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and, although not harmful, highly unpalatable. Vegetable 

 fats can be kept longer than lard, and lard longer than butter. 



Quality is another problem not solved by the butter-meat- 

 fat-cheese program. Since there is little variation in the 

 grades of butter, lard, and vegetable fats, changes in quality 

 of these products are not an important problem. In the case 

 of meat, however, there is a wide range in quality. Some cuts 

 are lean and others fat. Calves' liver is 100-per-cent lean. A 

 standard number of tickets for a particular cut of meat, re- 

 gardless of quality, has caused sharp changes in the cutting 

 of meat. A pork chop is not what it used to be. Good old 

 horse-and-buggy hamburger once was about 20-per-cent 

 suet ; now it runs from 20- to 40-per-cent suet or even more. 

 T-bone steaks and rump roasts can be cut from a steer, a 

 heifer, a canner cow, or a bologna bull at equal points per 

 pound, but the quality is not the same. Some are tender, 

 and others are tough. 



It is not possible to meet the many community prefer- 

 ences and keep the supply and demand for butter, meats, fat, 

 and cheese all in equilibrium. If there were several kinds of 

 tickets, it might not be so difficult to keep the supply of a 

 particular commodity and the number of coupons in adjust- 

 ment. 



To complicate the problem further, the supplies of meat 

 coming to market vary throughout the year, while the sup- 

 ply of tickets is uniform. Consequently the amount of meat 

 available to the consumer may be at wide variance with the 

 uniform number of coupons, with the result that some go 

 without meat. 



Another inequity in the rationing system is that the early 

 bird gets the low-point cuts and the late one is stuck with 

 the high-point products. 



The problem of administering the program is very compli- 

 cated. It would be necessary to keep profit margins alike for 



