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NAMI rejects WH conclusion on high meat prices
The White House released a report this week blaming higher meat prices at the grocery store on the consolidation in the meat industry and says it’s tackling that lack of competition on several fronts.
The North American Meat Institute made a strongly worded statement rejecting the White House premise.
The report says increased consumer demand has played a role but price increases are “also driven by the lack of competition at a key bottleneck point in the meat supply – meat processing” and cites the lack of competition with only four major processors.
The Meat Institute’s Chief Operating Officer Mark Dopp calls those statements “inflammatory” and says consumers are seeing higher costs mostly because of “a persistent and widespread labor shortage.” He says every industry, including meat and poultry packers, are affected by the ongoing global pandemic and inflationary trends in the U.S. economy.
The White House says since December 2020 prices for beef have risen by 14%, pork by 12.1%, and poultry by 6.6%.
