The Us Has a 2.5 Billion-Pound Surplus of Meat. Let’s Try to Visualize That.
Let’s say all the meat — the combined poultry, beef, and pork — is ground down into patties. Let’s also assume, for simplicity (and because we’re not interested in preparing a meat mélange burger for ourselves), that those patties have the same density as an uncooked quarter-pound beef burger.
July 24, 2018 | Source: Vox | by Brian Resnick
You thought the US cheese surplus was huge? Get a load of the excess meat.
There’s a lot of uncertainty these days. So here’s a comforting thought: The United States of America will not run out of cheese or meat anytime soon.
US dairy producers now have a 1.39 billion-pound surplus of cheese, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture. As the Washington Post has noted, that’s the largest domestic reserve of cheddar, Swiss, American, and other cheese varieties on record.
It means there’s enough excess cheese to arm each American citizen with a hefty 4.6 pounds of the crumbly, melty, salty good stuff. Why is this happening? Simply put: US dairy producers have been overproducing milk. Thanks to selective breeding, American cows are more productive than ever. And when demand for milk and dairy goes down in the summer, dairy producers store their excess milk as cheese, which has a longer shelf life in cold storage.