6 ms·

Maybe this is an indication of how out of touch I am, but I don't see why there is a push to lower the cost of chicken meat. It is already super cheap. You can

by vinhboy 10y ago

Maybe this is an indication of how out of touch I am, but I don't see why there is a push to lower the cost of chicken meat. It is already super cheap. You can get a whole rotisserie chicken at Safeway for $5 or less. That's a whole damn chicken, and the labor of someone cooking it for you! Unless you're eating a ridiculous amount of chicken at every meal, which you probably shouldn't, the cost of chicken could be higher if it means better working conditions and humane treatment of the animal.

manachar 10y ago
Have you found any commodity where there isn't a push to lower the cost? That's pretty much what capitalism does.
- harigov 10y ago
  Given that capitalism is a balancing act, I wish there is a drive towards incorporating externalities like employee happiness, safety, environmental friendliness, etc., on to the products by introducing some sort of ratings and making sure that all the products include that.
  - mikeyouse 10y ago
    Whole Foods provides ratings on its meat[1] -- but instead of $5 for an entire chicken from Safeway, it's more like $7/lb for boneless/skinless breasts at Whole Foods. It turns out that social responsibility is expensive. [1] - https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/mission-values/animal-welfare/animal-welfare-basics https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/mission-values/animal-welfa...
- Retric 10y ago
  Collage tuition or CEO pay? CD's are older, but used to fit.
  - DKnoll 10y ago
    None of those 3 examples are commodities.
    - Retric 10y ago
      I think that's arguable but how about: hardwood, crab meat, wolf pelts. Basically, anything with a finite supply and limited ability to mass produce.
      - DKnoll 10y ago
        It's not at all arguable, by definition each instance of a commodity is equivalent. Each CEO's value is not equivalent, nor is the music on any CD or each degree program available at every university.
        Retric 10y ago
        Every cow is different that does not prevent them from being treated as a commodity. "In economics, a commodity is a marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. Often the item is fungible. Economic commodities comprise goods and services. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity Staff ex:Nurses are generally treated as a commodity in many economic models. Music/Books/Movies can also be treated like this. Sure, as a consumer I might pick A over B, but movie theaters don't individually price movies based on quality.
        DKnoll 10y ago
        They can be treated as a commodity as they are graded on value. How would a commodity market work if each instance of the commodity had a different value? Both live steers, and their resulting leather, beef and other byproducts are sold based upon weight and/or grade. For example, 'a cow' is not a commodity... but a grade 3 live steer is. Movie theatres do not price films based upon quality, but the distributors certainly do (I managed a movie theatre). You cannot commoditise a movie ticket, each theatre provides different facility and presentation quality.
macawfish 10y ago
Why is there a push? Cause Machiavellian capitalism is rampant.
brianwawok 10y ago
So you make a Chicken processing company. Pay your workers $20 an hour and plenty of breaks. You sell Chickens for $4. Another company pays workers $4 an hour and makes them wear diapers. Sells Chickens for $3.75. Barring an outside force (regulation, feel good marketing campaign, ethics badge), which one gets 100% of the market, and which one gets 0%? Sometimes, free market sucks.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  It's the winner-take-all paradox, which was mentioned in an article here on HN earlier today. Given only a small incremental competitive advantage, a company is able to capture the overwhelming majority of the market, essentially becoming a monopoly.
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    Hence the sad world we live in with ever decreasing wages ;(
Pxtl 10y ago
That always blows my mind. It's an animal's whole damned life. It was born, raised to a large-enough size to eat, housed, fed, slaughtered, plucked, shipped, cooked, and served to the customer, plus profits at every step of the way. For $5.
- pweissbrod 10y ago
  you just summarized why i stopped eating meat in one line. thank you for this. I will quote it in the future.
nefitty 10y ago
There seem to be a lot of factors, besides competition, pushing poultry prices down. Most notably, numerous government subsidies: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-shapiro/the-chicken-industry_b_3947857.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-shapiro/the-chicken-indus...
jalons 10y ago
Those are also (usually) loss leaders for the super markets. Not that that makes this acceptable, of course.
searine 10y ago
>Unless you're eating a ridiculous amount of chicken at every meal, which you probably shouldn't, the cost of chicken could be higher if it means better working conditions and humane treatment of the animal. This is a privileged viewpoint. When dealing with food policy you need to view the food system from the perspective of those impoverished. Cheap food is a big deal, and often it's the only thing keeping millions of people in this country from starving. As such, keeping food cheap is an cornerstone of governmental policy because hunger=revolution.
- teekert 10y ago
  Keeping food cheap, or rather, as cheap as possible makes good food a luxury item. Redistribution of wealth would be much more effective.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Funny how animal welfare activists, environmentalists opposed to factory farming, and minimum wage increase labor reformers should all be working together on this. I would've never thought of that coalition.
  - antisthenes 10y ago
    Redistribution of wealth faces the problem of fleeing capital from your country. Remember that the global elite (people who control the vast majority of the capital) is highly mobile and from their perspective there's no difference between being robbed and having their wealth "redistributed". It should also be taken into account that even if the wealth was redistributed, each poor person would only receive a minute amount, for example let's say 1 share of Google, Amazon and a few more shares. They would almost immediately have to sell this wealth to transform it into income for current needs.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      In this case, redistribution would be raising wages. It doesn't matter if "the global elite" is mobile. They're not going to move their factory farming operations outside of the US, and if they do, you tariff them when they ship the product back in.
anonymfus 10y ago
May be because it's exported to countries where not everybody can afford it at ever this prices?
logicallee 10y ago
Possibly rotisserie chicken is a bad example, at least there is an urban legend that the smell of roasted chicken makes people buy more at grocery shops. That means it makes them money even if they sell it for $1 or any other price - if the urban legend is true it is subsidized by increased sales of everything else you would buy there.
- xenihn 10y ago
  It's a loss leader -- something sold at a loss for the sake of attracting customers to a store. Maybe they go to the store with the specific intention to buy a chicken, or they choose the store over another because they can get a chicken along with other stuff that they need. Either way, they end up spending more money on other (profitable) things.
  - logicallee 10y ago
    well the effect I heard is that even people who don't buy the chicken (ever, they just aren't chicken buyers) buy more of everything else due to the smell. So the store doesn't need to sell any at all, it just needs to be there. Though come to think of it this actually wouldn't affect price (because that smell effect would hold true if it's too expensive, right?) so perhaps it's a combination of both your effect (which affects chicken buyers) and the one I heard about (which affects non-buyers).
    - xenihn 10y ago
      That doesn't really make much sense in a massive warehouse store like Costco. You're not going to smell the chicken unless you're very close to it.
- extrapickles 10y ago
  Its also a somewhat common practice to cook raw food right before its self life is up to give it another shot at being sold. So by going through the expense of cooking it, they prevent the loss of having to throw it out. Not all stores do this though.
TheCoelacanth 10y ago
There are over a billion people who would have to spend 100% of their income for four days or more to afford that $5 chicken.
- undersuit 10y ago
  But they don't buy the $5 chicken, they buy their local chicken equivalent at their market rates. Maybe their market rates aren't as a screaming deal as $5 is for an american, but they also have a much better chance to raise their own chickens without an H.O.A. shutting them down.
  - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
    Most of them simply don't have chicken at all. There are roughly 800 million people who don't have adequate access to food. It doesn't seem like it if you like in a developed country, but for over 10% of the people in the world, the price of food actually is of extreme importance.
Retric 10y ago
Those are generally subsidized, with the sides having vastly higher markups.

