Word: slaughtering
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...chorus of mournful noise is issuing from the cattle-feeding pens of Colorado, Texas and the Middle West-and not just from the steers awaiting slaughter. The feed-lot operators are moaning too, because a consumer rebellion against beef and soaring costs of fattening cattle threaten to trim their profits to the bone. Says an official of the Colorado Cattlemen's Association: "A lot of boys are going to belly...
...good times, feed-lot operators buy 500-lb. to 700-lb. calves from ranchers, gorge them on a special, high-protein diet until the cattle reach the optimum slaughter weight of 1,100 lbs., then resell them to packers for about the same price per pound that they paid. They corral a profit if the expense of putting the added weight on the animals is less than the price that the added poundage brings...
Fattened Costs. It has not worked that way recently. The feed-lot operators bought the steers that are now going to slaughter last September when retail beef prices were at record levels and ranchers were asking-and getting-as much as 60? per lb. for steers. The cost of fattening the animals has about doubled in the past year, so that for calves that go on feed this month it will be about 50? per lb. This surge results mainly from zooming prices for corn, the main ingredient in a feeder steer's diet. But packers last week were...
...gobbling expensive corn, put on still more pounds-and packers pay less per pound for overweight steers than they do for pleasingly plump ones, because the additional weight is mostly unwanted fat. About all the operators can do is go on selling the steers when they reach optimum slaughter weight and hope for a price rebound later. That could happen in about six months, to the housewife's chagrin: there are an estimated 20% fewer steers coming into feed lots than a year ago. The result is that demand could exceed supply by late fall...
...would all prefer a world in which our nation were invulnerable to nuclear attack, an international system in which national survival would not depend on our ability to slaughter a hundred million Russians. But such a world is not feasible today, nor is it likely in the foreseeable future...