All meat is up, but a combination of factors – including a type of "strike" by the farmers – has caused an historic turn-round for beef.

The jump reflects the world market and is feeding through into consumer prices. Slaughterers in Britain are already paying 60p a kilo more than they were in January – roughly £300 an animal – and might have to go higher, because farmers are not yet satisfied saying rising feed and fuel costs mean they are still struggling to break even.

It all means the price of a premium roasting joint is up to £10 a kilo in small butchers' shops and there is more to come.

The National Beef Association recently issued a triumphant press release saying they had broken the "choke hold" of the processors, who negotiate on behalf of the supermarkets.

NBA director Kim Haywood said: "The day when abattoirs dictated terms is over. Beef cattle are being traded on a sellers' market and prime cattle numbers will be tight for years. Suppliers should assert their new-found selling power, after more than a decade of taking it on the chin."

Some beef calves come from specialist suckler herds but the rest are unwanted males from dairy herds. Dairy producers have been squeezed into running fewer animals, giving more milk, and using artificial insemination tricks to stop bull calves.

Beef specialists have left the business because of low prices. Some countries have turned grazing land over to biofuels.

Brazilian exports have problems with documentation for Europe. And China and India are pushing up demand.

Ms Haywood said the NBA saw all this coming to a head and helped by advising members to choke off supplies.

"There were powerful processors trying to pull prices back below 230-235 pence per kilo (ppk) in June-July. We contacted all finishers and said: Don't sell anything unless you have to. Now they can get 280 ppk. We actually need 320-340 but at least we are heading in the right direction," she said.

An economist for the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board Mark Topliff said: "The last few weeks have been quite remarkable."

John Weatherill, who rears beef on the Millington Grange Estate, east of York, said he used to deal direct with a big processor, who had tried to keep his prices down on behalf of Tesco. He sent his animals to market in York and Selby, instead, and has now stopped dealing direct with the processing company. At Thirsk, auctioneer Tony Thompson said they had seen record local prices for beef – and fat lambs were fetching a healthy £75-plus, against half that in the darkest days of last winter.

Pig producers are also getting somewhere close to a break-even price. The average price per deadweight kilo is up to 135p, from 111p at the beginning of the year and 105p a year ago. Rising costs account for some of this but not all.

The big retailers have absorbed some of the price pressure, by using frozen stocks and enforcing long-term contracts, but shopping-basket meat is up 17 per cent on a year ago on average and beef is racing ahead of that

Independent Ilkley butcher David Lishman said: "We buy local beef, direct, and the last bill I paid was 10 per cent up on the previous month – 25 per cent up on January.

"We are absorbing some of it but roasting topside is pushing £10 a kilo."