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Global Bacon Shortage 'Unavoidable'
New submitter The name is Dave. Ja debuts on the front page with the most dismal news of our time: "This is truly 'Stuff That Matters'. Where would civilization be today without bacon? I don't mean to be alarmist but ... sound the alarms! This is big — it could lead to civil unrest."
Yes, a bacon shortage. Hopefully what bacon there is will be more delicious after being fed with gummi worms.
Noooooooooooo!!
This is the worst news ever posted on Slashdot. I am not being a smartass...
This is THE TRUTH.
God damn! We better be building stockpiles NOW. If we don't have bacon it's going to make live unlivable for both me any my dog. Why should be continue.
Say it isn't so!
I'll have to hoard!
Gas shortage? No problem!
Oil? Nope.
But NOT bacon!!
We don't need no sucking the hog-cock of Conde Nast over here, GTFO.
It just means bacon will be more expensive.
There will be less cheap bacon to go around, but there will always be bacon.
According to one article, on average people consume 42 pounds of bacon a year. I figure a good freezer in the garage should hold enough for 3 or 4 years. Time to start stocking up.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Where the fuck is Al Gore when you need him?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/09/25/165256/lab-grown-leather-could-be-a-reality-in-5-years
Who's gonna notice when the Earth becomes unliveable due to climate change?
* Tornadoes... Droughts... Floods...
* Bacon Shortage, like OMG???
. . . and now this. It's like a war on breakfast.
I am not a crackpot.
"but there will always be bacon."
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Venkman: Or you can accept the fact that this city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff!
Venkman: Exactly.
Stanz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky! Rivers and seas boiling!
Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes!
Winston Zeddmore: The dead rising from the grave!
Venkman: Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria!
Mayor: Enough! I get the point! And what if you're wrong?
Venkman: If we're wrong, then nothing happens. We go to jail, peacefully, quietly. We'll enjoy it. But if we're right, and we can stop this thing... Lenny, you will have saved the lives of millions of registered voters.
Find this man
God spoke to me
Where will we get the toppings for the Bacon Shakes? There's no way we can live with synthetic Bacon Flavored toppings on our Shakes!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
How can we have a Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve without one for Bacon???
Finally, something that will make the public take notice of climate change! Destroying the planet and ruining their grandchildren's future doesn't faze most people when you mess with their bacon then Things Get Serious.
...please learn about the pork cycle.
Hooray! Finally, disaster porn I can really get worked up about!
Don't listen to those mother hubbards at Chick-fil-a: chicken is not the answer! We need more pork! Porking is the answer. Wait, what type of porn were we talking about again?
So, if I understand this correctly, the price of feeding pigs is rising. However, despite their theoretically being a 'market' for pig products and demand for pig products holding steady, it has not been possible for the price of pork products to reflect the cost of producing them, causing pork production to start shutting down, thus setting us up for a price spike in the near future....
Could somebody summon the invisible hand? I have a beating that needs delivering...
A bacon disruption can only mean one thing ...invasion.
You can have all the bacon I don't eat.
You're welcome.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
There's not going to be a "shortage", there'll just be what always happens when supply and/or demand change: the prices will adjust to a new equilibrium. Over the past 100 years, pork and bacon have sometimes cost more, and sometimes cost less. It's not really a huge deal. If the prices go up, you can choose to pay them, or buy something else instead.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
you should read the original press releases, a nice little campaign preparing the masses that price increases are in order.
British supermarkets can protect consumers [..] if they pay Britain's loss-making pig farmers a fair price
In its Save Our Bacon campaign, NPA is asking shoppers to make a point of selecting pork and bacon with the British independent Red Tractor logo
Governments are becoming increasingly concerned
And I simply _love_ the phrase "Pig industry leaders" :)
'at'll do, pig, 'at'll do.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/09/25/165256/lab-grown-leather-could-be-a-reality-in-5-years
Well, that covers footballs ... <rimshot>
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
First they burn the White House and now this.
What's next, no hockey?
Do these scoundrels have no pity?
No brain, no pain.
Yes it could -- such a shortage could have grave consequences for civilians everywhere. Alas, I never thought there would come a day when a cavia porcellus would be given badge and a gun .
Just kidding,
- Sgt. Oink
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Of Long Pig.
The environmental toll of hog farming is massive.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
You pigs!
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I live in Phoenix and we have terribly hot summers with extraordinary long droughts, but we still seem to do ok and there's never a panic among the farming community. Can't we avoid these crises with some simple planning?
Anyone who knows anything about farming, feel free to enlighten this ignorant city kid.
"With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone."
This is like the third bacon story in a week. First it's paying for a cross-country trip using bacon as currency, then the gummi worms one, and now we're running out of it...
