Cash-strapped shoppers are buying cheaper cuts of meat for their Easter barbecues than in previous years as the cost of living crisis bites.
Families are ditching steaks for burgers and replacing pork chops with sausages in an effort to cut down on spending, according to the British Meat Processors Association.
At Tesco, four pork chops cost £4.60 while a pack of eight sausages sells for £1.70. Four rump steaks come to £15.20, while four burgers are only £3.
Prices for food are rising at their fastest rate in more than ten years, figures from the Office for National Statistics last week showed, with meat prices 5.6pc higher in March than last year.
Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, said this was resulting in more people “trading down” on the types of meat they were buying.
He said: “Maybe instead of buying steaks, people are now buying burgers. If they normally buy pork chops, they buy sausages. There’s a tremendous scope to trade down on the meat side, especially when it comes to barbecues over long bank holiday weekends. The volumes will probably remain the same, but people will look for the cheaper cuts.”
Industry leaders remain hopeful that consumers will treat themselves to high-quality options such as large legs of lamb for the Easter Sunday roast.
Customers are cutting back at the same time as buyers facing steeper prices to purchase animals from the farm, known as “farmgate prices”.
Mr Allen said: “Those prices are rocketing at the moment. We’re seeing high prices for beef, lamb and now pork.”
The switch to cheaper cuts is likely to squeeze profits, he said.
Mr Allen said: “To be honest, you don’t make a lot of margin out of selling burgers. We’re anticipating quite a difficult autumn really with higher farmgate prices and this pressure at the other end from the consumer who hasn’t got the money to spend on it really.”
Meat processing plants are also struggling with costs as they continue to battle labour shortages. Earlier this month, MPs on the environment, food and rural affairs select committee called for the Government to “immediately” lower the English language requirement for butchers so that recruitment of foreign labour is easier. Estimates suggest that, by late last year, the industry was short of between 10,000 and 12,000 workers.
Mr Allen said many businesses still did not have enough butchers to help them get animals through the system as efficiently as possible.
He added: “You’re not actually maximizing your efficiency, really, because you just haven’t got enough staff to do it and that leads to things like waste. But you have to keep going to get by.”
