The Purloined Sirloin : Why is meat the most shoplifted item in America?

[bicentennial_baby]

Every supermarket detective—or "loss-prevention specialist," as many prefer to be called—has an offbeat meatlifting story to share. There's the one about the lady who seemingly defied the laws of physics by stuffing an entire HoneyBaked Ham in her purse, the man discovered with a trove of filet mignons in his Jockey shorts, or the meth addict who explained that his dealer, exhibiting an atypical benevolent streak, had agreed to accept prime rib in lieu of cash.

Yet most shoppers who use the five-finger discount in the meat aisle are neither so brazen nor so desperate. Carts brimming with groceries, they'll stealthily slide a single tenderloin or T-bone into a coat pocket, then hit the checkout line alongside their nonlarcenous peers. In this way, millions of pounds of beef, pork, and veal disappear from supermarket shelves each year. Meatlifting is a grave problem for food retailers: According to the Food Marketing Institute, meat was the most shoplifted item in America's grocery stores in 2005. (It barely edged out analgesics and was a few percentage points ahead of razor blades and baby formula.)

Meat's dubious triumph is due in part to a law enforcement crackdown on methamphetamine use. Meat used to be the shoplifting runner-up to health-and-beauty-care items, a category that includes cough medicines containing pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in home-cooked meth. In 2003, for example, a quarter of shoplifted products were HBCs, while meat took second place at 16 percent. But states began passing laws that require stores to move medicines containing pseudoephedrine behind secure counters. That was enough to cut the pinching of HBCs, which fell by 11 percent between 2003 and 2005.

Supermarkets would love to do something similar with meat, reviving the compulsory interaction between shopper and butcher as in days of yore, but such an anti-meatlifting strategy wouldn't play well to the masses. Today's harried consumers want to zip through their food-shopping chores as quickly as possible—hence the proliferation of self-checkout lines and, more ominous for the Krogers and Piggly Wigglys of the world, online grocers. Shoppers would doubtless blanch at abandoning the self-service meat refrigerator in favor of once again taking a number and waiting for the attention of a white-coated butcher.

http://www.slate.com/id/2157840/?nav=tap3

[BluePatriot]

1. How odd. Would have never thought that.

Meat is very expensive though *shrug*

[bicentennial_baby]

2. I know!

That's why I never buy it at a big grocery store...We go to a local place that butchers most of it onsite, and it's far less expensive :)

[BreweryYardRat]

4. Depends on what you get.

I can get a pound of beef to roast for $4. But steaks and stuff are pricy, pricy, pricy.

Fish is actually more expensive than meat.

[leftofthedial]

3. everybody wants to be packing some meat

here in America

[AllegroRondo]

5. A friend who worked at Walgreens

said their most shoplifted item was condoms. even after they put those magnetic anti-theft devices on the boxes.

but they dont sell meat.

[LeftyMom]

8. Yeah, but you have to think of that as a public service

Do we really want the shoplifters reproducing?

[AllegroRondo]

40. good point!

my first thought was, "they give those away for free at the local clinic, why would they need to steal them?"

[LeftyMom]

6. See!?!?!?!? Omnivores= teh EVIL.

[bicentennial_baby]

7. I was thinking of you when I posted this!

Yay! :bounce:

Y'know, after the whole 'bacon down the pants' story the other day :rofl:

[LeftyMom]

10. I loved that story.

:D

[bicentennial_baby]

12. 'Twas awesome!

:D

[Midlodemocrat]

9. That is so strange. I wonder how they get away with it?

When I buy meat, I put it into another plastic bag to prevent cross contamination and I would think if they were doing that and then shoplifting it, someone might notice.

The weird things you read on the web.