The Norse will be alright - Sæhrímnir will be eaten (providing "the best of bacons") and brought back to life the next day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A6hr%C3%ADmnir
Look on the bright side- this also has to mean there will be less spam in the future!
"Yes, a bacon shortage. Hopefully what bacon there is will be more delicious after being fed with gummi worms."...
From the article your linking: "ruminant animals such as cattle can safely ingest a wide variety of feedstuffs that chickens and hogs can't."
Anyone remember this headline from last week? Suddenly that guy seems like he's ahead of the times. Imagine how much 3000 pounds of bacon could buy you, especially if the price of it doubles.
Alternatively, anyone know where he is right now? I might be very willing to barter with him at this point.
Thank god for ham and pork chops!
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
There are only a few main meat food groups produced en-masse - chicken, fish, cows, pigs - and I'm allergic to cow products so with pig prices going to go higher it's going to mean more chicken & fish in my diet :(
Slashing budgets n shit is nothing compared to this. All the debates should be about what to do when there is a bacon shortage and how the government plans to subsidize it and hopefully release their reserves of bacon.
Have you not heard of price elasticity?
They always had it in for bacon, they know how happy it makes the filthy goyim and they can't have that.
The solution is simple: stop using bacon as a goddamn currency!
Pork rinds != bacon, you bloody fool!
So why are politicians wasting valuable time on such trivial nonsense as the economy, jobs, healthcare and the Middle East, when there is a genuine, honest-to-goodness global crisis going on?
This should be one of those rare moments that bring politicians of all ilk together to solve this. We need a bacon Apollo project, or a bacon Manhattan project.
The poster actually believes feeding pigs gummi bears is unusual enough to hotlink? Pigs are omnivores. They are fed grains, vegetable scraps, leftovers from meals, chicken carcasses, and whatever else has protein and may or may not have some amount of rot on it.
Not only that, the Muslims are apparently doing their part as well (they don't eat bacon) http://www.30-days.net/muslims/statistics/islam-growth/
At least the Arabs won't be involved in OBEC (Organization of the Bacon Exporting Countries).......
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
It's treated like this is the way we always raised food when the truth is factory farming is less than a 100 years old and it didn't take over until the 60s. All the problems we are having with food production are directly related to factory farming. Also the fact that middle men are allowed to force farmers to sell below cost and let farmers survive on federal farm aid. I ran onto this site a year ago where this family is field raising pigs on grass then supplimenting their diet with free milk curd from a dairy, rather than dumping it and risking environmental problems they feed it to the pigs. He also buys surplus bread by the ton. The waste milk is delivered for free and the bread is dirt cheap but the bulk of their diet is grass. The pigs learned to eat the grass from sheep and now the mothers teach the piglets. They are also fed some out of date fruits and vegetables but the bulk of their diet is plain ole grass. They are healthier and the meat is tastier. All pigs could be raised this way but corporate America is convinced you can make farm animals the same way you do a car. All you get is diseased unhealthy meat. The only reason for the shortage is expensive feed so take away the cost of the feed and virtually all vet bills and the problem goes away. Each sow averages 8 per litter twice a year and some have over 20 a litter twice a year. Even starting with a handful in a few years you have a substantial herd so if they dropped the factory farming the numbers would come back fast but you also have to get rid of the middle men that reap all the profits. Farmers usually receive an eighth to a tenth of the retail price. No wonder they don't want to raise pigs anymore. Here's that link. http://sugarmtnfarm.com/products/piglets/
> Yes, a bacon shortage. Hopefully what bacon there is will be more delicious after being fed with gummi worms.
Since when did bacon come from cows?
I mean, really. Did the editor even bother to read the posting they are referring to?
Right now hog farmers are filing for bankruptcy by the droves. Pork prices are extremely low and the high feed prices mean that farmers are losing money on every pig they raise. The worst that will happen is that bacon becomes more expensive.
Even if enough additional irrigation equipment and water could be put in place quickly enough to combat the 4th largest midwestern drought in a century (which it can't), it wouldn't change the shortage for feed because Congress mandated 'ethanol for everyone' during the Bush administration to ensure Republican votes from midwestern red states. That's why high fructose corn syrup Gummy Bears, usually destined to ensure the burgeoning supply of adolescent diabetics, are being redirected to feed the demand for high-priced bacon.
Think of it, we've finally found a decent means of combatting childhood diabetes without threatening the profitability of the Big Corn. We've given preferential treatment to pigs in the field instead of piglets in candy store.
It is not Jews. It is China. They started with Gold. Blocked rare earth mineral exports. And now engorging on pigs.