by vinhboy 10y ago

manachar 10y ago

Have you found any commodity where there isn't a push to lower the cost? That's pretty much what capitalism does.

harigov 10y ago
Given that capitalism is a balancing act, I wish there is a drive towards incorporating externalities like employee happiness, safety, environmental friendliness, etc., on to the products by introducing some sort of ratings and making sure that all the products include that.
- mikeyouse 10y ago
  Whole Foods provides ratings on its meat[1] -- but instead of $5 for an entire chicken from Safeway, it's more like $7/lb for boneless/skinless breasts at Whole Foods. It turns out that social responsibility is expensive. [1] - https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/mission-values/animal-welfare/animal-welfare-basics https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/mission-values/animal-welfa...
Retric 10y ago
Collage tuition or CEO pay? CD's are older, but used to fit.
- DKnoll 10y ago
  None of those 3 examples are commodities.
  - Retric 10y ago
    I think that's arguable but how about: hardwood, crab meat, wolf pelts. Basically, anything with a finite supply and limited ability to mass produce.
    - DKnoll 10y ago
      It's not at all arguable, by definition each instance of a commodity is equivalent. Each CEO's value is not equivalent, nor is the music on any CD or each degree program available at every university.
      - Retric 10y ago
        Every cow is different that does not prevent them from being treated as a commodity. "In economics, a commodity is a marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. Often the item is fungible. Economic commodities comprise goods and services. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity Staff ex:Nurses are generally treated as a commodity in many economic models. Music/Books/Movies can also be treated like this. Sure, as a consumer I might pick A over B, but movie theaters don't individually price movies based on quality.
        DKnoll 10y ago
        They can be treated as a commodity as they are graded on value. How would a commodity market work if each instance of the commodity had a different value? Both live steers, and their resulting leather, beef and other byproducts are sold based upon weight and/or grade. For example, 'a cow' is not a commodity... but a grade 3 live steer is. Movie theatres do not price films based upon quality, but the distributors certainly do (I managed a movie theatre). You cannot commoditise a movie ticket, each theatre provides different facility and presentation quality.

