Let 'em Eat Cheese

Most griping civilian shortage of the week came where, by last year's standards, there is no real scarcity at all. It came in meat, of which the civilian supply is still almost as big as ever. It was a shortage plainly due to price control--a lesson in what price control can lead to in other lines.

> Trouble now is that more people than ever have enough money to buy meat, normally a costly food on which the poor have to go light. Without price control a rise in retail price would have taken the edge off the demand at the same time that it stimulated the supply. With price control the demand kept soaring, but further production increases were inhibited. Some form of rationing became a cinch to prophesy.

> Fish, to which people normally turn when meat is hard to buy, is actually scarce (TIME, July 27). But nobody is grousing about a fish shortage. Fish prices have climbed about 40%, thereby cutting demand as much as the supply had fallen.

> Beef on the range is abundant, but steers in the fattening pens are 19% below last year. For one thing, the Army is willing to pay top prices for sound if stringy range cattle. For another, the beef-corn ratio is too low--feeders are afraid the cost of fattening would be more than the beef would bring. Even though there is no price ceiling for steers, the packers are holding the bids down to a level where they can break even when they resell the steers as meat. And that level is too low to make fattening profitable with corn at 85-c- a bu.

> Retail price ceilings have been clapped on lamb, which was exempted last April because it was then so far below parity. When there was not enough beef and pork to go around, housewives took lamb, bid up the price so fast that Leon Henderson thought he had to act.

> When lamb went under ceilings, the only outlet left was poultry. Chicken supplies were up 10%, but prices, free from ceilings, skyrocketed. Broilers and fryers are almost 50% above last year.

> The law forbids putting any ceiling on farm products below 110% of parity. So far, no farm ceiling has been imposed at any level, but last week, with steers and hogs fetching over 130% and 125% of parity, Leon asked the Secretary of Agriculture about price-fixing to ease pressure on packers and butchers. Claude Wickard recognized a hot potato when he saw it, decided to let it cool a while.

> Pork on the hoof hit a 22-year high of $15.30 cwt. last week despite retail price-fixing. At $15.30, economists figured that scientific feeding of 85-c- corn in the trough brought over $2.50 a bu. gross when resold in the hog.

> Government buying is heaviest in ham, corned beef and other cured meats. The public will have to learn to eat more fresh pork and like it. Curing facilities are limited, so there will be a glut of fresh-killed pigs when the fall crop of shotes comes to market in October.

> Meanwhile Claude Wickard suggested a stopgap: let them eat cheese and thereby ease the Government-subsidized glut in the cheese market.

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