Meat Mystery

Who ate up all the meat in the U.S.? Last week consumers heard that beginning March 29 the meat ration will be 28 oz. a person a week--and will be pieced out by an undetermined amount of cheese. The announcement shocked most U.S. steak eaters.

The plan would reduce the U.S. almost to the low British level of meat consumption. The British are allowed 16 oz. of meat and 4 oz. of bacon and ham, plus 4 oz. of cheese a week. But a report by Lend-Lease Administrator Edward R. Stettinius punctured the theory that the U.S. was short of meat on Britain's account. Meat exports by Lend-Lease last year amounted to only 5% of the total supply. And Lend-Lease in reverse, i.e., food supplied by Australia and New Zealand to our armed forces abroad, exceeded our Lend-Lease shipments of beef, lamb and mutton by about eight million Ib.

Nor are the armed forces getting most of the meat. In a scholarly study of food production and prices last month, Cornell Professors F. A. Pearson and Don Pearlberg pointed out that even if eight million armed men eat up to 20% more than they did as civilians, as eating mouths they would be equivalent only to a mere 1% added to the U.S. population. And 1942's meat production (21 billion Ib.) was 10% greater than 1941's.

The only apparent explanation for the meat shortage was that the U.S. people themselves were eating more meat. The citizenry, always regarded as underfed by economists, now had the biggest income ever, was shielded from high prices by a benevolent OPA, was spared higher taxes by a pussyfooting Congress. Result: a national orgy of carnivory. Seldom in its history had the U.S. been all at work at one time. The country was getting suddenly rich--all over, all at once. The economy was stretching on a vast scale to catch up--but it had not caught up yet.

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