What's Your Beef?

     To those who may have read earlier posts of mine, you know that every now and I then I veer off track and vent, almost out of necessity as if I've become an old-time steam locomotive about to derail.  It doesn't happen often but every now and then, it just does.  And you also know that once all that steam is let out, all is calm for awhile and everyone reading can sort of breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that whatever topic bothered me would fade away enough to let me get back to whatever the title subject was of the post, which in this case is truly about cows and beef.  However, speaking of cattle, here's my real beef (here goes, so skip by this rant or bravely read on) -- this whole Iran "war" and the alleged threat of its nuclear enrichment program: wasn't it Trump himself who pulled the US out of the agreed nuclear agreement with Iran back in 2018, one in which members of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) were allowed full and unannounced visits to Iran's nuclear facilities and kept reporting that all was staying well within the agreed limits?  The answer is yes, although one would be hard pressed to find any news agencies reporting such, as if such details were ordered to be buried alongside those Epstein files, redacted and never to be answered under oath, at least not by any members of the current administration (nothing to hide here, full transparency, but don't say any of that under oath).  And how comfortable are we in allowing a former Fox News host to tell Stars & Stripes, "We can sustain this fight easily for as long as we need."  Such inexperience seems to be exactly what Iran wants, to have the US continue to use up its $4 million Patriot missiles to shoot down each of Iran's $20,000 drones.  In just 3 days of operation Epic Fury, the US has used half of its Interceptor missiles.  As World Data explained: The math is stark: if Operation Epic Fury sustains its Day 3 intercept tempo of approximately 370+ intercepted threats per day and a conservative intercept ratio of one interceptor per two threats, the Camden facility’s entire annual output could theoretically be consumed in less than three days of sustained operations.  That is not a hypothetical risk — it is the operational reality that Army planners are managing in real time as of March 3, 2026.   And contrast that with the highest output obtained in a year (for Lockheed) of producing just over 1 (one!) missile per day, vs. Ukraine's ability to make 1000 drones per day, wrote the Center for Eastern Studies (I use Ukraine as an example because if Ukraine can do it, likely the Russia-backed Iran could match that pace).  Added Bloomberg: ...opening salvos of the war included BGM-109 Tomahawks, which are slow but accurate cruise missiles with a range of more than 1,000 miles.  They are designed to hit targets deep in well defended territory (as in, the former Soviet Union).  They cost several million dollars apiece and the US has about 4,000 remaining in its stockpiles, said Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center.  But Trump has used hundreds so far in the Iran War.  With fewer than 100 produced every year and US stockpiles of other weapons depleted by efforts to help Ukraine defend against Russia—not to mention a defense industrial complex regularly hobbled by delay, defects and cost overruns—the war is diminishing America’s ability to fight a more formidable foe.  Like China.  All of that is reportedly the strategy of Iran, to test the short-sighted views of this news host turned Secretary of War, and goad him into using up the US' arsenal of expensive weapons, then possibly strike anew.  And should Trump and Hegseth suddenly (and surprisingly) find themselves out of interceptor missiles, well there's always the nuclear stuff (although let's hope even they are sensible enough to not go there).  And what was all this bombing really about since it didn't seem to really be about uranium enrichment (and we already fell for that yellow cake stuff)?  Dare I mention that oil and energy funds are soaring (as but one example, Vanguard's Admiral Energy has returned 68% since the start of the year).  Oops, time's up so I'll step down from my soapbox.  A few deep breaths, a swallow of water (and with the bombing of desalination plants, millions will face water shortages) and ahhh, I'm feeling much better...anyway, this post isn't about any of that. 

Aerial view of a cattle feedlot.  Photo: Overview

      Recently my wife and I went out with some friends and our server told us of that night's special, a 16-oz ribeye smothered in a gorgonzola reduction and topped with something or another.  Then he added, "and that's priced at $68," as if it was no big deal.  Sixty-eight dollars!  Now jump to the chain outlet whose customers balk at a $25 steak (us).  What??  Twenty-five dollars for a cut of beef?  But if you're the franchisee (say at Outback or somewhere similar), what do you do?  Select a "lower" cut of beef, or look for a bigger bone to add weight to that 16-oz. cut, or cut your profit and offer a "special" to make it seem like a deal?  Or push the shrimp or chicken which would give you a higher return (and at the end of the day, how long do you hang onto those unsold cuts of beef, a question we tend to ask at less-filled sushi places).  May as well stay at home, except that prices of beef at the grocery store are equally shocking.  What's the deal?