Except that from the linked story: "But ruminant animals such as cattle can safely ingest a wide variety of feedstuffs that chickens and hogs can't." The gummi worms story was about feeding cows, not pigs.
And out of the ashes of the Old World the New World rose. A world where everything was paid for in bacon.
Couldn't care less, let me know when vegetables become scarce.
A story that won't cause a bad reaction in the middle east.
Alex
Have gnu, will travel.
Sorry, but that's just Western POV - most of countries don't have big traditions on bacon. Chicken, fish, vegetables, fruits, seafood, bread - you name it. I have cut my bacon intake almost to minimum and have never felt better. Saying this, having bacon now and there is nice, but I won't revolt if it's suddenly will cost twice. It can push prices of other products eventually though.
With all anti GM craze going around, I wonder what naturalist school of food would offer us practically, taking feeding people on this planet into account.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
People are starving right now, and we are burning food for fuel.
A shortage of bacon and other delicious pork products is definitely a bad thing.
However, pig is used in practically anything consumable.
And, by consumable, I don't mean edible. That is, unless you eat bullets and drink paint.
Fractal cows have already been invented: http://mndl.hu/works/fractalcow
Maybe fractal pigs could produce more bacon . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The pancake/waffle breakfast, of which I invited all of /., now to be served with sides of bacon! Give me a few weeks, working on the coffee heist, errrrr, procurement process.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
We must preserve the bacon supply! I propose that we pack it inside large containers of helium, to preserve freshness.
Well, the reason is simple. You grow pigs, boil them down to gelatin. Make gummys and feed it to the pigs. This cycle of man-made cannibalism is causing pigs to go extinct.
There's enough pork in Congress to carry us through these dire times.
From TFA:
The laws requiring ethanol be used as fuel are boneheaded at best, a side effect of the congress being willing to jump on any bandwagon that pretends to offer renewable fuel, but ethanol doesn't cut it. The math can be summed up as saying that to power one car you need to convert enough corn to feed seven people. There just isn't enough corn out there to replace gasoline with ethanol. Biodiesel isn't much better because it's usually made from soybean oil, another food staple requiring arable land.
If you want to have a workable biofuel solution, you should be giving the tax breaks only to companies that make their product from something other than food. You can make cellulosic ethanol from stuff like saw grass or biodiesel from saltwater algae. That's more complicated than just pouring the groceries into the gas tank, but at least it doesn't mess with the food markets.
Now this is an issue I can get behind.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/09/25/165256/lab-grown-leather-could-be-a-reality-in-5-years
You must have really poor quality foodstuff in your neighborhood shops to think of this as replacement for quality bacon.
Ezekiel 23:20
I believe this is how the walking dead started!
I would say that it is now time for our viewers to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo inside.
Dan.
... just stop eating meat.
I know, I know, you like meat, maybe even a lot. I get it, I'm not trying to convince you of some wacky dogma or spiritual doctrine. But based strictly on the economics of meat production, and its disastrous ecological effects, not to mention the fact that you probably don't need much meat in your diet, might you consider eating meat only a couple of times a week? If everyone in the U.S. did that, there would be far less animal waste, far less consumption of potable water, significant overall health improvements, and attractive cost savings for consumers. BTW, by meat I mean any kind of animal tissue, not just beef or pork. Just to spell it out, that would include fish, poultry, venison, animal flesh of any kind, and maybe eggs.
Certainly it would include bacon.
Repent, sinners!
no i'm hungry :(
No, but global warming is threating the viability of the cacao growing areas, messing up the rainfall patterns.
Bull. We're panicking enough about the bacon, let's not make shit up.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/global-warming-could-make-chocolates-expensive/articleshow/11266989.cms
http://www.ibtimes.com/global-warming-makes-chocolate-dearer-322831
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/10/local/la-me-gs-valentines-day-destroyed-by-climate-change-20120210
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I'd volunteer to stop eating bacon for the benefit of all mankind, but I've pretty much already done that to benefit my own health.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Did anyone else notice the bit in TFA which claimed farmers cannot protect themselves from high feed prices because there is no suitable futures market?
I thought 'hedging' was possible for annnnnything? Why is feed different (no opportunity for the Market to spread out the risk across different regions or foodstuffs?) And wouldn't solving whatever the problem is and creating a Market be a good way of improving farmers' lives and keeping consumers happy...?
Pretty sure the feral hog is running rampant on many parts of the world. I don't see this as being a issue, we just need to go hunt our own bacon!
Footballs? Nah. Leather shoes!
There may be more riots, and murders, and less freedom. But as more people convert to Islam, that means more bacon for the rest of us.
I was never a big fan of Bacon anyways..
So the megafarms who're raising pig-meat in factories are finding their business unsustainable due to their (quite frankly bizarre) feeding practices?
