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at Thu, 28 Oct 2004 01:56:38 GMT in
>,
(Michael Odom) wrote :

>On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 09:50:32 -0000,
>(Alex Rast) wrote:
>
>>at Wed, 27 Oct 2004 03:05:41 GMT in
>,
>>(Michael Odom) wrote :
>>>
>>>'Round these parts (NE Texas) the health and food safety laws pretty
>>>much put the kibosh on finding never-frozen organic meats unless you
>>>slaughter your own. ...
>>
>>Yeah, people say that the regulatory environment is tough... it would
>>seem to me that the worst they could do is make the
>>resulting meat more expensive. And if that's the case, is the number of
>>people who recognise that there is no free lunch and would be prepared
>>to pay more for fresh, organic meat really that small? If so, why is
>>that?
>
....
>
>What I wanted to say was that, under such a regime of food safety
>regulations, offering an affordable product to their customers
>requires smaller producers like the organic meat producers in my neck
>of the woods to freeze their chicken, lamb, pork and beef at the
>slaughter house. Doing otherwise will require them to observe more
>costly food safety rules regarding storage and handling and shelf life
>which would make their meat more expensive for the consumer and likely
>cut into sales.

But this is what I was talking about. Is the number of people who'd be
willing to pay more for fresh, organic meat, really so vanishingly small
that producers can't direct even a small proportion of the meat they raise
into fresh sales? In other words, aren't there some people out there who
would still consider the increased price they'd have to pay for fresh meat
affordable? I would think that, given that people who buy organic tend
already to be pretty selective, and that they're also used to paying more
for their selectivity, there'd be at least some set of those people that
would be selective enough as to be willing to pay the extra amount for
fresh. I agree that the markup could be quite steep, but most people who
buy organic are very aware of how much the rock-bottom prices in the
consumer market generate a false conception how how much things should
cost. They know full well that the "real" price one might expect should be
higher, in some cases a great deal higher (meat is one of those cases). It
just seems pretty strange that when it comes to the issue of fresh vs.
frozen an overwhelming majority of them would suddenly turn around and
become price-sensitive.

--
Alex Rast

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