Beef Prices Rise 20.1% Due to Increased Consumer Demand and Labor Shortage Behind unleaded gasoline, beef prices have risen the most on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) since October 2020, rising 20.1% in the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This is the highest single year increase in beef prices since 2003, when a cow was diagnosed with mad-cow disease for the first time in the U.S., which caused a beef recall. Normally, beef prices usually fluctuate between 1% and 5% each year according to BLS data.
But with inflation raising the prices of goods and services across the country, why is beef affected significantly more than other meat or animal products? Pork, the closest contender, rose 14.1% over the past year and dairy related products only saw a 1.8% increase.
“At the top we have the supply, at the bottom we have the demand, but we have this bottleneck at the packing level and the food processing level,” Lemenager said. “We had a shortage of labor; we had the product, we just couldn’t get it through the system.”........
https://www.cnsnews.com/article/national/megan-williams/beef-prices-rise-201-due-increased-consumer-demand-and-labor
