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Meat & Meat Products Market Report 2011
Key Note Publications Ltd, Oct 2011, Pages: 134
Meat and meat products are a very large part of the UK population’s diet, making up 23.6% of the total expenditure on food in the UK according to National Statistics. Expenditure on meat increased by 2.5% between 2009 and 2010, rising from £16.26bn to £16.67bn.
The price of meat has increased exponentially over the past 5 years thanks to a number of global issues. One of the biggest influences on current meat prices was the 2008 ‘food crisis’, when increases in the price of grain pushed up the cost of all manner of foods, including meat, because of the large growth in the cost of animal feed. Furthermore, as developing countries are becoming wealthier, the demand from these areas is increasing, which is putting pressure on global supply. In the UK, farming income has declined of late, which has the potential to push UK farmers out of business and increase reliance on foreign imports of meat, which makes meat prices in the UK extremely vulnerable to global events.
The meat sector has come under scrutiny in recent years for a number of reasons. Animal welfare groups have attacked the industry for the conditions in which it keeps some of the animals destined for slaughter. This has resulted in the Government passing legislation that has banned hens from being farmed intensively in small cages from 2012. Similar animal welfare concerns in the past have resulted in the UK banning veal crates early in the 1990s. Another aspect of the industry that campaigners fight against is the impact of farming meat on the environment, with the greenhouse gases it emits supposedly contributing to climate change.
As with almost every industry sector, the meat industry has had to contend with the recession, which has affected consumer spending habits a great deal. Though meat has not been foregone all together — it is far too much of a staple for this to be the case — consumers have been turning towards cheaper options, such as frozen meat or cheaper cuts, in order to save money. However, with the country’s economy slowly recovering from the recession, it is likely that expenditure on fresh meat and more expensive cuts will begin to pick up. The organic sector — which performed particularly badly in 2009 as organic produce comes at a greater expense at the retail level — is also likely to benefit, as the economy returns to growth.
A recent exclusive survey conducted by NEMS Market Research for Key Note has revealed that, although some consumers are reducing meat consumption because of rising meat prices (26.6%), the vast majority are not doing so. This is good news for the future as various indicators hint that the price of meat is likely to increase and by a fairly substantial amount, with Government-based projections placing UK consumer expenditure on meat at £20.74bn by 2015, 24.4% higher than in 2010.
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