In light of the recent protests made by French farmers against the low price of pork, beef and milk in large supermarkets, the European newswire service, Euronews, has carried out a survey of the retail price of beef in a number of European states.

The news channel compiled a list of the average retail price of a 500g potion of fresh minced beef from large supermarket chains in a number of different countries.

To account for the differences in the purchasing power of shoppers in each individual country, Euronews then looked at how many hours of work a person on the minimum wage in each country would have to work to purchase the beef.

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The figures show that although the retail price of mince in France is quite high the country’s high minimum wage make beef more affordable to shoppers. Consumers in Greece come off the worst from the analysis with an average worker on the minimum wage forced to work more than an hour to afford a 500g serving of mince.

Interestingly in the UK, where the beef price paid to farmers is quite strong at present, the retail price of beef is much lower than other member states. This is due to the on-going intense price war between the large retailers in the UK, many of whom are using beef as a loss leader to entice customers in.

Unfortunately, the comparison made by Euronews did not include Ireland in its analysis. But taking the Tesco retail price of €3.29 for 500g of lean steak mince combined with the Irish minimum wage of €8.65 per hour would position Ireland just ahead of the UK in the table. This would make mince beef more affordable to an Irish consumer on the minimum wage compared with any of the other countries in the table above.