Price discovery is the process of buyers and sellers arriving at a transaction price for a given quality and quantity of a product at a given time and place. Price discovery is critical for sending the correct price signal from the consumer to the producer. Telling them what to produce more of and what to produce less of.

A market whose participants are starved for information will have much wider price dispersion than one that is information rich."

The beef industry needs accurate prices for:

• Producers making marketing and risk management decisions as well as business planning

• Program requirements for price insurance, income, and disaster programs
• Policy and regulatory development requires reliable historical data for strategy development by industry and government (including defending against trade actions)

Canfax provides voluntary price reporting as a service to the Canadian beef industry. This requires a minimum number of prices reported to ensure confidentiality and repeatability in the marketplace to have confidence that the prices are reflective of the market for the week. Details on the Canfax process can be found at: