The price of food just keeps going up, now outpacing general inflation by a considerable amount.
The cost of food rose by 3.4 per cent last month over the same period last year, well beyond the 2.2 per cent general inflation rate.
However, an industry analyst is not pinning the blame on the supermarket chains. For example, if you look at Sobeys’ bottom line, they’re making a lot of money on pharmaceuticals but the gross margins have remained consistent.
Sylvain Charlebois of The Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University says the real hit is being felt at the meat counter with beef, chicken and other products but he lays the blame at the wholesale level – not at the retail end.
He says the United States saw beef prices going up and launched an investigation, however Ottawa has done nothing even though beef prices have escalated in Canada even more so than in the U.S.
“If we should be concerned about something, it’s in packing, not in retail,” says Charlebois.