Why red meat costs more
If you feel as though red meat is more expensive than it used to be, you’re right.
About 95 per cent of New Zealand’s sheepmeat and 87 per cent of beef is exported, and what’s left for locals is sold at a premium.
In January 2007, 1 kilogram of beef mince would have cost $9, according to Stats NZ’S food price index. If you put a pack in your shopping trolley in January this year, it would have cost $16.39. That’s an 82 per cent increase and inflation doesn’t explain the difference.
Had the price of beef mince simply risen with inflation, that $16.39 pack of mince would have cost just $12.09.
Stewing beef shows a similar pattern. In 2007, 1kg cost $11.90. In January this year the same amount cost just over $20. Had it matched inflation it would have cost $15.98.
It’s a similar story with lamb. A kilogram of lamb chops cost $10.51 in 2007. Now it’s $18.02. Had it matched inflation it would be $14.11.
Beef and Lamb New Zealand chief executive Rod Slater said the cost of meat in New Zealand reflected what markets overseas were willing to pay.
‘‘If a housewife in the middle of Oxford in the UK is prepared to pay a certain price for a cut of meat, we have to match that in New Zealand,’’ he said. ‘‘We are price takers, not price makers in this country.’’
Slater had heard New Zealand consumers complain about the price of meat for years. ‘‘It’s nothing new. Consumers always have – and maybe justifiably – tended to think that we’re paying too much for our product. And some of them go to the UK and they see lamb being on special in the supermarket at less than what they can buy it.’’
One of the emerging buyers for our red meat is China – African swine flu decimated the country’s pig numbers in 2018. Charles Finny, a former trade negotiator and founder of consultancy Sanders Unsworth, said this was why China had been importing more beef and lamb.
Finny said there were previously misconceptions about what goods
‘‘We are price takers, not price makers.’’ Rod Slater
Beef and Lamb NZ chief executive
would sell well there. ‘‘I can remember exporters saying to me, ‘Oh, well, China is never going to be a big dairy market because people don’t really like milk products, and they don’t like lamb either.’ ’’
Now it’s the top buyer of New Zealand’s dairy and sheep and, in 2019, it was the top buyer of beef before slipping back to second place behind the United States.
He put the increased demand down to the growing wealth of China’s citizens. Parents with increased earnings wanted the best nutrition possible for their child, making New Zealand’s dairy products popular. – RNZ