Pork prices

Release date:
8 November 2019

You asked

Pork CPI series, pursuant to the FOIA. I give below details of the CPI price series published by the ONS. You'll note that these prices all correspond to consumer prices for pork products: 1.CPI Index 01.1.2.2 Pork (2015 = 100)

Dataset ID: MM23

Series ID: L78R

CPIH Index 01.1.2.2 Pork (2015 = 100)

Dataset ID: MM23

Series ID: J2IG

I am writing to request detailed information on:

  1. Which retailers contributed prices for each series and,
  2. The weighting used for each retailer contribution in each series.
  3. Actual price contribution by each retailer

We said

Thank you for your request.

You requested information on the retailers, their weights and actual price quotes that contribute to the consumer price indices (CPI and CPIH) for pork.

Unfortunately we are unable to reveal individual retailers whose prices contribute to the series as this is considered personal information. Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act (SRSA) 2007 makes it a criminal offence to disclose personal information that would identify an individual or a body corporate. Section 9 of the Statistics of Trade Act 1947 also makes it an offence to disclose individual estimates or returns, or information relating to an individual undertaking. Because the disclosure of this information is prohibited by another enactment, s.44 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000 applies.

We do, however, release the individual price quotes as part of a microdataset which is published alongside the headline figures each month. Files for most months are located in the "Price quotes" section on this page. The exceptions are files for January to August 2019, which can be accessed via a link under the "Price quotes, 2019" section of the previous page or directly via this link, and January and February 2017 which can be accessed via a link under the "Price quotes, 2017" section or are the final two files on this page. The glossary on the first page describes the variables and codes used in the files.

For pork, there is one item in the sample, namely home-killed pork loin chops per kilogram. This has the identifier 210703 in column B of the files. The individual shop prices can be identified using a combination of shop code (in column E of the files) and region code (in column O). It is possible to follow most individual price series over time using these identifier codes. However it is possible that more than one price chain has the same pair of shop and region codes. This could happen when shops had the same shop code and were in the same region but not the same location. We do not publish location information again for reasons of confidentiality. Each of the rows in the individual spreadsheets has the same weight within stratum (identified in column T). Once aggregated to stratum level, the weights for each stratum are in column K.

The price quotes used for pork are the same for both CPI and CPIH, as are the resulting indices.

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