High 'Steaks'
Barbecuers will risk sticker shock when they buy a steak or some hamburger for the grill this summer.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture warns the consumer price index for U.S. beef and veal is up almost 10 percent so far in 2014, reflecting the fastest increase in retail beef prices since the end of 2003.
An individual can always opt to have a hot dog or a chicken breast instead, but what about institutional buyers?
Thomas DeGori, director of dining services at St. John Specialty Care Center, Mars, said the facility, a Lutheran Senior Life site, serves about 1,000 meals a day.
“We've seen about a 6 percent increase locally and anticipate another 6 percent increase in the future,” said DeGori of beef prices.
“We use on average 600 pounds of beef a month along with another couple hundred pounds of pork,” he added.
While beef remains on the menu, said DeGori, rising prices mean it isn't offered as much.
For example, DeGori said, “Our meatloaf may be made with turkey and our meat sauces made with chicken.”
“Maybe we're making a stew with chicken breasts,” he said. “We are still going to be able to provide beef options without exceeding our budget for the year.
“If we were offering beef three or four times a month, maybe we will reduce one time, introduce poultry and still meet our nutritional need,” DeGori said. He added he hadn't received any complaints from diners about the alternative dishes or the reduced presence of beef on the menu.
“Maybe this will be a benefit to us,” said DeGori. “It may increase our awareness of heart-healthy options and some alternatives to beef. Instead of beef stew or beef pot pie maybe we're doing it with chicken.”
Scott Zeckzer, corporate director of food service and purchasing for Concordia Lutheran Ministries' 10 facilities, says long-term contracts have softened the blow of beef price increases, for now.Concordia serves 4,710 meals a week, Zeckzer said, to 1,900 residents.“We are with a group-purchasing organization, and so a lot of the stuff that happens, we have items that we are contracted to buy three years ahead of time,” Zeckzer said.“Most people are seeing a 5 to 6 percent total increase, and we are budgeting a 2.8 percent increase based on some of the things we have done,” he said.“At Concordia, we are proud of the food we serve,” said Zeckzer and he added, higher beef prices are just the cost of doing business.Zeckzer said most of the 80,000 pounds of beef used by Concordia annually is locally processed. He doesn't expect beef prices to drop any time soon.“Not for 12 months, they expect prices to hold,” he said. “The winter was so bad; it killed crops, and you need crops to feed beef.”“We just did a budget, a rough one of the next year. Nine to 12 months from now we will get some relief,” Zeckzer said.In the meantime, he said, “a lot of facilities will switch to chicken.”The price of chicken, Zeckzer said, compared to last year is down about 5 cents per pound.“Our pork contract ends in July. We know that our pork prices are going to go up. Right now, pork loins are less than some of the others, so we're using recipes done up using pork loins,” he said.Al Schoener, general manager of food and nutrition services at Butler Memorial Hospital who is in charge of the Brady Street Café (the hospital cafeteria), the To Your Health Café (located in the Brady Street lobby of the hospital) and the cafe at its East Campus at 127 Oneida Valley Road, said the hospital has also cut down on its beef offerings in light of the recent price increases.But it's not an easy thing to rejigger 4,000 patient meals a week, as well as close to 7,000 cafeteria and cafe meals, he said.“Our patient menu is fairly static, because all menu items must have a nutritional analysis to determine applicability to a variety of special diets,” Schoener said.“For these reasons, revisions to the patient menu must be well planned,” he said. “Our three retail menus are more flexible, so we have decreased the use of beef and pork on these menus in response to the increases.”He added food and nonfood price increases are monitored on a monthly basis, to make prudent business decisions.
It's simply supply and demand that is pushing beef prices to unprecedented heights, said one Butler County farmer.Beef supplies are down and demand remains constant, said Guy Daubenspeck of Connoquenessing Township, who raises 70 mixed-breed head of cattle on his 226-acre farm.Daubenspeck said, “We have been in the beef business 15 years, after we got out of dairy cattle in 1998.”“We could say that fuel is always a big factor, and feed costs. We raise a lot of our own, process our own grain, but we add soybean and cottonseed meal, protein meal,” he said.But Daubenspeck attributes the increase in beef prices mainly to the decrease in the size of the national cattle herd.“We have a 2014 human population and cattle levels are at 1951 levels,” he said. “And so we have a demand that is not being met because there aren't enough cows.”Daubenspeck blamed the herd decrease on recent droughts in the West and South that drove up grain prices and caused farmers to sell off cows when it became too expensive to feed them.“Last fall, they lost 35,000 head of cattle to a freak storm in the Dakotas. The cows hadn't gotten their winter coats yet and they hadn't been brought down from the high pastures,” he said.
But, good news, Zeckzer said, “The odds of having two winters like this with droughts and everything are very slim.”“What people don't realize is that in the United States our beef is so much less expensive than it is in Europe. A lot of beef is being shipped away,” he said. “Where we might be paying $2.60 for ground beef, they are paying $5, $6 over there.”“Really, in some ways in all fairness, corn and beans are easier to farm than cows. There's a lot less labor involved,” Daubenspeck said. “But we enjoy it and we like the cows. For us, it is a nice steady income.”He said he sells two steers a month to private buyers. They go to a meatpacking plant in Mercer County.“It usually pays us to do our processing that way and to sell that way,” Daubenspeck said.“Mostly we try to go 18 to 24 months for neutered bull calves, from the time he hits that ground until the time he's ready to go on the rail,” he said.
