That’s likely due to an oversupply of poultry — the result of the industry ramping up production in response to previously-higher prices.

The oversupply pushed prices for chicken down, particularly when compared to the cost of beef and pork. 

Paul Shapiro, vice president of farm animal protection at the Humane Society of the U.S., called the increased meat consumption “very disturbing” but attributed it to the chicken oversupply — conditions that appear likely to continue through this summer and will contribute to continued growth this year.

“It’s not correct to interpret the increased consumption as suggestive of increased consumer demand,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro pointed to the growing popularity of plant-based, alternative-protein products — a market the Plant Based Foods Association says grew an estimated 8.7 percent to $3.5 billion in annual sales over the past two years — as evidence that demand is not driving the surge in meat sales. 

Diana Rice, associate director of nutrition communications for the Meatless Monday campaign, was also skeptical that the surge in meat consumption was indicative of a long-term trend.  

“I believe that we’ll see this trend reversed because consumers want to make dietary choices that are good for their health and the environment,” Rice said.

Still, there’s reason to believe advocates pushing for Americans to eat less meat still face a climb that is very much uphill.

Marta Zaraska, a France-based science journalist whose recent book Meathooked explored the historical and psychological context for mankind’s love affair with animal flesh, pointed out that sales of plant-based meat alternatives remain practically microscopic when compared to U.S. meat sales, which surpass the GDP of entire nations like Hungary and Ukraine.

“In general, the levels of consumption are steady and even climbing a bit,” Zaraska said. “We really are hooked on meat.”

The meat industry, she said, is also pushing back feverishly against calls to eat less meat — and has the marketing budgets to ensure the message is heard.

To counteract that, Zaraska said change can’t simply be left up to individuals. She said a “meat tax” like one currently being proposed in Denmark or a clear target for reduced meat consumption — which the European Union is considering— could make an impact. 

If we want to reduce meat’s environmental impact, she argued, we simply don’t have a choice.

“Considering that meat eating contributes as much to global warming as all the transportation combined,” Zaraska said, “it’s absolutely vital for humanity to lower our consumption.”

Perry went on from there to note his sterling credentials when it comes to supporting veterans and their families. Which is true: they were the cornerstone of his largely forgettable second run for the presidency. But putting those aside, it’s still worth asking why he felt he had to go down this road at the very moment when the initial controversy seemed to be receding from view.  

And the most compelling answer is the simplest: Donald Trump has terrible surrogates.

The same day that Perry was reviving the Khan story, the co-chair of Trump’s national veterans’ coalition was once more talking about killing Hillary Clinton. And no, “once more” is not a misprint. New Hampshire state Rep. Al Baldasaro had previously expressed his belief that Clinton “should be put in the firing line and shot for treason” for her use of a private email server. In an apparent attempt at clarification, he told a local outlet that he had not, in fact, called for her to be “assassinated” but merely meant that “she should be shot in a firing squad for treason.”

If you’re having difficulty finding the distinction here, you’re not alone.

Stressing on multiple occasions that you wouldn’t mind seeing your political opponent riddled with bullets is, of course, beyond the pale. On a much smaller scale, it’s also shows that you’re a bad functionary for a presidential campaign.

But these are the people whom Trump has relied on as his surrogates.

Baldasaro may be the most obsessively violent, but others are equally confounding. Katrina Pierson, the campaign’s national spokesperson, has become must-see television for her certitude in stating historical inaccuracies. Last week, she insisted that the war in Afghanistan started under President Barack Obama, despite his being a state senator in Illinois at the time. And just yesterday, Trump’s longtime counsel, Michael Cohen, helped create an instantly viral cable news moment when he repeatedly demanded to know who, exactly, was insisting that Mr. Trump was not doing spectacularly well on the trail. He quickly got the answer: every single poll.

There is an argument to be made that the impact of a campaign surrogate is overrated. Few, if any, voters cast a ballot because Pierson bumbled the history of the Afghanistan war. Cohen’s blank stares into the CNN camera will be forgotten by Election Day. Trump is far more responsible for making the Khan family an issue than Perry ever will be. And while Baldasaro’s comments are truly vile, it’s more notable that Trump himself has vaguely discussed Second Amendment enthusiasts taking action into their own hands.

But as a practical matter, all of these moments have harmed Trump. And their collective damage has added up. At a time when the Trump campaign would prefer to move the conversation away from their candidate and on to Clinton, these moments don’t allow for it.

