Rankin Inlet (Aug 20/03) - Levinia Brown, deputy mayor of Rankin Inlet, has a beef with beef prices in Nunavut: she thinks they are way too high.

Armand Autut holds up a pound of ground beef at the Northern Store in Rankin Inlet. Despite producers selling beef at rock bottom prices, cost on the shelves remain unchanged. - Chris Puglia/NNSL photo

At a council meeting on Monday she urged council to write a letter to the Northern Store management requesting they lower their beef prices.

"Why hasn't the price been affected by mad cow? Why hasn't it gone down in price? I have been really discouraged by the prices on the shelf," she said.

At Rankin's Northern Store regular ground beef is going for $8.99 a kilogram.

In Winnipeg, where Brown's husband was visiting last week, ground beef was selling for 69 cents a pound.

"I couldn't get over how much hamburger meat was," she said.

"Right now it's cheap down in the city with all the competition," she said.

"But still, up here, we would think it would go down."

Brown has another beef. She is also angry that the Northern Store co-op stores are eligible for funding from a food program the federal government runs for their mail orders.

"It's time we questioned them," she said. "Why aren't the prices going down when they are highly subsidized?"

Northern Store management, based in Winnipeg, defended the cost of beef on Wednesday.

"Costing never really changed," said Scott Findlay, vice-president of Northern Company.

"I suspect when they reduced the number of cattle they were slaughtering because of the U.S. market being closed, they also would have the same fixed costs they had previously when they were slaughtering more cattle. Those costs don't go away."

The U.S. border was closed to all Canadian meat products May 20 after a case of mad cow disease was discovered in one Canadian cow.

The border partially re-opened to ruminants, such as caribou and muskox, last week.

Beef will soon also begin to flow again. But consumers in Nunavut never saw a change in prices.

Findlay explained that the meat processors, mainly based in Alberta, are to blame.

"In many cases some of their fixed costs are being spread over the lower volume. That's how I've had to look at it as the retailer.

"I had the same expectation as any consumer would have had.

"We market check our prices on a weekly basis. The pricing right across the board has held constant.

"Only the lower cost type products have seen a decrease over the last short while," Findlay said, speaking of ground beef.

And even that may be short lived, he added.

"The border has opened up for certain types, so the cost has jumped up again for ground beef-type products."