ARGENTINA'S largest butchers union and farm groups launched a two-day beef trade strike Thursday to protest layoffs and reduced shifts due to a drop in slaughter levels and the government's closing of beef exports. 
Trade at the country's main cattle market, Liniers, ground to a halt Thursday as ranchers held back deliveries to support the stoppage by the greater Buenos Aires butchers union, or SIGCBA. Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires, and the surrounding areas are the most densely populated in the country.
However, other butchers unions rejected the strike, saying that farm groups were using the SIGCBA to push their own agenda.
"We won't allow the farm groups to use us for a completely political event," Jose Fantina, the leader of other leading butchers' union, the Federacion Gremial del Personal de la Industria de la Carne, told reporters.
The strike comes as Argentina's farmers are gearing up for more conflict with the government, planning a protest rally May 3 and demanding the government lower the 35% export tax on soybeans, eliminate the export tax on all other grains and free up beef exports.
The May 3 protest will be the second of the year, but farm groups have vowed to hold back from the crippling roadblocks that sporadically shut down transport over a four-month period in 2008.
Farmers were emboldened after those strikes forced President Cristina Fernandez to revoke a tax increase on soybean exports, and they continue to chafe under heavy intervention in grain and beef trade designed to keep down domestic food prices.
The government has been holding up some beef exports since December and tightened those restrictions in March as prices continued to soar. The government regularly shuts down or limits beef exports when prices rise in an attempt to increase domestic supply and bring down the cost to local consumers.
The government has used the export snags as leverage to pressure beef exporters to sell beef to the local supermarkets for well under market value. The government has set a target retail price for about a dozen popular local cuts that is well under current prices. The cheap meat was seen in a number of supermarkets this week after exporters agreed to the price accord, according to local press reports.
The price of beef has shot up in recent months, angering residents in this country with one of the highest per-capita beef consumption rates in the world. Those gains have helped to stoke broader inflation, which is at worrying levels. 
Argentina's 2010 budget estimated the consumer price index would rise 6.5% this year, but through the end of March, 12-month inflation was running at 9.7% per year, according to the government's statistics institute, Indec.
But many private-sector economists question the legitimacy of the official data, saying the government manipulates the figures, which the government denies. The private sector estimates that inflation is running at two or three times the official rate.
The price of beef has surged because of a drought last year and due to the government's intervention in cattle markets since 2006. This spurred ranchers to trim herds in favor of alternative, more-profitable pursuits such as soybeans. The herd trimming resulted in production of 3.54 million tons of beef last year, up 10% from the previous record.
However, production is expected to fall 13% this year to 2.8 million tons, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
Source: weeklytimesnow.com.au
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