Beef Prices to Rise Due to Hurricane
Inflation or "corporate greed"? Meat prices increased past double digits during pandemic
The toll of putting food on the tabular array is the highest it's been in 40 years. The biggest food price hikes are in meats, with pork and beef upwardly fourteen% to twenty% compared with a yr ago.
Food companies and some economists say pandemic disruptions, inflation and loftier demand are to blame. But others question whether there'south more at play.
"You're seeing just orders of magnitude greater turn a profit that are not justified by the actual rate of inflation or their increased costs," Ricardo Salvador, a scientist with the Marriage of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy group, told CBS News.
Co-ordinate to quarterly reports for Tyson, the nation's largest meat processor, the company posted $3 billion in profit in 2021. It made over $1 billion in profit merely last quarter, the reports showed.
That means profits are upwardly a staggering 48% from the offset quarter of 2021 compared with the same period in 2022, even as inflation is pain American families.
A big reason for Tyson's skyrocketing profits: its 31% price hike on beef, 20% on craven and 13% on pork.
In an earnings call concluding calendar month, Tyson's CEO said, "Nosotros're not asking customers or the consumer ultimately to pay for our inefficiencies. Nosotros're request them to pay for inflation."
"Economists and industry analysts confirm that today's higher meat prices are a directly effect of constrained supplies due to the labor shortage, higher input costs for such things every bit grain, labor and fuel, and stronger consumer need," Tyson said in a argument to CBS News.
Other major meat suppliers are too posting similar profits. Some analysts like Salvador believe the numbers don't add upwards.
"They're clearly taking reward," Salvador said. "You lot know, they're profiteering, and we're not the but ones to observe that."
"You could call information technology 'corporate greed,' certain. You could telephone call it 'jacking up prices during a pandemic,'" White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in December.
Even President Biden weighed in, blasting the meat manufacture in his Country of the Union address last week.
"Capitalism without competition is exploitation. Information technology drives up profits," Mr. Biden said.
Four companies — Tyson, JBS, Marfrig and Seaboard — control up to 85% of the nation'due south beef, pork and craven markets.
"That means they can proper noun whatever price they want. And if you want to buy meat, y'all're paying that price," Salvador said.
Jayson Lusk, Distinguished Professor and head of the Section of Agronomical Economics at Purdue University, told CBS News that meat companies are also facing rising costs for product.
"Tyson's example is that even while profitability is rising, so are their costs and they're having to pay more for their inputs," Lusk said. "They're paying nigh 20% higher wages to their workers since the start of the pandemic. And even for inputs such every bit cattle — cattle prices are up nigh fifteen% since the start of the pandemic, and so their costs have increased. That explains part of the reason that nosotros come across increasing meat prices. Only what nosotros see at the same time is that their profitability has been able to increase because the demand increases for their products take more than than offset their price increases."
Tyson adds that one of the reasons last year'due south income was lower is because of COVID-related costs, including testing, protective equipment and operational disruptions.
For Selina Flores and her family, it's no longer about stretching the budget — information technology's most what gets cut. The monthly grocery nib for her family of four has nigh doubled, Flores said.
"It was meat at every meal. Now, it's possibly ii or iii days out the week," she told CBS News.
Her family now relies on a monthly food donation from the Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida in Immokalee to brand ends meet.
"We're just trying to proceed upwards with everything and the prices keep going up," she said.
Salvador said there is nothing to keep the prices from increasing as long as "there isn't competition that will assistance bulldoze downward the prices then that they have a reason to actually be more reasonable."
That's why Flores is worried about her children's hereafter.
"Prices are going up and they're going to proceed to get upward. In that location's no stopping information technology," she said. "How am I going to brand ends meet?"
Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meat-prices-pandemic-inflation-corporate-greed/
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