Behind the recent surge in inflation hides the daily lives of millions of households in Quebec. There are also some products that stand out, either because their prices have gone into orbit, or because they stubbornly resist the trend. Second text in our series: the price of meat, especially beef, has experienced a spectacular increase over the past year.
Since this summer, Patrick Pinard has observed price increases of 10 to 30% on all the beef muscles he wants to sell in his four Clément Jacques butchers, in Estrie and Montérégie.
He saw the same kind of situation as all the butchers in Quebec and Canada. The price of beef increased by 17.3% in Quebec between October 2020 and October 2021, and by 37% in two years, according to Statistics Canada’s Consumer Price Index.
Mr. Pinard, however, notes an exception: the beef he buys directly from Quebec breeders costs 10 to 15% less. Unfortunately, the co-owner of butcher shops Clément Jacques cannot afford to buy his supplies entirely this way.
“The problem is that I have to reverse engineer everything myself, because small producers do not have the same processing capacity as large slaughterhouses”, he emphasizes. Pinard says he would buy 100% of his beef from farmers if it weren’t for the labor shortage, which deprives him of the workers needed for this meticulous task.
Beef slaughtered, processed and sold locally effectively escapes this inflation, says Bœuf Québec, which is working to rebuild a purely Quebec supply chain. “There are two realities,” explains the director general of the organization, Jean-Sébastien Gascon. First, there is that of mass distribution. It is particularly expensive because we have a low slaughter capacity in North America. Four major North American players control the market, so the price of meat is disconnected from the raw material. They have the opportunity to play between supply and demand to get the maximum out of the price. “
According to Mr. Gascon, beef farmers do not benefit from this price increase. The majority of them would even be in deficit.
The breeders who have the possibility of slaughtering their animals in a small slaughterhouse and selling it on the farm, a minority, “do not live in this bubble”. “They have the choice either to increase their prices to follow the market, or to continue to sell at the same price that they were selling”, indicates Mr. Gascon. But the outlets are rarer this way, as few butchers have the capacity to buy a whole carcass, or a half-carcass, and process it.
Bœuf Québec, which brings together 70 breeders and other players in Quebec production, has therefore given itself the mission of developing the Quebec beef industry. The slaughtering and processing capacity of Quebec beef has improved over the past five years, thanks to the group’s efforts, he says. “We want fairness between the chain’s partners, for there to be a better distribution of the consumer’s dollar,” said Mr. Gascon.
Changes in consumption
Meanwhile, butchers are seeing the effect of rising prices on consumer habits. “People are looking for bargains. Some reduce their amount of meat. It is a luxury product, more than ever, ”notes Mr. Pinard. Others would turn to even cheaper meats, such as poultry.
Claudette Laquerre, met Thursday at the Boucherie du Marché Maisonneuve, illustrates this situation. “We don’t have the choice to run the discounts. I do Maxi, Metro and, from time to time, IGA ”, relates the consumer.
She says she has been eating less meat for about six months. “I increased the fish, which is also expensive, but you have to go for protein anyway. I converted to plants. Not the chickpeas, because I don’t like it, but the lentils, the legumes, the pea soups in winter, ”she reports.
Mr. Gascon invites meat lovers to encourage breeders in the province by spotting products marked “Bœuf Québec”, which can now be found in several grocery stores. “The more people buy our meat, the more they encourage more sustainable production, the more we will have significant purchasing power, the more we will control what we offer to consumers and the more we will give back to producers,” he says. -he.