FOOD: Meat on the Menu

With steers beginning to jam stockyard pens and hogs flooding to market, the U.S. Government moved to put more meat on U.S. platters. It did this by lifting quotas on livestock slaughter so that the stockyard pens could be cleared. It also lowered ration points on many meat items.

Estimated U.S. meat production in 1943 (24 billion lb.) is the highest in history. The pork now flowing in will be good, because farmers have found it more profitable to fatten their hogs with corn than to sell the corn at low ceiling prices.

But the new beef will be more bony and gristly, because it is not finished on grain before going to market. The reason is that Midwestern feeders have been unable to pay Western cattlemen’s high prices and still make a profit. Now that range grass is growing scarce, Western steers are stampeding, not to feeders who fatten steers into tasty corn-fed steaks, but directly to U.S. dining tables.