KINDERSLEY, Sask. – The beef industry is blaming grocery store workers for its failure to stop the meat’s continual slide in sales.
Butchers see “case-ready” beef as a threat to their jobs, so they aren’t allowing stores to offer it, Beef Information Centre representative Joan Perrin told ranchers at the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association annual convention last week.
“The biggest drawbacks in our industry are unions and backwards thinking,” said Perrin. “The chain leaders want it, but they’re worried the workers will sabotage it.”
Later she said some stores are also wary of case-ready beef because they think it is less fresh and will worry customers.
Read Also
Land crash warning rejected
A technical analyst believes that Saskatchewan land values could be due for a correction, but land owners and FCC say supply/demand fundamentals drive land prices – not mathematical models
Case-ready means meat that is already prepared for cooking by the time it reaches the counter. It can mean meats that are cut, seasoned and marinated, packaged, labeled and even sometimes priced at the processing plant.
Most chicken is sold this way. Very little work is done at the grocery store.
A wide variety of easy-to-cook chicken products exists, Perrin said, and that has helped chicken steadily gain market share, often at beef’s expense. Chicken wings, for example, were almost a scrap meat part of the bird until they were turned into a tasty snack food.
Perrin said up to 70 percent of pork and chicken is processed, or “value-added,” compared to about 25 percent of beef.
Beef has lost about one percent of the meat market every year for the past 20 years.
BIC committee member Wilf Campbell said beef producers want to reverse the trend and begin rebuilding market share. And meeting the meat needs of the “culture of convenience” is key, he said.
Perrin said convenience is a much larger factor than price for many urban consumers, who have little time to prepare evening meals.
“They’ll pay for convenience,” she said. “They’re thinking meals and they don’t want to do the work.”
Most consumers see steaks as a special occasion meal, and by the time urban commuters have returned home at night, cooking a roast is not one of the meal options they will consider, Perrin said.
Making beef easy and fast to cook is essential for beef’s renaissance, Perrin said.
“If we fix the product, we’ll get market share.”
A number of American companies have produced case-ready beef, such as a microwaveable pot roast, that look promising, Perrin said.
But even if they can be produced, the industry will have to find some way to work around worker hostility, she said.
“Case-ready means jobs are disappearing,” is how meat cutters at grocery stores see things, Perrin said.
“You can’t even breathe case-ready (during contract negotiations),” Perrin said.
Safeway Alberta and its union did not return calls about the issue.
