Lemoyne, Pa. ? The price of filet mignon jumped 50 cents a pound at Glen Miller’s Western Prime Beef and Deli, and manager Frank Heffelfinger said his supplier warned him to expect further increases in coming weeks.

“That’s a big jump, 50 cents a pound,” said Heffelfinger, who passed on the expense to customers of his Lemoyne butcher shop this week. “What else can you do?”

Voracious consumer demand, supply shortages and a ban on Canadian beef prompted by the discovery of a single case of mad cow disease in Alberta in May have combined to propel beef prices into record territory.

Prime slaughter steers at auctions on the East Coast commanded 93 cents a pound last week, a record that was shattered Tuesday when choice cattle went for $1 at some auctions.

That set a national record for price in its category, said Kathryn Mattingly, spokeswoman with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s marketing service in Washington, D.C.

Cattle farmers are “thrilled to death,” said Taylor Cox, with the USDA in New Holland, Pa. “This time a year ago, prices were around 65 to 67 cents for prime steers. Now you’re talking about 95 cents for the same kind of cattle. That makes a big difference.”

Nationally, the beef-cattle market began picking up steam after Canadian beef was prohibited in late May, a blanket ban that has been loosened slightly since then.

But the bull market really took off during the past three weeks as meatpackers scramble to fill orders, said Bob Anderson, an industry analyst with Commodity Services Inc. in Des Moines, Iowa.

Producers have been pushing to market younger, thinner animals, a short-term solution that has exacerbated supply shortfalls caused by the absence of Canadian beef, which had amounted to 4 to 5 percent of the U.S. market.

If consumers balk at higher prices, Anderson said, it could cool the white-hot market.

“The key question now in everybody’s mind is: At what point will the consumer turn away?” Anderson said. “When restaurants did that before it was a signal that the market was through and shortly thereafter we came back to earth.”