I for one am not surprised.
You haven't lived till you've eaten dead pig which was once free-range.
I'll spell it out for the clueless: Eating Grain Fed pork is slightly beter than eating sawdust, if you want your pig-products to be truly tasty they need to have grown up on a varied diet.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Okay, who wants to explain to me how a 10% reduction in pig production ends up doubling the price? Also, my bacon from the food co-op will remain the exact same price until demand gets so crazy that each pig is worth about as much as a Ferrari.
But have this repeat year after year until the US has to import rice from China to feed its population will be less funny.
Stop the MFs making Biofuel from food!!
MFG, omb
Guess I better start hoarding... Oh, who am I kidding? Like that's going to work.
I knew those fuckers at Epic Meal Time were going too far with the bacon.
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
Pig leaders are not common in the UK, there is a special school, called Parliament in which they are trained by Master troughers like Tim and Lord Deben. I think that you, in America are following in this Noble example in a place called Washington?
MFG, omb
"Boneless chicken wings" have none of that, using connective-tissue-free breast meat that overcooks if you so much as look at it funny and no skin.
It should be the law that if someone at a wing joint offers you boneless wings, you can legally stab them in the eye with an ice pick (or your fork) for even suggesting such a thing! Yes! I feel strongly on this subject!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
cross-country bacon trading guy abandons trek, buys whole country.
And Slashdot circles the drain even more.
Well, that covers footballs ...*rimshot*
Yeah, that had us in stitches.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The "Aporkalypse" (or possibly "Hamageddon")
That's just what the Jews want you to think, silly goyim.
Part of the problem is the chinese national Strategic Pork Reserve. China used to buy huge amounts of pork from the US and elsewhere to maintain the reserve, but felt food security was increasingly more important, so they stopped buying pork, and instead started buying more feed, particularly corn and soybeans from south america. Unfortunately, due to the large domestic pork herd needing to be fed, and insufficient agricultural output domestically, all they've done is shackle themselves to Brazil and Argentina rather than the US.
So you have this weird market pumping that is causing the price to thrash, and so now it is low but will soon be very high as farmers no longer have excess animals to cull to reduce their costs.
This guy's gonna need to redo his flowchart.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
A friend told me the reason for not eating pork is simply because there is a type of 'worm' that lives in the pig's meat that doesn't get killed even by high cooking temperatures, and some more, the Islam guideline specifically targets only the 'meat' of the animal. One way to think of it, when people hear of a worm going around on this internet do they drop their firewalls and de-install their malicious software detection programs? Well simple then: for people practicing Islam, their "NIST of all NIST's" published a document that stated definitively there is a 'worm' in pig's meat and better don't take it into your system. Full stop. And there really there just isn't any more to it than that. She still works with us, eats with us when we go out for dinner, and can laugh and enjoy with us even when we order this
.02
http://www.candbscene.co.uk/?p=368
for one of the courses [she just doesn't eat it].
Because i fucking can that's why.
General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, we must not allow a bacon gap!
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
So, this must mean that if we have more Muslims, we will have more bacon. Amirite?
Sigh... let me... yadda yadda... first one... yadda yadda... new overlords... yadda yadda....
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
France has bacon!
This is disastrous! We ought to have an investigation into the cause of this 'hog gap' without further delay. Moreover, we must immediately inaugurate funding for a Strategic Bacon Reserve to be drawn down during times of national need, like every morning around breakfast time.
they're fucking us quite hard - it's the pigs that are behind the food shortage. Not surprised they'd want to save their own kind - pig fraking pigs that they are.
When I took a trip from the US to South Africa, I was amazed to find that our bacon was their "streaky bacon", which indeed was only used for flavoring things and not intended for consumption. Their bacon was something unlike anything I had ever seen before; A delicious ham-looking cut of pork, but with all the delicious flavor you'd expect from bacon. Truly heavenly.
This led me to wonder, though. Where the hell does that delicious cut of meat vanish to in the states? I've never in my life seen a ham-looking bacon-flavored cut of pork available at a supermarket or butcher. Surely our pigs are the same species as theirs, so where does this cut of meat vanish to between slaughter and retail?
My own theory involves a conspiracy between the pig ranchers and an advanced alien civilization, where the most prized cuts of pork are offered as tribute in exchange for protection from the illuminati (who find pork to be an abomination, naturally). But really, if anyone with insight into the pork manufacturing industry in America cares to offer some insight into where the REAL bacon goes, I'd appreciate it.
Corn shortage due to drought -> Pig shortage due to corn shortage -> Bacon shortage due to pig shortage -> I guess bacon flavored popcorn is off the table at this point?
Don't forgot the Jews do not either.