      But here's a number: 59 pounds.  That's the average amount of beef an American consumes each year...still.  And those veggie substitutes?  A few of the companies making them are in trouble, as in financial trouble as restaurants and fast food chains (such as Carl's, Jr.) drop such offerings from their menus.  Beyond Meat, one such maker of non-meat "meat," just watched its debt deal push it to the verge of bankruptcy as its stock price collapsed, wrote the LA Times.  And it's not alone.  According to the alt-protein trade group Good Food Institute, wrote Fast Company, funding to cultivated-meat companies has shrunk from $1.38 billion in 2021 to just $139 million in 2024.  Their article dealt with the surprise shutdown of Believer Meats which was one of the pioneers of cell-grown alt-meat now so popular in Israel.  And it wasn't so long ago, said the same piece, that Eat Just founder Josh Tetrick (he created the "just" brand such as the eggless Just Mayo and Just Eggs), wrote in his 2018 book that  "a think tank predicted that demand for cow products would fall by 70% by that same year."  Ah, those predictive markets...

      Apparently meat is meat, and demand for it (especially beef) is not slowing down.  Less meat has a better ring it seems, than meat-less.  Yet a quick glance at any grocery store or fast food outlet or restaurant pretty much anywhere makes one wonder how such places can keep so much meat in their refrigerators, with steaks, bacon, and chicken tenders hitting fast food grills minute after minute...Kentucky Fried, Cane's, Popeyes, In-N-Out, McDonald's, Texas Roadhouse, Outback (mentioned earlier but now in financial trouble after raising prices), and on and on.  And that's not factoring in those $65 tenderloins in fancier restaurants (which are doing quite well according to the NY Times, although none of our group ordered the "special" ribeye at our outing).  Now full disclosure: I haven't eaten meat (anything 2- or 4-legged anyway) for 40 years and have had my share of alternative meat products, including Just Eggs which I would often pick up at huge discounts (sometimes just 10% of their normal price) when I would bring supplies to an outdoor homeless kitchen.  The "eggs" passed the taste test, not only with me but with the homeless as well (although we may not have been an ideal tasting audience, which includes myself).  And while many of today's products do indeed taste "fine" to my resigned taste buds (which have likely withered away when it comes to how real meat tastes) such products often fail the test when I give surrounding meat eaters a sample of an alt-meat something (two exceptions being the Beyond Italian Sausage, and the Impossible Steak Bites which both got courteous nods of approval).

      But don't think that I'm harping on this topic like some veggie braggart feeling all uppity.  The issue of beef has now become serious enough to become the cover story of a recent issue of Barron's.  Wait, Barron's, that near-unaffordable JP Morgan-type financial magazine (deals can be had but the yearly price is over $275).  Uh, yup (there's even a section on the growing market for catching cattle rustlers)...seems that cattle are now easy cash-in-hand, and it could be because cattle herds in the US haven't been this low since 1951.  Mexico accounted for nearly 5% of our beef but a screw worm outbreak (mentioned in an earlier post) has currently stopped all shipments.  Even one of the "big 4" (four companies dominate the meat processing industry in the US) shuttered a slaughterhouse in Nebraska.  For today's ranchers, it comes down to genetic predictors.  A heifer takes 2 years to have her first calf, and should something go wrong she is sold for meat.  If she has a calf, it means another 6-8 months before the calf can be auctioned off.  Whether an egg-laying chicken or a milk-producing cow (or dare I say, an elderly person), a breeding heifer is good as long as she can  successfully produce.  Suddenly that tender loin takes on new meaning...

      So back to those burgers and steaks.  The bigger question seems to be "what do we eat?"  And it's a good question, one professor emeritus Vaclav Smil has asked for over 50 years.  His recent book (he's written 49 others) is How to Feed the World, and he points out that even those huge pre-1800s bison herds would have fed just over 2 million people, about the same results that slaughtering all of the estimated 30 million wild deer today would accomplish.  Hares, rabbits, squirrels, rodents...forget it (he estimates 50 people would need to kill 600 rabbits each week to survive).  So just how many cows do we have in those feedlots if all those now wiped-out bison and wild deer wouldn't do the trick?  Answer: a lot!  20 years ago we used to slaughter 100,000 per day.  These days, that number has dropped to about 74,000 cows per day, according to the industry letter Feedlot Magazine.   But that number is rather small when compared to both goats and sheep, pigs, or of course, chickens (at 200 million per day).  And fish?  You don't want to know.  And yet, the shelves keep emptying and the restaurants keep filling.  We are big eaters, and there are a LOT of us.  Old McDonald's farm is history for the most part, at least here in the US...

      "More than 200 million acres --85%-- of Western public lands are grazed by livestock, mainly beef cows," wrote High Country News, causing one reader to write in: So let me get this straight: my public lands and tax dollars are being wasted to support 50,000 outdated ranchers and a few billionaires so they can continue to destroy what little biodiversity we have left in the West?  Livestock and people literally outnumber mammals on this planet, and we've killed more that 50% of our wildlife.  Cattle pay big in this destruction, and in the West we're down to less than 10% of public lands that are truly wild.  All this for 2% of our beef?  Why not leave the ranching to those who actually own the land they run cattle on, and let the wildlife have the public land?  And then, when wild populations recover, hunt them sustainably?  The meat is much healthier, with no work or antibiotics needed.  And the rest of the wildlife could get a chance to recover too.  Added the article that caused such a reaction: 

