What Came First the Chicken or the Idiotic Idea to Fix its Price?
August 25th, 2011A question that has been plaguing man for years…well actually this year. The chicken industry has found themselves in a tight spot. Their production has increased 4% since last year, however poultry sales have lowered. Basic economics would tell you that the price of chicken has lowered in order to move the surplus of inventory. That also means that the chicken industry needs to slow down production because the demand they had predicted does not exist.
Factors that could explain the drop in chicken demand:
- The increase of vegan, vegetarian, and human rights campaigns
- The increase in savings, more people aren’t spending as much at the grocery store, possibly cutting out the unnecessary foods (could chicken be one?).
- The rise of organic and “happy meat” consumption, Perdue (as seen in Food, Inc) is not favored among conscious meat eaters
- Black market survivalists could be providing chickens in their local communities, cutting the need for mass meat producers.
The government doesn’t acknowledge the free market nor do they care to make it function properly. Instead they’ve decided that because consumers are not buying the chicken, they will. Oh wait, that’s rather redundant. The government will be purchasing $40 million in chicken, and to make it seem like it’s ok they are donating all of the chicken to food assistance programs, soup kitchens, and other places where people are in need.
Finding this action of theft despicable may make me look heartless in the face of charity, however buying $40 million of un-demanded chicken with the taxpayer’s money in a time when our debt is in the $14 trillion dollar range can’t be a rational way to handle the surplus and downward slope of chicken prices. It’s just another way the government increases the population of those in need, if you ask me.
Also, why on earth does the taxpayer need to be burdened with a business’ bad book keeping? Looks as thought the chicken companies over produced. Because they made a bad production call, we are given the responsibility to help them…oh but don’t worry the extra chickens are going to homeless and impoverished people. I’d like to see how critics like myself will be treated by speaking out against this absurd motion by the Federal Government. If they were so humanitarian the chicken company would give away their surplus, not get paid millions for it to make up for their loss. “Here ya go kid have a chicken while I drive my BMW to the Yacht Club.”
The free market solution would be let the company find an innovative way to sell the chickens at a lower cost. The company will have to take a downgrade in profits for the year, endure consequences from their OWN business decisions. The price is naturally lower because of the lack of demand and excess chickens…let the price be lower. This provides a wide opening for competition to step in; competition that hasn’t made a poor business decision; competition that perhaps deserves to be in the lead.
