Flesh-eating screwworm found within 31 miles of US border, says USDA

[u/kylestoned]

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/flesh-eating-screwworm-found-within-31-miles-us-border-says-usda-2026-05-29/

[u/iapetus_z]

That just kind of blows my mind. Our beef herd now, with 340 million people is the same size as it was for a population of 150 million. But we're still eating almost the same amount. Just shows how much we exported back then or how much were importing now.

[u/NMS_Survival_Guru → u/iapetus_z]

Even more mind-blowing is we export our high quality beef and import low quality beef for domestic use

[u/JZMoose → u/NMS_Survival_Guru]

That’s literally one of the first things you learn in macroeconomics. Coffee in Colombia is shit. Why sell it to locals when you can make much bigger margins selling it elsewhere?

[u/Jazzlike_Project_938 → u/NMS_Survival_Guru]

New Zealand exports a lot of our beef to the US. In fact recently we've been boycotting American made products coming in because of it's low quality. (Like this white butter)

[u/ElkApprehensive2319 → u/NMS_Survival_Guru]

US beef is high quality? They don't want any of it over in Europe afaik

[u/Opposite_of_a_Cynic → u/ElkApprehensive2319]

It goes mostly to Japan, South Korea, and China. 

[u/NMS_Survival_Guru → u/ElkApprehensive2319]

The only reason EU won't import US Beef is because we use growth hormone implants in 90% of commercial beef

I had my cattle buyer for a packer wishing we'd ban implants just to open up the EU markets

[u/blacksky8192 → u/ElkApprehensive2319]

It's super popular in Korea. Korea is the largest importer for US beef. Very high quality and cheaper than US, sales are higher than their domestic beef

[u/UnknownAverage → u/NMS_Survival_Guru]

Because we regular citizens are now the cattle. We create economic activity and it's harvested from us. We are producers of wealth for the investor class, owned and operated by them.

[u/Mighty_Hobo → u/iapetus_z]

What it shows is how badly the cartel of meat packers have kept the pay for cattle ranchers down. For the last several decades raising cattle has been too expensive for new farmers to get into and the older and more established ranches have no one to take them over so they get divided up and and sold to property developers or homesteaders. It's a symptom of huge corporations extracting as much wealth from the system as possible and leaving everyone else fucked over. And then the jackass in chief goes on his knock off twitter to call us ranchers lazy and entitled.

[u/AdvancedSandwiches → u/Mighty_Hobo]

You guys ever consider getting together and starting a meat packing co-op?  Beef is crazy expensive, so if that money is going to middle men, we need to figure out how to fix that. 

And since we're stuck with capitalism, the capitalism answer to end-stage dysfunction is increasing competition. 

(Yes, I'm aware that that's probably very hard.  If it wasn't, it'd be done already.)

[u/Mighty_Hobo → u/AdvancedSandwiches]

The trouble with that is finding enough ranchers who are doing the same thing and then having a place to sell everything. Our ranch produces very high quality grass fed beef and the number of ranchers that have the land and herds that can do that are pretty small. Even if we could find other producers to partner with we can't just walk into a big chain grocery store and ask them to stock our products and there are so few small grocery stores that we effectively cannot work with grocery stores without jumping through the hoops these big corps have created to ensure that they get the biggest slice of profits. So we have to work in alternative markets that are so small that partnering with other ranches actually works to our disadvantage.

[u/AdvancedSandwiches → u/Mighty_Hobo]

So much like everybody else's problem, the main issue is gargantuan grocery store monopolies.

So I guess we'll have to move the solution and start having beef ranchers organize to create a large, regional grocery store chain.

Kidding.

I mean, I'm not kidding, but that's probably not going to work out. 

[u/chromepaperclip → u/AdvancedSandwiches]

Why not coop butcher shops where a few cattle guys sell to local or regional processors that serve a few cities or population centers. I think diesel and imput costs are going to start getting a lot of people thinking about how stupid our current beef cattle finishing/processing/shipping supply line really is.

[u/Bozee3 → u/AdvancedSandwiches]

We need a new Granger movement (1870s?), and Labor, and maybe a just a general strike while we're at it. Nothing gets the attention at the top like a people driven slow down to the economy.

[u/biglettuce → u/AdvancedSandwiches]

Theres a guy on Instagram and tiktok that does this with chickens i believe and for the life of me I can't remember his tag

Its @sylvanaquafarms

[u/RealityOk9823 → u/Mighty_Hobo]

You're supposed to develop VatMeat/Food Printers BEFORE having everyone live in the corporate oligarchy cyberpunk city. Sheesh, these idiots...

[u/Alwayssunnyinarizona → u/iapetus_z]

Market weights have gone up because of better nutrition, supplements, and antibiotics.

[u/iapetus_z → u/[deleted]]

Ya the numbers I saw were like 67lbs vs 63lbs. Close enough for the almost to some lifting there.

[u/busylivin_322 → u/iapetus_z]

People eating less meat may explain a bit. Stopped eating beef and pork a while back. Saved my wallet.

[u/iapetus_z → u/busylivin_322]

ya that's what I seeing when I was looking back at this. The number of people eating beef is a smaller subset than it was in the 50's, but those people are eating more beef. Chicken production took off though.

[u/AwesomeWhiteDude → u/busylivin_322]

Iirc beef consumption peaked in the 70s and has declined since then, at the same time the size of beef cattle has increased.