Tag: food

We’re pricing the poor out of food in the UK – that’s why I’m launching my own price index

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/22/were-pricing-the-poor-out-of-food-in-the-uk-thats-why-im-launching-my-own-price-index

Excerpt:

A collection of 700 pre-specified goods that includes a leg of lamb, bedroom furniture, a television and champagne seems a blunt and darkly comical tool for recording the impact of inflated grocery prices in a country where two and a half million citizens were forced by an array of desperate circumstances to use food banks in the last year.

The Smart Price, Basics and Value range products offered as lower-cost alternatives are stealthily being extinguished from the shelves, leaving shoppers with no choice but to “level up” to the supermarkets’ own branded goods – usually in smaller quantities at larger prices.

I have been monitoring this for the last decade, through writing recipes on my online blog and documenting the prices of ingredients in forensic detail. In 2012, 10 stock cubes from Sainsbury’s Basics range were 10p. In 2022, those same stock cubes are 39p, but only available in chicken or beef. The cheapest vegetable stock cubes are, inexplicably, £1 for 10. Last year the Smart Price pasta in my local Asda was 29p for 500g. Today, it is unavailable, so the cheapest bag is 70p; a 141% price rise for the same product in more colourful packaging. A few years ago, there were more than 400 products in the Smart Price range; today there are 87, and counting down.

….

I have been writing about these things for 10 years now. I have given evidence to multiple parliamentary inquiries, led numerous petitions, been consulted on the School Food Plan and the National Food Strategy, spoken twice at the Conservative party conference, and still the realities of the worst of our collective experiences are dismissed by haughty money men as not matching their theoretical lamb-and-champagne metrics.

So, along with a team of economists, charitable partners, retail price analysts, people working to combat poverty in the UK, ex-staff from the Office for National Statistics and others who have volunteered their time and expertise, I am compiling a new price index – one that will document the disappearance of the budget lines and the insidiously creeping prices of the most basic versions of essential items at the supermarket.

Author(s): Jack Monroe

Publication Date: 22 Jan 2022

Publication Site: The Guardian

Meat Supplies Tighten as Cyberattack on JBS Snarls Food Chain

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/jbs-meat-plants-face-slow-restart-after-cyberattack-11622633982

Graphic:

Excerpt:

A ransomware attack against JBS SA sent shock waves throughout the U.S. food industry and exacerbated tension between Washington and Moscow, even as the meatpacker restarted plant operations.

JBS said most of its plants resumed operations Wednesday, though some shifts and processing operations remained suspended, according to individual plants’ social-media posts.

….

Meat supplies were already tight before the cyberattack. Surging demand from reopening restaurants, along with production problems at meat plants, are driving up costs of bacon, chicken wings and other products as people continue to make big grocery purchases. Some restaurants and supermarkets have raised prices for consumers as a result.

Distributor Gordon Food Service Inc. bought meat from other suppliers Tuesday while JBS plants were offline, said Jagtar Nijjar, Gordon’s director of imports and commodities. Mr. Nijjar said he expected it to take four business days for its normal order flow from JBS to resume. Normally, he said, Gordon gets more than half of its pork from JBS, at least half a million pounds every week.

U.S. cattle producers, meanwhile, said they were waiting to learn whether they would be able to deliver animals to JBS plants on schedule this week. U.S. meat companies slaughtered 105,000 cattle and 439,000 hogs on Wednesday, down 13% and 9%, respectively, from a week prior, according to USDA data.

Author(s): Jesse Newman, Jacob Bunge

Publication Date: 2 June 2021

Publication Site: WSJ