Food prices soar

AS we predicted last autumn, food prices in Britain are soaring by as much as 12%, which will add an estimated £750 a year to the average family's house-keeping bill, it was revealed yesterday.

Daelnet forecast this growth over many weeks last year - reporting crop failures, flooding and huge increases in the planting of bio-fuel crops in what were wheat producing nations - but as recently as November, the Government were denying it was happening and insisting that inflation was only 2.1%.

However, official figures from the Office of National Statistics published yesterday show that wholesale food prices went up by 7.4% last year, which is likely to become a 12% increase at retail rates. Despite this, the official inflation rate - excluding housing costs and council tax - still stands at 2.7%.

One of the biggest increases comes in the price of meat, which will not be received well by livestock farmers in the Yorkshire Dales.

Animal movement restrictions - imposed because foot and mouth disease leaked through the sewers at a Defra research laboratory in Surrey - hit the autumn lamb sales at the most critical time of the year, meaning that some farmers received as little as £3 a lamb in the artificially created glut that followed.