For a brief moment, Trump appeared to recognize that this was, in fact, a problem one that only he could fix. In June, his campaign brought on board an operative to oversee and organize the surrogate operation. But two weeks into the job, that operative, Kevin Kellems, quit.

“While brief,” he said, “it has been an interesting experience.” Kellems didn’t return a request for comment.

Since then, nothing appears to have been done to mend this clearly problematic situation. In fact, just the opposite. Trump praised Baldasaro after his initial remark and the campaign has stood by Pierson through her various cable news adventures. Republicans outside the campaign have been left utterly confused. Some assume that Trump simply can’t recruit better talent, since few seasoned operatives have any desire to join a campaign that they view as a surefire loser.

But there is also a theory that Trump is either too cheap or simply doesn’t care.

“That’s the thing that bothers me. So let’s suppose he is a smart businessman, just for this argument’s sake. He has marketing and communications and advertising and finance people in his resort, golf courses, real estate ventures and other things. He moves almost none of them over, save a lawyer and a digital/policy guy, both of whom are unhinged?” said Rory Cooper, who was a top operative to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

“Part of it is that nobody will work for him. Too career risky even if not out of principle,” Cooper continued. “But he could surely throw enough money at some good people if he was really trying. And yeah, that’s a strong signal that he’s not.”

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story said incorrectly that Khan’s son was a Marine; he was in fact an Army officer. Also, due to an editing error, it misidentified Eric Cantor as the former Senate majority leader; he is the former House majority leader.

Shkreli himself also threw his two cents in, using the same argument he used to defend his 5,000-percent percent price hike on Daraprim, a drug for AIDS and cancer patients to which his company acquired the rights in Aug. 2015. He tweeted that epinephrine injectables aren’t lucrative enough to lure competitors into the market, which would presumably bring prices down:

Another epinephrine injectable, Adrenaclick, can cost almost $400 for a two-pack, according to GoodRX.com, a consumer site that lists competitive pharmaceutical prices, and it has a different injection mechanism than the EpiPen. Those who use EpiPens also face an additional barrier because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t consider injectable epinephrine pens as therapeutically equivalent to each other, meaning a prescription for one pen cannot not be filled with a cheaper version. States have to change their own regulatory rules to allow patients to switch one pen for what’s stated on their prescription, and so far only 21 states have done so. 

Clinicians wrote over 3.6 million prescriptions for the EpiPen last year, while the Adrenaclick was prescribed only a few hundred times, reports PBS. 

Mylan Pharmaceuticals does have an EpiPen Savings Card for eligible patients that reduces the cost of a carton by a maximum of $100. But as users point out, a $100 discount doesn’t mean much when you’re left with the rest of the big bill. Marie Myers, a Facebook user who both uses the EpiPen for herself and buys one for her child, took Mylan Pharmaceuticals to task on the company’s Facebook page two months ago over the relative uselessness of the savings card, which the company calls a “$0 copay” coupon.

I called Mylan about my situation. Explaining that it would cost me $1,251.46 for two packs of epi-pens and the representative pointed me to the “$0 copay” coupon offered. I pointed out that the fine print of that coupon only covers a maximum of $100 per pack of epi pens. Still leaving me on the hook for $1,051.46 for this needed medication. Which still leaves Mylan with a massive profit, and leaves me in a situation where it was unaffordable. The representative admitted Mylan knows those coupons no longer make Epi-pens affordable to the majority of individuals with the new standard of high deductible health plans and stated that at this time Mylan has NO assistance program in place. 

In a statement sent to the Huffington Post, Mylan Pharmaceuticals called attention to the fact that they’ve donated more than 650,000 EpiPen and EpiPen Jr  auto-Injectors to about half of all U.S. schools nationwide, and that 80 percent of commercially insured patients received the EpiPen for free using the EpiPen savings card. 

They also blamed the increased burden of EpiPen costs on the rise of high-deductible health insurance plans in the U.S. From the statement: 

We encourage all patients and families to thoroughly review and understand their options when selecting healthcare insurance coverage. With the Affordable Care Act, there are options available. Premiums, prescription coverage, out-of-pocket limits and deductibles can vary widely. Often, plans offering lower premiums have higher deductibles, and many options now have separate pharmacy and medical expense deductibles.