Experts are saying ethanol is partly to blame for the recent jump in prices on dairy and other meat products. The Agriculture Department said the strong demand for corn from ethanol plants is driving up the cost of livestock and will raise prices for beef, pork and chicken as well. Some experts even worry that the nation could face a shortage of corn in coming years.
Despite gloomy reports of rising prices, this is just about the best news I’ve heard all year. Maybe now companies will start to leave out all the “less than 1%” unnecessary animal ingredients from their products to save a few bucks. No more whey in bread, chips, crackers, cereals… Keep your fingers crossed.
3 Comments
Alex
on #Maybe this will help take whey out of cereals, but rising corn prices also lead to destruction of forests to increase land for corn growing, more environmental damage from industrial monoculture farming, etc. There’s a genuine debate in the environmental movement about corn ethanol. I fall on the side that it’s certain politicians’ cynical sop to Big Agriculture to get corn-state votes and pretend like they’re doing something good for the environment without having to make hard choices. Yes, the anti-ethanol coalition makes for some strange bedfellows, but that’s the way it is.
nybble
on #Yeah, cellulosic ethanol seems to be where ethanol’s future, if it should have one, is at. Having said that, I wouldn’t mind seeing whey show up in a few less products. Reading ingredients – it’s always so close, just that darned whey!
DreamingTwilight
on #As I understand it there is an overabundance of corn already in this country. What should happen here is that some of the subsudies that are being paid out to farmers/corporations should be stopped (of course true for meat and dairy subsudies as well) and let the prices balance more naturally… we (the people/taxpayers/whatev) are paying for a lot of corn to be put in warehouses and to be grown and left unused.