Lather up while you can still afford it

Posted By Blake Hounshell Tuesday, July 10, 2007 - 5:58 PM Share

You can add soap to the list of vital products—corn tortillas, animal feed, beef, beer—that are getting more expensive thanks to the biofuels craze. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Soap and detergent makers say they are being hurt by a double whammy of federal subsidies and mandates that has reduced the supply and pushed up the costs of a key ingredient, beef tallow. The steeply rising price of corn, driven by a federal requirement to use more ethanol, has pushed up corn prices, making animal feed more expensive and prompting farmers to blend the less-expensive tallow and other fats into their feed.

The upshot: In the past year, beef-tallow prices have doubled.

Further down in the article, there's this gem:

Lou Burke, manager of Conoco's new biofuels program ... blames the market gyrations on hedge funds that have been bidding up futures prices for soybean oil, anticipating a boom in alternative diesel fuels. The move, he says, has spurred a sympathetic rise in other fat-related commodities.

Fat-related commodities? A charming term. Apparently, some folks are suggesting that beleaguered soap manufacturers turn to a different input altogether: petroleum. Gives the phrase "awash in oil" a whole new meaning, don't it?

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