Beef Prices

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30480, 30 June 1964, Page 12

Beef Prices

Complaints of “ profiteering ” can be expected when the retail price of beef rises next month. The president of the Canterbury Meat Retailers’ Association (Mr B. M. Owens) can expect no bouquets from housewives or politicians for his warning of a probable 4d per lb increase, although the butcher’s margin of profit on beef has undoubtedly been reduced to an uneconomic level in recent weeks. Schedule prices paid to farmers for good or fair average quality beef are now 145 s per 1001 b, compared with 135 s per 1001 b three months ago, but retail prices have not moved up proportionately. The beef eater has, in a sense, been subsidised by the purchasers of lamb.

Retail beef prices have probably been lower in New Zealand in the last six months than in any other country with a comparable standard of living. This has helped to maintain consumption of beef in New Zealand over a period when all exporters have been short of meat to supply lucrative markets in North America and Europe. In attempting to hold down retail prices, butchers have been working against the pull of overseas markets. Several years ago complaints were made about the high prices then charged for New Zealand crayfish, for which a profitable North American market had been developed. Last year, during the acute shortage of sugar on world markets, it was argued that the New Zealand price of sugar ought to be pegged. The pending rise in beef prices will, no doubt, produce another crop of “ pegged-price ” and “ consumer-subsidy ” theories. The only answer, however, is for people to eat less beef until prices come down again. That reaction to the higher beef prices will benefit the housewife’s purse, the meat industry’s export income, and the nation’s economy.