I buy a fair bit of meat. At my nearest butcher scotch fillet steak (rib eye, I think, in American English) is $35 per kilo. It is from a meat packing plant with reasonably cheap labor, with expensive equipment amortized over thousands of cattle a year, cutting up cows all day
At my next nearest butcher it’s $60/kg. It’s cut off a cow carcass hanging in the back of the shop by a butcher with a knife
Mine are grass finished, and watered with rain - the most environmentally friendly meat available. I expect the cheap meat in Texas is grain finished, which makes each animal fatter and heavier and cheaper per unit weight
And that cost of labor
I buy a fair bit of meat. At my nearest butcher scotch fillet steak (rib eye, I think, in American English) is $35 per kilo. It is from a meat packing plant with reasonably cheap labor, with expensive equipment amortized over thousands of cattle a year, cutting up cows all day
At my next nearest butcher it’s $60/kg. It’s cut off a cow carcass hanging in the back of the shop by a butcher with a knife
On the good side there are few middle men in meat
Come down to Texas and you can get a ribeye for closer to $12/kg.
Mine are grass finished, and watered with rain - the most environmentally friendly meat available. I expect the cheap meat in Texas is grain finished, which makes each animal fatter and heavier and cheaper per unit weight