If beef and animal production is so expensive, why is it relatively cheap on the market?

hamburgers are cheap, most meat is relatively cheap, but the environmental people say that it is much more expensive to produce. How does it stay in business if this is true? what's goin on?

Why aren't things priced according to how much resources are used by the food or product? It would seem like a really good idea going towards reducing polution, and saving on world resources of course.

Meat is an unsustainable price model, thats all you need to know. It is propped up by government subsiby ( of which i get a chunk for my arable farm ).

i know, i'm in the middle of it. Farmers around me are falling apart because of the price pressure that meat-eaters force on the industry.

Guess who suffers ?

Do you think its the shareholders of slaughter houses, or the CEO of MCDs, or the supermarket owners ?

Nop, the only place to cut costs is animal welfare and husbandry.

The "ecomomies of scale" is wrong. No matter which way you cut it ( ha ! ) the meat industry is currently unsustainable at consumer prices without subsidy.

We ahve pet cows and sheep and they take up many acres which could be used to feed many people if the world so chose. The water feed and land they require is disproportianately high to the meat they would provide.

because they have weird chemicals that make them last longer so they have been on the shelves forever so they don't have to through out rotten meat and waste money!!! ewwwww

This stems from the confusion between financial cost and environmental cost. Meat is financially cheap to produce because of the high demand for it in Western countries. Wsterners tend to hog resources, not just meat but also fossil fuels, power, water, etc.

It is lower in cost do to the volume of the production. However, hamburger is pretty much the lowest priced meat from a cow. The cheap stuff also has the higher amounts of fat. If you compared it to steaks or other types it is more costly.

Cows are huge, 1-ton animals. They have tons of burger per cow.

Soybeans are small, 3-gram vegetables. They have minimal "soy-meat" per bean.

Do the math--cow burgers will probably always be cheaper than soy burgers.

Meat (amongst other foods, such as eggs, dairy, corn...) is heavily subsidized by the governments of several industrialized countries. Otherwise it -would- be too expensive, most people wouldn't buy it, and thus industries that need subsidies to stay afloat lobby the government to achieve this.

Harry D: You are right, that grain and dairy are what are subsidized, but it is that cheap grain that feeds the cattle used for beef, the chickens, the pigs, etc. Nothing we buy in the stores is priced in terms of resources consumed to make it, but instead a staggering number of factors, including government subsidies which play a large role in keeping prices for foods stable and affordable (and preventing such economic disasters as the grain market crashes that occurred around the Depression era). When environmentalists talk about expenses, it is in terms of resources consumed (which, raising livestock in the United States at least, consumes a lot of), not the end result number on the price sticker at the Walmart.

when i stopped eating meat i noticed i was spending far less on my groceries than i was before i stopped. a hamburger might cost a few bucks (maybe less for fast food, but hey, it's fast food) but a portabella mushroom (which i think tastes better than a hamburger) grilled costs about 50 cents plus the cost for the bun. plus it takes about 4 minutes to cook vs 2 or 3 times that for the meat.

so to answer your question, i will say that i do not agree. expense is relative. if you're used to eating expensive, certain meats might seem cheap. if you're used to meat, going veg can be a lot cheaper.

(not to say i don't splurge from time to time on expensive smoothies or gormet veggies)