CALGARY – Consumers can look forward to some bargains on beef this summer.
About 60 percent of beef sold in retail stores is sold as a featured item. With the oversupply of beef and low wholesale prices this year, it’s anticipated prices will drop and people will line up at the meat counter to take advantage of the specials.
“There’s some great beef buys to be had because of increased cattle production in North America,” said Glenn Brand, national retail merchandising manager for the Beef Information Centre. He expects this summer’s long weekends will set the pace for beef buying.
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“Retailers are going to have very strong and competitive features on beef that’s going to move a tremendous amount of tonnage through the system,” he said.
“Hopefully the weather will improve and people will fire up their barbecues.”
Another advantage that makes beef more attractive is rising poultry and pork prices. Poultry in particular has gone up to cover producers’ high feed grain costs.
With cattle producers receiving about $70 per hundredweight for slaughter animals, they’re questioning whether these prices are being passed on to consumers.
“Producers are concerned that the price of beef that they’re selling has gone down pretty significantly since this time last year. They’re questioning retail prices and whether or not they’ve come down proportionately to the live cattle prices,” said David Andrews, president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association.
Tracking beef prices is difficult, says Brand.
While average retail prices are available on some cuts, most statistics don’t show how much beef was sold. Further, much of the information on pricing is proprietary information held by the retail chains.
To watch prices more accurately, the Beef Information Centre has been part of a consumer price tracking program since last October, supplied by a statistics company called International Surveys Limited.
About 4,000 households across Canada submit their grocery bills to the firm which analyses spending habits on food products including beef. Brand says the beef industry hopes to obtain a better set of figures on retail beef buying and will receive information on a quarterly basis to indicate how the increased features affect the overall retail price.
