Meat dispute leads to higher prices

Price rises on many basic foods in Argentina appear to have frozen over the past year following government price controls.But despite these controls, the BBC food price index is registering a rise of around 19% and the increase has mostly been due to the rise in meat and milk prices.

There has been a lot of criticism from cattle ranchers and farmers who say the government forces them to sell their cattle at unrealistic prices.

On the outskirts of Buenos Aires lies the Liniers cattle market and outside its high walls, trucks from all over the country park up to unload their cargoes.

The cattle are pushed up ramps and into fenced corrals inside, and then they are auctioned off to the slaughter houses and meat packing plants.

This is the biggest cattle market in the world, with some 40,000 animals coming through the gates every week.

Special status

Beef is revered in Argentina and all products related to it, including milk, are regarded as staple foods and no Argentine will do without a traditional Sunday barbecue.

So when in 2006 prices began to rise, the government introduced price controls.For the past two years ranchers have been forced to send a higher percentage of cows to slaughter at the meat market.

They say this is partly because of a serious drought but it is mostly because the price the government is allowing them to charge for the animals is so low.

They say they cannot afford to feed the mothers and their calves.

"It is all down to government mishandling," says Nestor Roulet, vice president of the Rural Confederations of Argentina.

"The government has the wrong hypothesis, they think that if the price of bulls or heifers on the hoof is kept down that this means meat will be cheap in the shops," he says.

Mr Roulet maintains that the government has the same attitude towards milk, whereby if the milk is cheap at the dairy it will be cheap in the supermarkets.

"But the government is allowing the intermediaries to benefit. The producers only get 20% of the profit, the other 80% is divided out between industry, commerce and the state," he says.