[bicentennial_baby]

11. This is why I love foodblogs!!

:bounce:

Got this one from Chow :D

But yes, sounds tricky...unless they don't care about the cross-contamination and all that :puke:

[LeftyMom]

13. Rachel Ray fans?

;)

[bicentennial_baby]

14. Bingo! That's it exactly!

:rofl:

After all, she'll cut open a package of chicken on tv, and then put the knife back in the drawer!! As if I wouldn't notice THAT?! :o

:D

[mongo]

15. Um, when you're willing to stuff a package of sirloin down you pants,

you generally aren't worried about "cross-contamination".

:rofl:

[bicentennial_baby]

16. Ha!

:rofl:

[Midlodemocrat]

21. Yeah, but some of those bags leak.

ick.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

26. That can be a help ...

what store clerk is going to question someone holding their gut with wet pants heading for the door? "Have a good day!"

[bridgit]

17. i think it's a primordial mechanism, plus it's packaged, often flat, more easily concealed than a...

bag of rice or beans, pant pockets filled with heads of lettuce would be signaled out quickly is my guess, some meats varieties i.e. sandwich meats, small packages indeed, stuff like that :shrug:

i do think it has somewhere less to do with a "dubious triumph due in part to a law enforcement crackdown on methamphetamine use" than it does self/internalized perceptions of poverty, solutions, and options again :shrug:

[bicentennial_baby]

18. fascinating response

as always :hi:

[Tyrone Slothrop]

19. I worked at a grocery store in high school

And we had this one guy who used to come in about once or twice a week. He would go straight to the meat department, wait until no one was looking, tear the label off of a piece of meat and put said into a plastic bag that he would bring with him.

He would then proceed to the customer service desk and claim that the meat was bad and try to return it (we didn't usually require a receipt for returns)-- even though the meat had never even left the store. After a month or two, the customer service people caught on (he dealt with the same woman a few different times) and alerted the store detective. We set up a stake-out (no pun intended!) and caught the guy in the act.

Oddly, we couldn't prosecute the guy for shoplifting as he never actually removed the meat from the premises. He was, however, banned from our store.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

27. Right, it's not shoplifting

but it's theft, and can be prosecuted. Someone felt sorry for him, or just didn't want the hassle.

[Strawman]

42. That explains it

Now I know why the old lady at who stands by the door at our grocery story frisks me down and says "let's see if you got any meat in there, sonny." Every time. And just me.

[Gormy Cuss]

44. That brings up the question-

Did she ever find any?
}(

[Seabiscuit]

20. Ham on the lam

I can accept that it's fulfilling to pack a slab of beef between the legs, but an entire honey baked ham??? What was that lady thinking??? Oh, never mind.

[bridgit]

30. come on meat, let's beat feet...

:rofl:

[Gormy Cuss]

22. Meat addiction is causing this increase in crime.

There are meat cooking "labs" in every neighborhood -- it's gotten out of hand. Ever notice that the odor of meat cooking is present in most apartment buildings? Meat users are even cooking the stuff OUTDOORS. What's to prevent the likes of say, matcom, from setting up a charred meat cooker in your neighborhood too? I say it's time we put meat back behind the counter and require customers to show photo IDs for every purchase. This is a national nightmare.

:patriot:


A PSA for the sarcasm-impaired: yes, I'm joking.

[Lyric]

23. I was a grocery store cashier, and my Mom the manager.

Meat was definitely our biggest stolen item, with Mach 3 razor blades and other HBA (health and beauty aisle) items coming in second and third, respectively. The office counter had full view of the entire HBA aisle, so we had less theft from that department than most other stores.

One woman came in to buy Food Stamp groceries every month at the beginning of the month. We always thought it was strange that she bought foods that were meant to be prepared with meat, or used with meat, but never actually bought meat. We finally figured out that she'd been stuffing her baby's big blue diaper bag full of meat before coming through the checkout line.

There was the guy who came in with his coat pockets stuffed full of empty plastic grocery bags. He'd grab a buggy, head right to the meat department, load up his cart, then go to the snack aisle (where nobody could see him) and bag everything up before walking right out of the store with it all. Nobody blinked an eye at a guy walking out with a cartful of our grocery bags.

