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2.5 Billion Pounds of Meat is Piling up in the US as Exports Slow Down

posted by martyb on Thursday July 26 2018, @06:24AM   
from the It's-a-meat-wave! dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

WKBW-TV reports:

Some new numbers are showing that the U.S. has more than 2.5 billion lbs [1.1 million metric tons] of meat in cold storage warehouses, and it's all because Americans aren't eating enough to keep up with supply.

Another reason is that the trade situation is chipping away at global demand.

[...] The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects the industry will produce a record 102.7 billion pounds of meat this year.

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Original Submission

• Re:Are they working on JIT feeding? Re:Are they working on JIT feeding? (Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday July 26 2018, @12:56PM (1 child)

  by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday July 26 2018, @12:56PM (#713060) Journal

  Something to keep in mind before you pull that rare and bloody hunk of meat off the BBQ and drop it on a plate this summer.

  A bit of a digression, but if you're talking about a solid hunk of beef (like a steak), the vast majority of bacterial contamination present is generally on the surface. A surface sear on a grill (or very hot pan or whatever) will be sufficient to make the meat safe to eat. If that weren't so, Americans would suffer food poisoning at much greater rates by eating medium-rare or rare steak.

  Things are different for things like a hamburger, where the interior is likely to be contaminated during processing. That's why various food safety organizations recommend higher cooking temperatures or pasteurization steps to ensure safe burgers... And why ground beef is frequently a source of outbreaks.

  Also, you referenced an "oversized freezer" for storage: bacteria don't grow in freezing temperatures and most commercial meat stored that way is vacuum-packed in primal or subprimal cuts at wholesale before being broken down and repackaged for retail sale. A vacuum-sealed hunk of beef is not going to accumulate more bacteria or become more unsafe whether it's stored for a few days or a few months. (Though eventually quality may begin to degrade.)

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• Re:Are they working on JIT feeding? (Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Thursday July 26 2018, @01:19PM

  by zocalo (302) on Thursday July 26 2018, @01:19PM (#713070)

  Assuming it's similar to the UK, then meat storage is going to depend on the type of meat and the specific storage facility. Another thing the article doesn't mention is what stages of the processing the storage backlog is occuring - are we talking whole carcasses from the abatoir, at some other step on the way to the store, or at all stages of the process (which seems most likely for a JIT distribution model)? In the ideal case the complete carcass from the abatoir is cleaned and hung as-is in a regularly cleaned walk-in freezer arrangement until it's ready to be processed into the packs you usually see on the shelf, shipped to a butchers, etc. at which point it moves rapidily through the system until it reaches a consumer. When corners are being cut it's usually things like the temperature and level of sanitation that are the first things to go because they cost money to do properly and it's about the only "slack" in the system the distribution network owner can control. In one particularly extreme case that made the news over here a few years back, chicken carcasses (of all things!) were simply piled on a concrete floor in temperatures that were insufficiently low to prevent bacterial growth and rot to the point that the resultant sludge was literally running out from under the pile and across the floor.

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  UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

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