June 5, 2006

 

Better processing aided in poultry's rise in America's meat industry

 

 

In the past half-century, consumption trends in America have increasingly tilted in favour of poultry, as beef consumption declined, according to the Cattlenetwork.

 

In the 1950s, for every pound of chicken eaten, Americans would eat thrice as much beef and twice as much pork.

 

Technological innovations brought a change to that. As production bolstered efficiency, poultry prices were brought down.

 

While retail prices of chickens have been halved from US$1.38 to US$0.62 from 1960 to 1997, beef prices have almost doubled from $2.70 in 1960 to $4.86 in 1982 before falling to US$1.74 by 1997.

 

The proliferation of chicken fast food outlets and greater public health awareness have chipped away at beef consumption, causing it to fall from 80 to 65 pounds per capita consumption in the past 3 decades.

 

On the other hand, chicken consumption has doubled during that period from 28 to 53 pounds. 

 

Although the beef industry did achieve production efficiencies similar to those of the poultry sector and was thus able to lower prices in the mid-80s, it was not enough to reverse the change in consumption habits that had been taking place for the past two decades.

 

While all these changes were in effect, pork consumption remained stable.

 

The fact that more women are entering the labour force, thus leaving less time for households to prepare dinner, also led to a burgeoning demand for convenient pre-cut and further-processed products.

 

In 1963, whole birds constituted 85 percent of the poultry product mix sold in supermarkets while cut-up products constituted 15 percent; by 1997, they had switched places. Many large pork and poultry plants also branched into seasoning, cooking, sorting or packaging their meats.

 

These changes also boosted meat exports in the form of packaged meat products.

 

The differing tastes between domestic and international markets also worked in the poultry industry's favour. While the domestic markets favour chicken breasts and other white meats, chicken legs and other dark meat are exported to countries such as China, Mexico, and Russia.

 

Poultry exports became increasingly important as its share of production tripled from 5 percent in 1970 to 17 percent by 1997, while volumes increase 41 times from 135 million pounds to 5.6 billion pounds.