- The price of a ribeye roast rose by 95% from $8.71 per lb last November to $16.99 per lb this week
- Meat packers blame supply chain crunches and staff shortages for the sudden rise in prices
- They say they were already struggling to attract workers before the pandemic, now must pay up to $20 an hour to compete for staff who don’t want to work
- They also want shipping companies to be forced to take their exports – rather than go for import jobs from Asia on non-perishable goods
- The Biden administration says the companies are deliberately hiking prices out of greed, despite inflation being seen in all categories of consumer prices
- Farmers are behind him, blaming ‘big beef’ for the rise in prices and not the fact that companies have rising costs
Startlingly high prices are appearing in meat aisles across the country in what shoppers have begrudgingly come to know as ‘meatflation’. Prices shown reflect an average of retail prices advertised in the week starting November 5. The data was released by the US Department of Agriculture. Every type of beef rose in price, with bone-in ribeye seeing the highest spike of 95% from the same week last year
