A follow up on yesterday's discussion about beef prices.
I just read a good guest editorial by Dr. Rich Raymond, who was born and raised in Central Nebraska and practiced family medicine in NE Nebraska before becoming Nebraska's Chief Medical Officer and ultimately Undersecretary for Food Safety at the USDA (2005-2009). His main point was how beef is becoming so short and so expensive it could disappear permanently from some family tables (a risk I agree with), but he brought up two good points that affect the current supply of beef and therefore the current price of beef.
1. Lean Finely Textured Beef - the "Pink Slime" scare not only closed several processing plants and put a bunch of people out of work, but it also means there is a lot of lean beef that we used to recover for ground beef that is now going to rendering or pet food. To replace it, we have had to increase our imports of lean trimming from overseas which has also increased the costs (we can't begin to produce enough lean trimmings here to meet the ground beef demand, in part because we have become so efficient in the amount of beef produced per cow per year that there simply aren't enough cull cows to meet demand).
2. The loss of Zil-Max. While I'm more of an Opta-flexx fan myself (since it doesn't reduce grade and has no withdrawal) there is no debate that Zil-Max put the pounds on and we are seeing the effects of it being taken off of the market in less pounds of beef going to the packer.

A couple of really good insights, and what's most interesting to me is the activist consumers and city slicker press would have celebrated the loss of both LFTB and Zil-Max, and now they are getting their wish with higher beef prices for the masses (never underestimate the will of those that want everyone to eat less or no meat). Remember that Dr. Raymond was Undersecretary for Food Safety - he knows full well that both of these practices were perfectly safe and wholesome.