Grocery price hikes hit Muslims during Ramadan

Fasting Muslims need protein, but meat prices have spiked across the country.

By Ben Popken, Rima Abdelkader and Michela Moscufo

(NBC NEWS) Muslim shoppers and merchants in the United States say that, along with the daily fasting requirements of the holy month of Ramadan, they are also bearing with food price increases.

“We go to the grocery and everything has changed,” said Muhasen Abdulrahman, 56, a teacher and single mother of three teenagers in Chicago. “Because of Covid, everything is more expensive.”

She uses food benefits and a local food pantry to supplement, but it can be hard at times to stretch meals for the whole family on a tight budget.

“Now we have Ramadan, we are fasting,” she said. “Because we are fasting, we need protein.” Lamb prices, for example, have risen from $6 to $12 a pound, she said, and halal chicken is also up several dollars a pound.

Food prices across the U.S. are up by around 4 percent since January 2020, due to pandemic demand and supply chain issues, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index.

After consumer food prices spiked from March to June last year, with meat prices in particular soaring 10 percent, food prices are no longer increasingly as rapidly. They’re also not going down.

White House economists have acknowledged that inflation will continue to rise, albeit more slowly, with the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending moves keeping borrowing costs at near zero to stimulate the economy.

Grocery price inflation has affected all Americans. But it’s especially noticeable to halal food markets in the U.S. — a grocery sector worth an estimated $13.8 billion, according to estimates by the research group DinarStandard — during the month of Ramadan, where food plays a key role.