Then there were the team scammers. Keep in mind, we worked at a locally-owned store with seriously outdated register equipment and no cameras. These four women pooled their money together to legitimately purchase about $120 worth of meat. Then the first would walk out to her car, unbag the meat, and give the bags *and* the receipt to the next woman. She'd go back in, go get exactly the same items, bag them up out of sight, and walk out--with a receipt in her hand if anyone stopped her to check! Then she'd pass it along to the next woman, and on to the 4th. In total, they wound up with $500 worth of meat, split up among the four of them equally, and only paid $30 each for it. After that little scam we got upgraded register printers so that each receipt had the cashier's name printed on it, and the exact time of the purchase.

Oh, the stories I could tell. :rofl:

[Courtesy Flush]

24. Some of it may be going out the back door

It's not always the customers. The employees take their share too.

[Ghost in the Machine]

43. good point.. and it's not only grocery stores, but restaurants too...

I just had to fire one of my dishwashers last week for stealing 2 cases of steaks and a case of country ham. Lord knows what else he stole, but I figure he was getting me for about $600 a week or more, for the last 2 or 3 months. I had to do a little digging, but I had noticed my food costs skyrocketing, but sales weren't matching the increase.

[AlCzervik]

25. Cause lobsters make too much noise?

[MonkeyFunk]

35. not to mention

sticking a lobster down your pants is generally unwise.

I won't make THAT mistake again!

[tigereye]

36. ah

:rofl:

[Gormy Cuss]

38. Why not? People get

crabs in their pants. What's the diff?
:P

[Rabrrrrrr]

28. Because there are a lot of scum and trash in the world.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

31. I'd think that would be the case if the most shoplifted things were luxury items.

I can't bring myself to feel much outrage towards the theft of small quantities of food.

[Rabrrrrrr]

32. "small quantities"?

They are not small quanitites. Theft is an insidious fact of life for retail operations.

I worked in a grocery store for a few years - the amount of theft that we caught was stunning; the amount that we didn't catch was disgusting. Not to mention that number of filthy asswipes who would pass bad checks for hundreds of dollars.

Imagine if your house was broken into every week, and the thiefs made away with a few DVDs and CDs each time, and then every few months they walked out with a TV or a stereo. Small thefts each time, so stop your bitchin', right?

But fucking annoying and expensive after a while.

Theft hurts the store's profits which in turn affect the employees' pay AND affect the cost of merchandise. Everybody loses except the shitbag thief.

[Sanity Claws]

29. Meateaters are felons

[Little Wing]

33. It's not meat theft, it's Urban Hunting

:D

Meats are nice and flat, easy to slip down the front of your jeans and slip your shirt over. Just like a couple Playboy or Penthouse magazines.

[Crabby Appleton]

34. Purloined Sirloin - I wrote a paper in college subtitled that

but it was about cattle rustling - Univ of Texas

[tigereye]

37. when I was a poor student

a female buddy of mine stuffed an entire package of meat ( I have no idea what kind it was) right up under her shirt. It was so fast, she must have had lots of practice.

I was a vegetarian at the time, so it was doubly weird, when's the last time you've seen anyone steal tofu, or mung beans....

I deliberately walked the other way. I can't imagine stealing anything unless I were really hungry or had hungry kids and no other way to feed em.

[bicentennial_baby]

39. ....

:rofl:

"when's the last time you've seen anyone steal tofu, or mung beans...."

:rofl:

[bullwinkle428]

41. The Fareway supermarket chain in the Midwest ONLY sells their

meat from behind the glass counter by the butchers and their assistants - nothing pre-packaged at all. Yeah, when the store is busy, you may have to wait a couple of minutes before you're taken care of, but the quality level is excellent and the prices are very competitive with the other markets in the area.

No corporate website, but some company info here:

http://www.hoovers.com/fareway-stores/--ID__47508--/free-co-factsheet.xhtml