Mad Cow Conundrum

I just went grocery shopping.

It got me to wondering…Canada hadn’t been able to export beef to the US for over two years, but yet we still pay the same for beef now (adjusting for inflation) as we did before the ban began.

My question is, when a farmer sells a 500 pound cow for $1.80, how is it I’m still paying 20$ for a steak? Where is the supply and demand logic in that? Who exactly is fucking we the consumers and we the farmers? The meat packing plants? The retailers? Isn’t it price fixing if one or the other conspired together to keep beef prices high and make a killing (literally) in the meat market?

What should have happened is beef prices should have plummeted as farmers, meat packers and retailers tried to dump the excess beef, and other meats should have risen, as the demand for alternative sources of protein would have distributed the burden on them (the chickens, the pigs, the fish).

I remember reading awhile back that there was an inquiry into this, but so far no one has gone to jail, no blame was cast. Makes me wish sometimes that I were a vegetarian.