All meats, except for beef steaks and beef roasts, are available ration free in the U.S. as of midnight today, the Office of Price Administration announced during World War II. The OPA also said that the monthly allotment for red points, which are needed to purchase butter, margarine, cheese, and evaporated milk, would be cut in half, giving citizens less of these staples. Restrictions on beef steaks and roasts remained the same.

"Announcement that the Office of Price Administration has suspended the point-rationing system for all kinds of meat, with the exception of choice cuts and roast of beef, brings to an end one of the least glorious battles on the home front – the battle of the butcher shop," an editorial in the Valley Morning Star explained on May 12, 1944. "In a world which was visibly tottering under the weight of an atrocious assault on free institutions, a world in which whole races were being systematically exterminated and in which whole innocent and unoffending nations had been overrun and starved, the self-appointed spokesmen the American people acted as though the worst atrocity of all time was a system which limited their right to buy as much meat as they chose and at as high prices as they could afford."

NOTE: According to OPA Administrator Chester A. Bowles, rationing restrictions changed due to reduced Army and Navy demand, the stopping of lend-lease pork buying and the hope that more meat would be brought to the market over the summer.

Most Meats Freed From Rationing
The Port Arthur News, May 3, 1944
Meat Rationing Is Called Least Glorious Experiment
Valley Morning Star, May 12, 1944
Changes In Meat Rationing
The Daily Times-News, May 4, 1944
Meat Rationing Ends, Except on Beefsteak, Roast
The Ogden Standard-Examiner, May 3, 1944
Lamb shipments spurt
The Greeley Daily Tribune, May 4, 1944