Meat Eaters

Though the cost of living has gone down 20%, the National Industrial Conference Board computes that the U. S. wage-earner's weekly pay envelope has shrunk 27.3% in real purchasing power. Despite this shrinkage the wage-earner has been able to buy more meat for his platter. Last week the Institute of American Meat Packers announced that total meat consumption was up for the first half of the third Depression year. Though less beef and veal went on the U. S. platter, pork consumption was up 152,000,000 lb., lamb up 13,000,000 lb. Last year's meat consumption was above 1930 but still below 1929. The Institute's figures cover the Federally inspected two-thirds of the industry's meat. The other one-third is slaughtered at small abattoirs not engaged in interstate trade, or at local butcher shops. The rise in meat eating the Institute attributes to low prices, in some cases the lowest of the century. The sharp rally in hogs (TIME, July 11) only brought pork prices abreast of the 1904 level.

Each & every U. S. citizen last year swallowed 133.2 lb. of meat inclusive of goats. Since the end of the beefsteak era meat consumption has tended to decrease. Pork has supplanted beef as the prime item of U. S. meat diet. Highest per capita meat consumption was in the panic year 1907--155.1 lb. As Food Administrator, Herbert Clark Hoover brought it down to 120 lb. in 1917, but it had climbed back to 149.7 lb. by 1924. Theories of balanced rations and a trend to vegetarianism have since cut it down sharply.

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