Supermarkets are being urged to go easy on prices, especially for meats, for Christmas.
This call has come from Minister of Commerce and Trade Senator Haynesley Benn, who noted that shoppers were faced with higher prices for pork, ham, chicken, beef, and lamb because of increased production costs. He also asked large food distributors to absorb some of the costs as a short-term measure.
Adding that meat producers were continuing to lose as their charges were increased marginally in face of a worldwide increase in grain prices, Benn said neither the international producer of grain nor the feed manufacturer would absorb the increases.
Benn told the DAILY NATION that droughts in countries producing raw materials for livestock feed had led to price increases that were passed on to farmers who were then forced to share those costs with supermarkets.
