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Updated: June 10, 2020

Consumers paid more for groceries in May as meat got more expensive

By Danielle Wiener-Bronner, CNN Business

Consumers paid more for their groceries last month as meat continues to get more expensive.

The prices of food consumed at home rose 1% in May from April even as overall prices declined 0.1%, according to seasonally-adjusted figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The increase was driven mainly by a 3.7% increase in meat, poultry, fish and eggs.

Beef and veal got a lot more expensive in particular: Consumers paid nearly 11% more in May, the largest ever monthly increase.

The price increase for certain types of meat was even more dramatic: uncooked beef roasts soared 19.5%, and uncooked beef steak prices jumped 11.6%.

Meat prices have been rising as major processing facilities shut down or slowed operations because workers have been getting sick with Covid-19. At the same time, demand for meat in grocery stores has spiked as consumers eat at home more.

Plants are opening back up, but at Tyson, one of the country's biggest meat processors, meat production was still below pre-pandemic levels at the beginning of May, Bernstein analysts said in a research note.

"Based on our estimates, [about] 55% of Tyson's pork production capacity and [about] 36% of its beef capacity were completely idled as of May 1," Bernstein food analyst Alexia Howard wrote in the recent note. "Most of Tyson's plants are operating today, although at varying levels of reduced capacity due to absenteeism issues," she added.

Overall, US pork production was down about 6.2% year-over-year in the week that ended May 29, Howard noted. Beef production was down 7.6% in that period, she said.

Meat wasn't the only type of food that got more expensive. Fresh vegetables were up 1.3%, according to BLS data, with tomato prices rising nearly 2%. Ice cream rose 2.5%.

But other grocery prices have started to stabilize. Egg prices, which rose 16.1% in April, fell 4.8% in May.

And consumers are paying less for other categories of food. Coffee prices fell 1.2% while bread prices were down 1.8%

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