With Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris expected to call for action against “corporate price gouging in the food and grocery industries,” the meat industry said on Thursday that it is not to blame for high prices. “Americans are seeing inflation in every part of their livelihoods — rent, gas, automobiles, furniture — not just in the meat case,” said the National Chicken Council, speaking for the broiler chicken industry.
“A federal ban on price gouging does not address the real causes of inflation,” said the trade group Meat Institute. “The Harris campaign rhetoric unfairly targets the red meat and poultry,” it said, although the food inflation rate, an annualized rate of 2.2 percent in July, is the lowest since early 2021.
Harris was scheduled to outline her economic policy platform at a rally in North Carolina on Friday. Her campaign said Harris would propose a ban on “corporate price gouging in the food and grocery industries” and support tougher scrutiny of supermarket and food-producer mergers, “specifically for the risk that the proposed merger would raise grocery prices.”
“There’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business,” said the Harris campaign. “Americans can see that difference in their grocery bills.”
The meat industry said prices in its sector are determined by supply and demand. “Cattle prices remain at record levels because the United States has the lowest cattle inventory since Harry Truman was president,” said the Meat Institute. The National Chicken Council said broiler prices were shaped by “major input costs like corn, soybeans, energy, packaging, transportation, and by fiscal policy and burdensome government regulations.”
President Biden took aim at “shrinkflation” in his State of the Union speech in March. “Too many corporations raise their prices to pad their profits, charging you more and more for less and less,” said the president.
Meatpacking is dominated by a handful of companies.