Ranching’s dominion over the West began in the mid-1800s, when cattle barons --aided by the federal government’s westward-expansion policies and the forcible removal of the region’s Indigenous peoples-- built vast ranching empires on tribal lands.  Hundreds of thousands of cows grazed on the tall bunchgrasses of the sagebrush steppe, which the newcomers and government dubbed “the range,” a term that later morphed into “rangeland” and is now widely used to describe the sagebrush steppe...By the early 1900s, livestock herds had decimated native vegetation in the West, and ranchers needed help.  Only 16% of public rangeland was in good condition, according to a 1934 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture...A major component of the government’s early range-management programs involved seeding the depleted lands with non-native crested wheatgrass, which ranchers favored for its agreeable taste to livestock and ability to withstand heavy grazing.  The federal government also killed sagebrush on several million acres in Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Colorado, Nevada, California, Utah and Wyoming, spraying the shrubs with herbicide and then seeding the ground with crested wheatgrass...In 2022, after Kauffman [Boone Kauffman, an Oregon State University ecologist] published two studies that found that grazing degraded public land, local cattle industry leaders called for his removal from Oregon State University, he said.  “There’s a real pressure, and probably unprecedented pressure at the moment, on state and federally funded scientists to not go against the cattle industry.”  Cue Oprah Winfrey discovering that even her then-devoted following was not immune from the cattle industry.  And remember that marketing campaign from oil companies about plastics?  Picture the new push by the dairy cow industry (which appeared in National Geographic); catch the fine print and you'll see just what those cows are being fed to keep that milk coming...by-products, fruit peels, almond hulls?  

      Now don't mistake me for someone preaching, since I do grill steaks and such for my wife and friends, and also feed my dog all sorts of wet and dry dog food which contain meat ingredients.  And let's face it, being a rancher or a cowboy/girl would be way too tough for a city slicker like me.  And some of these ranchers, like farmers, have it in their blood generation after generation (not talking the billionaire hobby type).  And raising livestock (soon to be deadstock) for food is worldwide, as it has been for centuries.  Rather, I fall back to the basics of supply & demand.  There are a LOT of us humans, each wanting a piece of the pie (or burger) and even with all the subsidized water troughs and grazing lands, there doesn't seem to be a neat, compromising ending.  So I took solace in the words of two editors, both of whom suggested that we should just have another look at things, not so much a different perspective but to have multiple perspectives.  First up, the editor Nathan Lump of National Geographic, reviewing the annual "photos of the year" for the magazine: Give yourself time to absorb and contemplate these images.  Think about what they depict, and see what they say to you.  For me, I find enclosed in them a sense of urgency, a call to preserve what's in danger of being lost, as well as a reminder of the poetic beauty to be found in carrying on, in daring to dream of a better future.  Then there was this from editor Jennifer Sahn of High Country News: It is not wrong to seek solace in nature.  But we cannot turn a blind eye to injustice, however far away it occurs.  We have to figure out how to keep both things in view, the angels and the oil derricks.  To get up each morning and meditate for a moment on beauty before diving into whatever fresh horrors the news of the day brings.  The threats and the cruelty are unlikely to cease...we are called to bear witness, and to respond. 

      The video below is one I've always enjoyed, the story being that the daughter of composer Henry Mancini wanted to give her parents something special for Christmas so she wrote them a poem about the importance of family and friends, a poem Mancini then put to music.  The lyrics are simple but conclude with this: ... and I think about the times I have forgotten to say thank you.  We do that often, getting so caught up in what is happening on the news or across the world that we forget to think about those people and places we love, including nature and the fact that we are alive.  And I feel that such thoughts were what those editors were trying to convey, that while there is much badness and ugliness out there, there is also much goodness and beauty, and that it is often right in our backyard, or down the street, or sitting next to you.  And we need to remember that and be thankful.  The science editor of the same magazine brought another view of how to picture gratitude in our lives, pointing out just how fragile life can be: To help readers understand how incredibly recently humans appeared, John McPhee, in his 1981 book Basin and Range, suggests spreading your arms out wide and imagining that the distance from fingertip to fingertip represents 4.5 billion years -- the age of Earth.  In comparison, he writes, the 300,000 years since Homo sapiens evolved is so brief that "in a single stroke with a medium-grained nail file to you could eradicate human history."  This possibly happening because of cows is one thing.  But this happening because of nuclear war would be quite another.  

  

                        

P.S. Just when you hoped this talk of cows was over and done with, I had to throw in one more grammar question: why do we use corral instead of pen?  The OK corral in Tombstone didn't have any cattle, so why do we still associate that word with cattle (do we say a sheep corral, or call a prison a people corral?).  Both words can pass muster, as in "corral those hooligans" or "lock up those goofballs in the pen" (which was often meant to convey a jail back in the day).   But then, didn't we used to write with a pen?  Dang, learning the nuances of English is a tough thought, through and through, although...well, see what I mean?