The 1973 Meat Boycott was a week-long national

boycott A boycott is an act of nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organization, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons. The purpose of a boycott is to inflict som ...

in the United States to protest the rapidly increasing

meat Meat is animal flesh that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted, farmed, and scavenged animals for meat since prehistoric times. The establishment of settlements in the Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of animals such as chic ...

prices. It took place from 1 to 8 April 1973.

Background

Meat prices began to rise in late 1972. The

Consumer price index A consumer price index (CPI) is a price index, the price of a weighted average market basket of consumer goods and services purchased by households. Changes in measured CPI track changes in prices over time. Overview A CPI is a statistica ...

published by the U.S.

Bureau of Labor Statistics The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a unit of the United States Department of Labor. It is the principal fact-finding agency for the U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics and serves as a principal agency of t ...

attributed this price increase to poor weather conditions, which increased the price for grain and animal feed, rising domestic demand, and unusually high export demand for pork due to the dollar devaluation in mid-February. Meat prices had risen 5.4 percent in a month, poultry and fish 5 percent and all retail food prices 2.4 percent, and that all consumer prices had risen seven‐tenths of one percent.

Boycott

The boycott rose out of small, local organizations of consumers across the country as prices for meat rose dramatically. These groups were primarily female led, as women traditionally bought the groceries for their households, and these groups grew both from people that only joined together around this issue and already existing women's and community groups. The boycott included both abstention from buying and cooking meat as well as active protests. The protest was observed by more women than men, as men continued to eat meat that was bought before the boycott took effect.

Lasting effects

According to some, the boycott was successful in lowering meat prices for a short period of time, although the New York Times reported that there was "no significant decline in meat prices." That being said, in the Time Magazine cover story for April 9, 1973, the boycott was called, "the most successful boycott by women since Lysistrata," and the public pressure pushed President Nixon to enforce price ceilings on beef, pork and lamb. The leaders supported continued boycotts of meat, specifically by refusing to cook or eat meat on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ralph Nader wrote that consumers would become more aware of their ability to advocate for and control food policy. Others wrote that "housewife activism" and women's groups' power gained more recognition, and the boycott's primary lasting effect was as a "consciousness-raising experience".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Meat boycott, 1973 April 1973 events in the United States 1973 protests Meat Consumer boycotts