Meat prices: sharpest rise since 2001

Consumers paid 3.8 percent more for their meat in 2017 compared to the previous year. Prices at meat producers, e.g. slaughterhouses and boning plants, rose as well. Over the past two decades, meat prices in the retail sector have risen by 2 percent annually on average. Last year, retail meat prices surged at twice this average rate. In 2001, prices rose by almost 10 percent. These price hikes were possibly connected with the outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease that year.
Retail food prices went up by 2.7 percent in 2017. Altogether, consumers paid 1.4 percent more for their daily groceries, clothing, petrol, rent and insurance premiums.

Prices of poultry meat rose most rapidly in 2017

Of all meat purchased by consumers, poultry saw the steepest price rise in 2017. Processed meats (i.e. smoked, dried or salted) as well as pork rose slightly less, but still more rapidly than average. Other types of meat such as rabbit and wild boar (game) saw relatively the smallest price increase.

Consumer spending most on processed meats

Processed meat accounted for nearly 30 percent of all consumer meat purchases in 2017. The next largest share was held by pork and other meat preparations, including canned meat and half-and-half minced meat. Sheep meat and goat meat represented 1.2 percent of all meat purchases in shops.

Mainly rabbit and wild boar more expensive in past decade

Between 2007 and 2017, the steepest price rise (24 percent) was in game such as rabbit and wild boar, followed by poultry meat. During this period, pork prices rose by almost 10 percent. In 2017, consumer prices of meat were 17 percent up on ten years previously. In the same period, consumers had to pay 18 percent more for their food shopping basket.

Dutch price rise steeper than in eurozone

The meat price increase in the Netherlands in 2017 was one of the highest in the eurozone. Only Slovakia recorded a higher meat price increase. In Belgium and Germany, the increase was half that of the Netherlands at the most. Prices even went down in Ireland, Cyprus, Finland and Greece. The Netherlands saw relatively the sharpest price rise in poultry meat compared to the rest of the eurozone.