Beef price increase hits Nova Scotia consumers, butchers
Nova Scotians aren't immune to the rising cost of beef as butchers and restaurants wrestle with the impact of the smallest North American cattle herd in decades.
Chris de Waal, of the Getaway Farms' Butcher Shop at the Halifax Seaport Farmers' Market, said his shop raised its prices on Tuesday morning after putting it off for months.
"We have taken a hit over the last little while while prices have continued to climb. But we're at that point now where we need to just bump things a little bit to make sure that we'll be here next year," he said.
"The prices just keep going up so we finally hit that breaking point where we just had to do it."
Experts have said high meat prices are essentially a question of supply and demand. The global appetite for meat continues to grow as the middle class in developing countries grows richer.
At the same time, high feed costs in the past several years and persistent drought in the U.S. have driven farmers to cull herds in traditional cattle country, including Texas.
"The local farmers that we're working with and the local area cattle that we buy, they're fetching a higher price than they've ever fetched so we've unfortunately had to raise our prices a little bit to compensate for that," said de Waal.
According to Statistics Canada, the average retail price of beef has gone up steadily in the last four years.
One kilogram of round steak, for example, cost $12.58 in September 2010. Four years later, the average retail price was $17.57.
A kilogram of regular ground beef cost $7.61 in September 2010 but by September 2014, that had ballooned to $11.40.
Local restaurants are also feeling the pinch. They only have a few choices: raise prices, cut down how much beef they use or eat the difference.
"You can eat it and that's what we've been doing so far but you can only do that for so long," said Victor Fineberg of Hali Deli.
"You have to face the facts and you have to do something about it."
The menu at Hali Deli relies heavily on beef. Fineberg said it now costs him about 40 per cent more than it did six months ago.
"I don't know what the answer is, because it keeps going up. It's not stopping. You hear a hundred different reasons as to why — supply, demand, shortage," he said.
"It's hard to make that decision to put prices up. We're in a very price sensitive market so I'm always frightened to. You really don't want, if customers are used to a certain thing, you don't want to drop the quality or the size of it as well."
