America’s meat shortage is more serious than the missing hamburgers | Hacker News Reader

America’s meat shortage is more serious than the missing hamburgers

vox.com

US Rep Thomas Massie has been talking about this for years and has seen a recent surge of support for his PRIME Act, which would allow small farms to have their livestock slaughtered at custom facilities instead of USDA facilities, if the meat is to then be sold within the state.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2020/04/27/gop-cong...

> (...) which would allow small farms to have their livestock slaughtered at custom facilities instead of USDA facilities

I don't understand. That bill only creates loopholes to avoid health and safety checks. What's the point?

I mean, the bill eliminates health and safety checks, and then declares that the bill "will further allow farmers to provide food, that would otherwise go to waste". Yet, the food that fails health and safety checks is supposed to be taken out of the market, right? Isn't that the whole point of the system? How is this compatible with a civilized society?

The same exemption already exists for poultry in the US. Right now, if I want to buy beef from a farmer down the road, I have to buy a whole or half cow, then have it butchered. This would allow farmers to sell cuts of beef locally. There are only a handful of USDA meat processors, they are all owned by multinational conglomerates, and they have no interest in processing cuts of meat at the local scale. They serve factory farms and the current law was designed to protect their grip on the market.

> The same exemption already exists for poultry in the US.

That doesn't matter at all. Either the health checks are not justified, or this bill is tailored to expose everyone to health and safety hazards just to increase some industry's profit margin.

Trying to spin this nonsense as a way to magically create food through legislation is disingenuous and takes advantage of people's ignorance.

Right now, cows are being killed without ever reaching a processor. Families are looking for meat at grocery stores and finding empty shelves. Does that make sense to you? Every state has a Health Department and laws regarding slaughter, and this bill would not exempt any processors from those laws.

Not clear how meat packing is different from packing green beans for example. Covid19 is affecting the workers who prepare the foods in the meat isles but somehow avoiding the workers who prepare the foods in the vegetable isles?

A also wondered. Maybe dissecting a pig is still more manual labor?

I'm sure no human hand touched my frozen peas.

This twitter thread has some details: https://twitter.com/NAChristakis/status/1256335430787579906

TL;DR: lots of aerosols around from cutting flesh with knives and saws, hard work in dense environment, often small injuries etc

"There’s a version of America and its food consumption habits that existed three months ago that might never exist again. Some might feel entitled to getting that back. Others will find something new to want."

Feeling or acting entitled towards anything (food, money, etc) only leads to disappointment. And I say that as a frequent consumer of all types of meat. Maybe it's time for some forced change, mother nature style?

Yeah, but isn't this why artificial meat companies are getting funding? To industrialise meat production and achieve unprecedented scale?

It's more of a meat avarice than a meat shortage.

I just love how extensive Vox's reporting is

Seriously, notice how there is no outrage over the posting of Vox articles, which is documented to be bias towards the left side of the political spectrum, but when someone posts something from a right leaning website, it gets flagged almost immediately.

If it helps, I've had many submitted articles flagged within a few minutes from posting them, the majority of them on debates regarding gender and neuroscience. My conclusion at the time was that they were being flagged by users who felt the articles pushed a certain liberal agenda (though that was not my intention). Despite that, I didn't conclude HN users in general have a certain political affiliation. Note that it only takes a few users to flag and bury an article and other users can do little to salvage a sufficiently flagged article.

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