Eaton
Finally finished Benjamin Lorr's "The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket” and it ... is a good read? That lives up to its ominous title?
It's broken into six parts, which basically go from “Wow, Trader Joe's has a fascinating origin story" to “…I …did not realize so many of the Myanmar people had suffered decades of slavery and inhuman abuse to keep shrimp prices low”
An excellent book about grocery store, but also about the grim mechanisms of capitalism.
Eaton
@lewiscowles1986 they’re about 50% cheaper than they were in the early 90s, ajusted for inflation. On the long term, the big shift was the global emergence of industrial-scale shrimp farming in the 70s. Before that they were a luxury product that cost more per pound than a good steak.
Production at that scale, at the prices we’re now used to, is tremendously labor intensive but also relies on slave labor.
Calling that “guilt porn” seems pretty weird.
Lewis Cowles
@eaton Are the shrimp prices low though?
Used to be 500g for £3.50; now its 150-200g for £4.50
over 20 bucks a kilo feels not cheap. Chickens, a much larger animal cost less, and are supposed to be actually cared for, rather than extracted from an ocean.
Like most guilt porn, there may be some truth; but what have been the outcomes since "we learned about this" over a decade ago?
Eaton
@lewiscowles1986 It’s a bit like saying electronics prices are too high today; they are expensive in comparison to many other things we consider essentials but historically very inexpensive. And even then, often rely on labor practices and environmental impacts we *believe are wrong* but are unable to alter via individual action.
“So? We know!” Well, yeah.
Eaton
@lewiscowles1986 Have you looked at the actual price of shrimp, or are you just applying general CPI correction to the current advertised price?
Lewis Cowles
@eaton
I'm a data person so I just searched to see if I could find what you just asserted, but it seems plain incorrect. 1977 to 2024, inflation adjusted $20 of shrimp back then, would now be $100
As a consumer, you have a 5x increase in costs.
Again, I've looked into shrimp farming; the book you read seems to be the misleading thing here.
Eaton
@lewiscowles1986 Second, the shift in both price and production levels I referenced is missed if you cut off at 1977. Industrial shrimp farming emerged in the mid 70s, and that change is what transformed it to a commodity protein.
Your earlier comment (that shrimp should be cheaper since they're ‘harvested from the ocean’) is off in two respects: that's not how the shrimp industry has worked for decades, and even if it did, ocean-caught is more rather than less expensive, production-wise.
Eaton
@lewiscowles1986 Third, complaining about the high price of shrimp when it's historically low, both in real terms and when adjusted for inflation, is a perfect demonstration of why the shrimp supply chain, like chocolate and coffee and cotton and a bunch of other commodities, keeps whoopsing its way into horrifying human and ecological costs.
The societal problem of those costs across a bunch of industries, and the difficulty of altering the *systems* that produce them, are not “guilt porn.”
Eaton
@lewiscowles1986 Stepping back from shrimp in particular, I spent several years working in the grocery industry building cost, price, and supply chain management software. The margins the industry operates at, and the pressures that exist at every point along the supply chain, are not revelations. Some bits from Lorr's book — details about overland shipping logistics, specifics of antislavery activism in the Myanmar shrimp industry — were new to me, but the shape of the story is not new.
Eaton
@lewiscowles1986 this conversation has definitely been a journey
Lewis Cowles
@eaton I have only been able to find data going back to 1977, if you have more information; I'm willing to receive it. But also how far back are we going to need to go?
I Was pretty sure due to religious objections, shrimp, like lobster being a bottom feeder, would have made it undesirable for all but the servants. Lobster also used to be very cheap, far back enough.
I Obviously don't care about such things as part of my dietary choices; but I would have thought if cherry picking was an issue.
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