money on all that too, they are doing just fine.

[tweety]

The reality of feed conversion ratio, water use, and the dismal protein conversion efficiency. For example beef is 2.5% and chicken is 21%.

1 kg of Beef produces 35 kg of CO2 while chicken 4.5
High levels of methane and nitrous make beef an easy target for making it out to destroy the environment.

Beyond meat isn't the beef industry's problem, It's being the poster child of waste and cause of climate change. Good marketing will keep focusing on that fact which beef can't even begin to push back on. Do yourself a reality check and have a Farmers Breakfast wrap at Timmies, they are actually quite good.

Cost will come down significantly for isolate based proteins, more companies are already getting in on the action. More and more really good home made beyond meat recipes will replace even more "evil" beef.

But since Ag sucks at anything to do with public perception, they'll just keep calling it names and dog food while the ship sinks.

[samhill]

From what I recall in science class in high school was that Homo sapiens evolved living on nuts, berries, grasses etc . Not till they began to kill and eat meat did the brain develop somewhat similar as today with the ability to make and use sophisticated tools.
Planet of troglodytes we were.

[the big wheel]

To add to buckets and grassfarmers posts you butcher that cow you still get tenderloin, stew meat, soup bones, tenderized steak etc and the biggest difference is the burger is not like your regular store bought, it will be more like an extra lean more pricey burger, likely better. Retailers put a lot of fat and trimmings and water in their burger that you would not get doing your own.

We butchered (not for burger)a 4yr old cow last fall that was in good condition gave her a bit of barley for a month and it is as good of beef as any young steer we have done yet if I'd have sold her she would have been the 80 cent cow. Wouldn't try that with a 20 yr old beast though!

Another difference on the individual vs the packers they sell the hides, bone meal,blood meal etc where they can and make money on all that too, they are doing just fine.

Just out of curiosity what was the so called fillers in hamburger? What exactly was it, McDonald’s got caught with the pink slime and then the marketing was yes your beef burger is pure beef which is what I expected it was all along. Burger King was selling horse meats when you couldn’t give horses away. Margins must have been pretty good then.

[grassfarmer]

The reality of feed conversion ratio, water use, and the dismal protein conversion efficiency. For example beef is 2.5% and chicken is 21%.

1 kg of Beef produces 35 kg of CO2 while chicken 4.5
High levels of methane and nitrous make beef an easy target for making it out to destroy the environment.

Beyond meat isn't the beef industry's problem, It's being the poster child of waste and cause of climate change. Good marketing will keep focusing on that fact which beef can't even begin to push back on. Do yourself a reality check and have a Farmers Breakfast wrap at Timmies, they are actually quite good.

Cost will come down significantly for isolate based proteins, more companies are already getting in on the action. More and more really good home made beyond meat recipes will replace even more "evil" beef.

But since Ag sucks at anything to do with public perception, they'll just keep calling it names and dog food while the ship sinks.

Yeah, sure Tweedeldum. We just started grazing a section of rented wildlife habitat. Slough and bog full of weeds. Would be slim picking for your vegans. Only the cow can turn this junk food into high quality protein one bite at a time. The other guys are turning healthy vegetables into junk food.

[GDR]

Just out of curiosity what was the so called fillers in hamburger? What exactly was it, McDonald’s got caught with the pink slime and then the marketing was yes your beef burger is pure beef which is what I expected it was all along. Burger King was selling horse meats when you couldn’t give horses away. Margins must have been pretty good then.

Dont know all what they put in some pre made patties but boy are some of them gross and funny texture. I'm talking about the ones that come from the store in the box, DQ and McDonalds actually seem pretty good.

[grassfarmer]

Just out of curiosity what was the so called fillers in hamburger? What exactly was it, McDonald’s got caught with the pink slime and then the marketing was yes your beef burger is pure beef which is what I expected it was all along. Burger King was selling horse meats when you couldn’t give horses away. Margins must have been pretty good then.

They've taken the pink slime out but there are still sometimes things other than beef in the burgers - they are sometimes contained in the seasoning so they can declare it's 100% beef. Anything from hydrogenated cottonseed oil to "corn fibre", corn starch, sugar, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate and silicon dioxide.

[tweety]

Yeah, sure Tweedeldum. We just started grazing a section of rented wildlife habitat. Slough and bog full of weeds. Would be slim picking for your vegans. Only the cow can turn this junk food into high quality protein one bite at a time. The other guys are turning healthy vegetables into junk food.

Of course it is, but perception is reality - something Ag will never understand. You just roll your eyes and say idiot under your breath and keep pumping out the arrogant facts of "science" to the choir, meanwhile GMO's, glyphosate, chuckwagon races, pesticides in general get banned as the Austranada's of the world are way more effective and social media savvy.

While you say 50 cows are grazing in a grassy wldlife area that gets tweeted, instagrammed and facebooked to 12 people, millions of the public gets shown images of hundreds of thousands of feeder cattle belly deep in cowshit, destroying ground water, wasting energy, and creating methane and NOx causing global warming over and over and over on every conceivable social media channel and media as well.

So keep up the ignorance of what's actually going on.. Maybe it'll all just go away if we keep telling each other how dumb they are.

Which is publicly more acceptable? A feedlot or field? - which is where most of those burgers come from

[tweety]

Wake up sleepy heads, no antibiotics, no disease, no contamination, no killing. GMO bacteria produced ice cream and cheese is on its way too. Vegan friendly, no animals required to be worked or slaughtered. Even has a friendly name, Future Meats.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/lab-grown-meat-company-aiming-to-be-in-restaurants-by-2021 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/lab-grown-meat-company-aiming-to-be-in-restaurants-by-2021