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I Knew the Price of Meat Was Going Up
Here’s the label of the meat I bought for my pot roast tonight.
But, can you imagine my surprise when I removed the wrapper and found this on the backside of the label?
The barrier beeped on my way out the door of the supermarket, but I ignored it and no one challenged me. I think the anti-theft device above was probably the cause. The checker did not seem to notice that the meat was equipped with the little metal device when I went through the checkstand. And the price is not high enough to require the little device, I don’t think.
Are supermarkets tagging meat where you live?
Published in Economics
There have been news stories about the need to put this RFID tags on various foods due to the higher prices.
Of course, beef and chicken are not the insects we are all now supposed to be developing a taste for.
So maybe as Good Party Members, it is important that we are allowing Big Brother to understand which of us are still indulging in foods that are said to prevent our planet from being here 6 or 7 years from now.
If those alarm tags are just part of the backs of all their labels now, they are probably more interested in protecting the more-expensive meats. But the tags are on all the labels, so the cheaper stuff gets them too.
P.S. Back before I left Phoenix, a little over 2 years ago, Smart & Final sometimes had department managers specials. One time I saw some beef roasts that were marked down to I think $2.50 per pound, and they weren’t expired or anything, but at actual checkout they came up as 50 cents per pound! I grabbed all they had, of course, and shared with neighbors.
Large retail outfits (led of course by Walmart) have been demanding producers put RFID tracking tags on more and more products, to facilitate the retailer’s inventory management. RFID tags allow the retailer to better know what is inventory and where it is.
The tag you show looks more complicated (and thus expensive) than I would expect for a universal inventory RFID tag. If it is an anti-theft tag, perhaps the meat packer packages enough high priced meat that the packer automatically adds the tag to all its packages?
When beef prices spiked a year or so ago, one of our local BBQ places added concertina wire to the fencing around its meat lockers.
My guess is that the anti-theft “device” is as much about the attractiveness of the product to would-be thieves as it is about the price per se. I bought some plumbing repair supplies recently at Lowes, and I was surprised that every Sharkbite package (even ones costing only $2.50) had those anti-theft strips inside the packaging. My guess is that Sharkbite supplies are desirable to thieves and super easy to drop a handful into a pocket or other discreet location. Obviously meat is harder to put into a coat pocket, but meat is a desirable commodity that many find hard to afford, thus increasing the temptation to scan a can of beans, but place a ribeye into the bag.
Good thing you didn’t try to run out the door with that wad of meat – you meat-eating, climate denier meat head! I can’t imagine why that’s there – it’s nuts!
We buy our meat mostly at the commissary and haven’t seen that. But then if you are caught shoplifting, you deal with military justice and loss of commissary benefits.
Pretty soon the meat will be behind locked barriers like cigarettes, and you’ll have to get a store employee with a key to let you in to get it.
Hey, I can see a new online business called “Dollar Meat Club” . . .
Also like baby formula has been, for some time.
Plus razor blades at many locations, and more.
A lot of things as shoplifting has become rampant in many areas. I have seen several articles in the business press in recent weeks about stores trying to balance minimizing shoplifting by locking up inventory versus the lost sales when customers decide against buying an item if they have to find an employee to unlock the product or retrieve the product from a storeroom. And if the product is not in an accessible display, the store looks like it has no inventory, discouraging customers.
I hope that device didn’t weigh very much because you were paying for it to the tune of 71/2 bucks a pound. Wasn’t the meat behind a butcher counter?
Not necessarily. I forget the term for it, but (assuming the store behaves ethically) the meat weight is “net” and the scales is set to automatically subtract the weight of packaging.
I never did understand the locked up razor blades at CVS or Walgreens. Why are they so valuable?
I was kind of being funny. It’s those kind of jokes that make me so popular!
Sorry. My bad. Too much “Mr. Literal” on my part.
Razor blades can be pretty expensive these days, maybe you haven’t noticed. Also the basic packaging is small and light, easy to conceal, and they can be sold pretty easily on the street. Not for their store price, of course, but enough to make some dough since they are normally so expensive.
The high price is because Gillette’s wholesale price for replacement cartridges is high.* But it’s not just the price, it’s the combination of high price and small size. It’s an easy item for a shoplifter to slip one or many into a pocket or a tote bag. And (at least where we used to live) there was a thriving secondary market in the nearby city’s poorer neighborhoods. Thieves would steal the $42 cartridge 12-packs from suburban stores, then break up the package and sell the individual cartridges at say $5 each to people who cannot put together $42 at once to buy the 12 pack (or don’t have the transportation to get to a store that carries them).
*Why I some years ago bought an old fashioned double edge (DE) razor and buy DE blades in bulk at $25 for 100, and stopped using cartridge style razors.
Maybe it is time to start collecting these and keeping them in one’s pocket. Since nobody checks when they set off the door alarm it might be amusing to trigger alarms intentionally. I approve of confusing Big Brother.
Thanks for the compliments!
You’re thinking of tare.
That’s it–thanks!
I never had anyone come up to me in some dark alley downtown, open his trenchcoat, and try to sell me a pack of stolen razor blades from the assortment attached to the inside of his coat. Now I have something to look forward to. 😊😊
I might try that, except what I saved on razor cartridges I would spend on bandaids.
Gaaah, beat me to it! The only reason I knew the term is that I just bought a digital kitchen scale that has a tare function to account for the weight of the mixing bowl (or whatever). I found it delightful that the product had been so thoughtfully designed.
I totally understand the need to protect against shoplifting, and the use of RFID tags, but the label has no indication that there is a tag attached, and they seem not to have trained their checkers to disable it when a customer buys the meat. Tags attached to hard goods are normally disabled or removed at checkout. I live in a suburban area, and have not heard that there is a high rate of shoplifting. However, as you get closer to Seattle, I’m betting that rate increases. Even Seattle has not had the smash-and-grab robberies as much as LA, San Francisco, or other large Leftist cities. But I expect that soon, every place will be at risk.
You’re just not part of the “in” crowd of thieves/shoplifters and their customers, for which you should be happy.
Also as someone else mentioned before, what happens sometimes is that the shoplifter sells the 12-pack to a “bodega” or something, who then sells them individually.
Which is safer than doing it yourself, since that’s how that single-cigarette guy wound up dead.
I’ve always used an electric razor, no bandaids.
Has Seattle passed the anything-below-$1000-doesn’t-count laws like L.A., San Fran, etc, have?
In my previous life as a police officer batteries and meat were the top products stolen from supermarkets. Beer was the product of choice for shoplifters in convenience stores. We called them beer-naps. Cigarettes were kept behind the counter at the small Shop-N-Robs and were available at the customer service counter in supermarkets.
Her guy’s whiskers just don’t phase her
He shaves with electric razor
Why bother with
Burma Shave.
Laundry detergent is also a popular item to steal, reportedly in some big cities drug dealers will accept brand name detergents in lieu of cash- the idea being everyone has to wash clothes.