It’s getting more expensive to bring home the bacon.
Even if you’re the butcher.
“Bacon went up about a dollar a pound,” says Catherine Davis, owner of Your Corner Butcher in Ottawa’s Byward Market.
Davis also has a beef with beef. “For instance, in July the flank steak, which is a very cheap cut of meat, but because it’s in so much demand it practically doubles in price,” she says.
Davis says she has done her best to keep her price hikes to a minimum, but not all customers are so lucky.
According to Statistics Canada the average retail price of regular ground beef has gone up 16% in the past year. More choice cuts, like sirloin steak, are up 19%. The price of bacon has gone up nearly 30%.
The rise in pork prices is described as an anomaly – the result of an unforeseen virus that is hurting supply. “It’s a new virus so no pigs have immunity to it. And young pigs are dying at the rate of 70%,” says Dave Smith of Ashton Glen Farm, a beef and pork producer in Ashton, Ontario.
He says pork prices may moderate once the virus runs its course.
The rise in beef prices represents a more complicated stew. Smith says it has been years in the making, starting with the Mad Cow Disease scare that decreased demand. It, coupled with rising corn and soybean prices, led many farmers to get out of the cattle business altogether. “People who were raising cattle got rid of their cattle and put their farm into cash crops,” he says.
Smith says even global warming is at work. A major drought across the U.S. in 2012 made things even tougher for cattle producers.
And it’s all happening at a time when emerging markets like China and Russia are increasing the demand for beef. It’s a supply and demand imbalance that could take years to correct. “I see beef prices staying where they are and climbing,” predicts Smith.
It’s good news for beef producers. Bad news for anyone eying their next rib-eye.
