Meat and meat products: changes in demand and supply.

My brief is to talk about the changes in supply and demand. I am going to concentrate on the demand side and, in particular, the effects of adverse publicity and changing lifestyles on the demand for meat, particularly red meat, and also industry’s reaction to those factors. The proverbial ‘Man from Mars’, if he paid a fleeting visit, might get the impression that meat consumption is falling dramatically. One reads headlines like ‘Who eats meat now?’, ‘Goodbye to the Sunday roast’, ‘New report is bad news for red meat’, etc., etc. This has been the prevailing theme of media attention to the meat industry, particularly over the last 3 years. In fact, the total consumption figures tell a rather different story. Table 1 shows that meat consumption in all its forms, when expressed in carcass weight terms, is 4 million tonneslyear in the UK. It has been rising steadily over the last few years. But what is most remarkable is the increase in domestic production. Traditionally we were the world’s largest importer of meat and meat products from Australia, New Zealand and South America and parts of Europe, like Denmark. Imports have declined steadily over the last 20 years, while exports have built up to a significant amount. If poultry is taken out, we come to a figure of between 2.93 million and 2.98 million tonnes for total red meat consumption over the last 5 or 6 years. Looking at the same information expressed in another way, in terms of per capita consumption, based on carcass weight (Table 2), we see a small decrease since the early 1970s; but the last 4 years (1985-88) have actually shown figures which are increasing, right through the period when the anti-meat publicity has raged. Within these total figures, there is of course a difference between species; pigmeat and poultry meat have been increasing, in contrast to beef and lamb, and the swing can be entirely explained by the price differential. However, the poultry processors would no