The amount of beef eaten per person per year in the USA is absolutely insane anyway:
USA - 37kg/capita
UK - 18kg/capita
We're not exactly shy of roast beef on this island either - the French nicknamed us "rosbifs" for a reason.
The amount of beef eaten per person per year in the USA is absolutely insane anyway:
USA - 37kg/capita
UK - 18kg/capita
We're not exactly shy of roast beef on this island either - the French nicknamed us "rosbifs" for a reason.
According to the Economist magazine, the global problem is Chinese people eating more meat.
Shouldn't per-capita consumption be factored in? Otherwise "the global problem" just boils down to whichever country is the "biggest" (by population or by GDP).
That's a deeply biased stance though, isn't it? It seems to say that USA and Brazil eating vast amounts of beef, the latter clearing the Amazon to do so, isn't a problem, it's only a problem now because of the Chinese.
The US and Brazil have eaten a lot of beef for a significant amount of time, so that had already been priced into the market.
A sudden spike in price requires a change in the market - e.g., the Chinese suddenly starting to eat more beef, wildfires wiping out grazing land, fuel price spikes making it more expensive to ship the product around, screwworm outbreaks reducing cattle headcount, crackdown on migrant workers reducing available labor for meatpacking plants, etc.
The word "problem" lacks nuance here. But it's a reasonable stand-in for "the factor that shifted and is the root cause".
I don't remember when I first found out, but it blew my mind that sausages in the US are typically beef. Like, what? Sausages are like quintessentially pork products. Like the whole point is that you have a lot of off cuts of a cheap meat and you make sausages. Beef sausages? Yeah, that's like a step change in wealth, haha.
> that sausages in the US are typically beef
They are? That's not my personal experience, but maybe there's something unusual in the part of the US I live in. I mean, beef sausages exist and you can get them, but you generally have to choose them intentionally.
I don't know well "all other pork" and retail ground beef work as proxies for sausage meat. But ground beef roughly doubled in price from 2010 to the start of 2020. Before it did that, it was very close in price to "all other pork", and before 2000 a bit cheaper.
Sausages are typically pork in the us. Hot dogs are often beef though
I wouldn't say they're "typically" all beef. When you go shopping for something like hotdogs for instance, if you just pick up a package of "hot dogs" or "weiners" they'll typically be a mixture of chicken, turkey, pork, and maybe beef. For instance:
https://www.oscarmayer.com/products/00044700000045-bun-lengt...
Some people really look down on these kinds of products though and see this as a "mystery meat" of extremely poor quality cuts. The whole phrase of "knowing how the sausage is made" comes to mind. So that's then in comparison to "franks", which are often 100% beef and are often seen as higher quality:
https://www.oscarmayer.com/products/00044700073377-jumbo-bee...
Are they higher quality? Eh. They're probably about the same in the end. One big thing pushing up the popularity of beef franks over pork/chicken/turkey mix is an impression of Kosher hotdogs being of very high quality during the time when meat packing was really bad, so lots of even non-Jewish people will often see Kosher dogs as superior. Which, for obvious reasons, have beef and not pork.
Brats are usually pork. For example:
https://johnsonville.com/products/original-bratwurst/
This is then true for other kinds of common sausages as well. Kielbasa is usually a pork and beef combination, maybe with some chicken or turkey:
https://www.hillshirefarm.com/products/smoked-sausages/00044...
They even make a point to say "smoked sausage" versus "beef smoked sausage".
https://www.hillshirefarm.com/products/smoked-sausages/00044...
https://www.hillshirefarm.com/products/smoked-sausages/00044...
Things like chicken sausages are also quite popular.
https://www.aidells.com/products/lunch-dinner-sausage/007640...
And one can't forget things like andouille sausage which is quite popular in a lot of Cajun dishes.
https://www.aidells.com/products/lunch-dinner-sausage/007640...
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