Yes, indeed, the congress convenes in a different city every 2 years under the auspices of the even MORE bizzarly named International Meat Secretariat.
The motto of this year´s congress was "Meat for a Sustainable World."
The world might end up being sustainable ...but as for meat, well, you´d better eat up.
The biggest story to come out of the event was Wednesday´s speaker, Henning Steinfeld, PhD from the United Nations' FAO... Food and Agriculture Organization.
The UN's Dr. Steinfeld says beef will become as rare as caviar in 40 years. Imagine the look on that kid's face when you mention the days of 99¢ Whoppers.
And as a matter of fact, beef in Argentina got a little rarer this week. CICCRA, the Argentine Chamber of Meat Commerce said that beef prices in supermarkets rose 75% in the last year, live cattle prices have gone up 91%, the number of cattle here in Argentina went down 15%, beef exports are down 51% just this year and 6000 cattle ranchers have bailed out of the cow bidness in the last 4 years.
Meat packers like the Brazilian giant JBS, owners of Swift and Las Lilas, are laying off workers and closing down their Argentine plants just like the smaller slaughterhouses.
The value of your average Argentine slaughterhouse has dropped so much that some ranchers and municipalities are in talks to buy them.
2 comments:
Dr. Steinfeld's comment that beef will be as rare as caviar seems a bit over the top , not to mention a false analogy but it will be more expensive especially if it's raised in a sustainable manner. What U.N Boy doesnt mention is that 40 years from know the U.N calculates a human population of 9 billion and word food production will have to double. considering the amount of imputs we need to grow crops today along with the ferterlizer run offs killing our oceans eg " the gulf of mexico" soil depletion in most of the U.S is over 95% , alot of our foods gonna get rare and costly!
Yeah, I think those figures are based on a study that even the author now says was mistaken.
The main thing was the water figures. I think the author now admits that he calculated all the rain that falls on a pasture as going into the cattle and not the soil.
The figures actually work for some ranches/feedlots in California which rely completely on pumped ground water ...but those are rare.
Weird, thought ...that an FAO PhD would still be touting that study in an intl forum!
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