MLBA12: December / January 2010

 

 

 

 

According to statistics from the World Bank, from 1987 to 2008, global meat consump­tion increased at a 2.8-percent annual rate, compared to 1.8-percent popu­lation growth over this time. While meat consumption was rising very nicely, there were specific countries, meat lines and market segments that were at the heart of the story - and which will drive the Asian meat in­dustry's future.

 

After population growth is sub­tracted from the annual increases, per capita global meat consumption rose by approximately one percent per year. If the mature markets of the west and stagnant economies of Africa and central Asia are filtered out, per cap­ita meat demand of Asian and Latin American countries increased by two to three percent every year.

 

However, within this brighter picture, wide disparities can be seen. First, and most clearly, in both Asia and the west, across most (but not all) market segments, white meat is gain­ing favour over red meat.

 

For example, poultry consump­tion increased 2.85 times from ap­proximately 20 million tonnes in 1987 to 57 million tonnes in 2008. As the world population only increased by 1.42 times over this period, this implies that per capita global poultry consumption roughly doubled over this time period, with the bulk of this increase concentrated in newly indus­trialising countries.

 

Thanks to rapidly rising Chinese in­comes and its cultural preference for swine meat, global pork consumption rose ap­proximately 90 per­cent. That outpaced beef's relatively stagnant production and falling per capita consumption. How­ever, while pork pro­duction rose approximately twice as fast as population growth over these two decades, it was only about a third of the increase in poultry production. Moreover, we can expect future in­creases to level out.