Farmers Forum staff
Canadians are eating less beef, chicken and pork as pandemic pricing has hit meat counters and grocery aisles, says food analyst Sylvain Charlebois in a recent column.
Since May, beef sales have dropped 6% nationwide — and, surprisingly, even more than that in Alberta — reports the Dalhousie University professor in trade magazine Retail Insider.
The national decline in chicken and pork sales was even worse, respectively falling 12 and 17% in the same time frame. Ontario consumers actually curtailed their pork consumption by a whopping 20% this summer.
Despite sluggish meat sales, the professor points out that meat remains more expensive, with beef alone up 10% since January. It’s an indicator of how the supply and demand theory of pricing “rarely makes sense” at the grocery store and is “more complicated than that,” Charlebois said.
