Read on Twitter
A short thread on one of many, many weird things Coronavirus is doing to our supply chains – and so to how we live. For farmers, one of the big problems they& #39;re now facing has the joyous name of: carcass imbalance.
Here& #39;s what that is.
Here& #39;s what that is.
We ate a lot of meat pre-Coronavirus, and we& #39;re still eating a lot now. But how we& #39;re eating it has changed: we& #39;re not going to fancy restaurants, most of us aren& #39;t doing dinner parties or big roasts for extended family (if we did it before), but we& #39;re cooking at home a lot.
The result of that is a big jump in demand for the cheap cuts of meat – most notably the bits we use to make supermarket mince. At the same time, the stuff that& #39;s usually much more expensive, like the fancy steak cuts, has a big drop in demand.
The problem? You can& #39;t slaughter half a cow, or only the cheap bits of one. Normally, the different prices and demand for different cuts balances out – but right now it doesn& #39;t. Hence: carcass imbalance. To get the cheap mince we want, we& #39;re creating a huge steak stockpile.
The result is that we& #39;re running out of cold storage space for high-value meat. And the steaks keep coming. It& #39;s a real and serious problem for farmers and the industry, who are asking for intervention to make supermarkets or others buy the fancy cuts.