macawfish 10y ago

Why is there a push? Cause Machiavellian capitalism is rampant.

brianwawok 10y ago

So you make a Chicken processing company. Pay your workers $20 an hour and plenty of breaks. You sell Chickens for $4. Another company pays workers $4 an hour and makes them wear diapers. Sells Chickens for $3.75. Barring an outside force (regulation, feel good marketing campaign, ethics badge), which one gets 100% of the market, and which one gets 0%? Sometimes, free market sucks.

antisthenes 10y ago
It's the winner-take-all paradox, which was mentioned in an article here on HN earlier today. Given only a small incremental competitive advantage, a company is able to capture the overwhelming majority of the market, essentially becoming a monopoly.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Hence the sad world we live in with ever decreasing wages ;(

Pxtl 10y ago

That always blows my mind. It's an animal's whole damned life. It was born, raised to a large-enough size to eat, housed, fed, slaughtered, plucked, shipped, cooked, and served to the customer, plus profits at every step of the way. For $5.

pweissbrod 10y ago
you just summarized why i stopped eating meat in one line. thank you for this. I will quote it in the future.

nefitty 10y ago

There seem to be a lot of factors, besides competition, pushing poultry prices down. Most notably, numerous government subsidies: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-shapiro/the-chicken-industry_b_3947857.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-shapiro/the-chicken-indus...

jalons 10y ago

Those are also (usually) loss leaders for the super markets. Not that that makes this acceptable, of course.

searine 10y ago

>Unless you're eating a ridiculous amount of chicken at every meal, which you probably shouldn't, the cost of chicken could be higher if it means better working conditions and humane treatment of the animal. This is a privileged viewpoint. When dealing with food policy you need to view the food system from the perspective of those impoverished. Cheap food is a big deal, and often it's the only thing keeping millions of people in this country from starving. As such, keeping food cheap is an cornerstone of governmental policy because hunger=revolution.

teekert 10y ago
Keeping food cheap, or rather, as cheap as possible makes good food a luxury item. Redistribution of wealth would be much more effective.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Funny how animal welfare activists, environmentalists opposed to factory farming, and minimum wage increase labor reformers should all be working together on this. I would've never thought of that coalition.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  Redistribution of wealth faces the problem of fleeing capital from your country. Remember that the global elite (people who control the vast majority of the capital) is highly mobile and from their perspective there's no difference between being robbed and having their wealth "redistributed". It should also be taken into account that even if the wealth was redistributed, each poor person would only receive a minute amount, for example let's say 1 share of Google, Amazon and a few more shares. They would almost immediately have to sell this wealth to transform it into income for current needs.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    In this case, redistribution would be raising wages. It doesn't matter if "the global elite" is mobile. They're not going to move their factory farming operations outside of the US, and if they do, you tariff them when they ship the product back in.

anonymfus 10y ago

May be because it's exported to countries where not everybody can afford it at ever this prices?

logicallee 10y ago

Possibly rotisserie chicken is a bad example, at least there is an urban legend that the smell of roasted chicken makes people buy more at grocery shops. That means it makes them money even if they sell it for $1 or any other price - if the urban legend is true it is subsidized by increased sales of everything else you would buy there.

xenihn 10y ago
It's a loss leader -- something sold at a loss for the sake of attracting customers to a store. Maybe they go to the store with the specific intention to buy a chicken, or they choose the store over another because they can get a chicken along with other stuff that they need. Either way, they end up spending more money on other (profitable) things.
- logicallee 10y ago
  well the effect I heard is that even people who don't buy the chicken (ever, they just aren't chicken buyers) buy more of everything else due to the smell. So the store doesn't need to sell any at all, it just needs to be there. Though come to think of it this actually wouldn't affect price (because that smell effect would hold true if it's too expensive, right?) so perhaps it's a combination of both your effect (which affects chicken buyers) and the one I heard about (which affects non-buyers).
  - xenihn 10y ago
    That doesn't really make much sense in a massive warehouse store like Costco. You're not going to smell the chicken unless you're very close to it.
extrapickles 10y ago
Its also a somewhat common practice to cook raw food right before its self life is up to give it another shot at being sold. So by going through the expense of cooking it, they prevent the loss of having to throw it out. Not all stores do this though.

TheCoelacanth 10y ago

There are over a billion people who would have to spend 100% of their income for four days or more to afford that $5 chicken.

undersuit 10y ago
But they don't buy the $5 chicken, they buy their local chicken equivalent at their market rates. Maybe their market rates aren't as a screaming deal as $5 is for an american, but they also have a much better chance to raise their own chickens without an H.O.A. shutting them down.
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  Most of them simply don't have chicken at all. There are roughly 800 million people who don't have adequate access to food. It doesn't seem like it if you like in a developed country, but for over 10% of the people in the world, the price of food actually is of extreme importance.

Retric 10y ago

Those are generally subsidized, with the sides having vastly higher markups.