WASHINGTON (TND) — Due to inflationary prices, this year's Thanksgiving may be "the most expensive meal in the history of the holiday," according to The New York Times.
Calvin Moore, the Congressional Leadership Fund communications director, said President Biden's policies have created a situation where "working families can’t even afford to celebrate the holidays this year.”
Matthew McClure, an executive chef at Bentonville Ark.'s "Hive," paid 20% more last month on his pasture-raised turkeys than he did last year, according to the Times.
Frozen turkeys between 8 and 16 pounds cost 25 cents more per pound than they did a year ago, according to the weekly Department of Agriculture turkey report, released Friday. By the end of the year, turkey prices per pound will surpass the record Department of Agriculture benchmark price for turkeys. That was $1.36, set in 2015, according to market analysts.
The increase in turkey prices is likely due to rising corn prices, which turkeys feed on. The price of corn has more than doubled from July 2020 to July 2021, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Last month, the consumer price index was up 4.6% from September last year and prices for meat, poultry, fish, and eggs increased by 10.5%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Mainstream food companies such as Nestlé or Procter & Gamble have warned their consumers of the price increases, as reported by the Times.
The director of sweet-potato sales for Wada Farms in Raleigh, N.C., Norman Brown, has been selling sweet potatoes for nearly 40 years. He says he is paying truckers twice as much as usual to transport the crop.
I don’t know what the answer is, but in the end, it’s all going to get passed on to the consumer," Brown told the Times.
Chicago worker Caroline Hoffman says she now "dreads" buying vanilla extract because she knows it costs $2 more. She told the Times that when she finds canned pumpkin for under a dollar, she stocks up on it so she has it when she needs it for events like "Friendsgivings."