Meat
Personally I love it, no meal is complete without a large slab of the stuff in my humble opinion. I've tried vegetarian food and just don't like it, I'm sorry but that's just the way it is. I am very careful to make sure I get my five a day in of course. Chips, they're made from vegetables aren't they? Mushy peas, that's another box ticked, and I always have toms, beans and mushrooms with a fried breakfast. There you go five.
I usually have a bit of salad with my kebab. And I will always go for the pineapple option to top off a gammon, so that's a bit of fruit thrown in, I'm actually quite healthy when you start to think about it.
And I'm not alone in my liking for sliced up dead animals, no siree, having gone off on a bit of a tangent this morning, I've been researching meat consumption.
Now for some reason I can't explain Australia* is missing from the data I have managed to glean. Every other civilised country in the world is there, accompanied by several uncivilised ones, but Down Under is sadly lacking. Maybe they can't count, or are too busy evicting Aboriginies from their rightful homelands, who knows. Suffice to say that the data I am about to relate excludes our Ashes losing antipodean chums. New Zealand are in there, no worries, and batting well above average as it happens, there's just no Ozzies.
OK, so who are the big meat eaters around the globe? The Argies are famed for their carnivorous appetite, aren't they? When they're not diving in the penalty area, demonstrating against the government or losing wars they're always sat in front of a steak, right? But no, they don't top the table. In fact they don't even make the top ten, the ball-handling light weights. The glamorous top spot of Premier League carnivores goes to....
Denmark. That's right the Danes eat more meat per head of population than anywhere else on the planet (unless the Ozzies are so busy eating it that they haven't got round to sending their results in). Every man, woman and child munches their way through more than 145kg of the stuff every year. Hats off to them. Let's hope it's Danish bacon that they're eating, because we don't want that stuff coming over here.
Here's the world meat munching top ten:
Denmark 145.9kg/head
New Zealand 142.1
Luxemborg 141.7
Cyprus 131.3
US 124.8
Bahamas 123.6
Greenland 113.8
French Polynesia 112.2
Mongolia 108.8
Canada 108.1
Impressive performance by Mongolia there, although I suspect that we are using the word "meat" in it's loosest form. They can't wait for Christmas to come over there you know. They're more interested in who's pulling Santa's sleigh than what's in it. Ditto Greenland, where the expression "shall we go out clubbing tonight?" has an entirely different meaning. Forget about the Bahamas, that's just where rich fat Americans live.
If you are interested, the Irish just dip out on a top ten place, coming eleventh with 106.3kg, with the carrot-loving UK down in 33rd (despite my best efforts) at 79.6kg/head. The "legendary" Argies only make it to 16th with a weedy 97.6kg, a darn sight more than Bhutan mind, who bring up the rear, only managing to get 3kg of meat per year down their necks. There must be a health shop on every street corner over there.
Interestingly, India are only a few places above Bhutan in 164th place consuming just 5.2kg/head. Dark horses China are 66th, eating 52.4kg.
Now then lets have a look at growth. The figures I have go back to 1961, that's appropriate as it's my birth year, so anything that happened before that is irrelevant anyway. Which countries have seen the biggest growth in meat consumption since then?
I reckon plenty of you guessed right there, yes it's our chums in the Far East, China with a growth in meat consumption of almost 1300%!
Back in 1961, the average Chinese only ate 3.8kg of meat per year, and that has now risen to 52.4kg. South Korea has also seen spectacular growth of more than 1000%. Consumption growth in the US is still quite impressive at 40%, putting them 83rd in growth terms, one place behind India. Here in the UK it's a more modest 14%.
Fascinating stuff, the most populous country on the planet has had the largest growth in meat consumption, although lying in 66th place in terms of volume of meat consumed, it has plenty of room to show further improvement.
Hmmmm, what does that tell us about demand for feed?
* A different source pegs Australian meat consumption at 110kg per capita in 2005/06 versus 91.4kg in 1968/69. That would get them into the top ten in eighth slot.
UK: Meat Consumption Falling
Data on consumer buying pattern throughout the United Kingdom indicates an overall fall in the purchase of meat and poultry for the 12-week period upto 9 Septenber 2008 when compared to the same period in 2007. According to a Livestock and Meat Commission (LMC) bulletin, total meat and poultry consumption has fallen by 10 percent with the largest fall recorded in the beef category, 24 percent.
Beef
Beef continues to have the largest market share of the meat and poultry category at just below 50 per cent. This is six per cent less than the same period last year. In terms of quantity of beef consumed, total beef purchased in the 12 week period up to 7 September 2008 as compared to the same period in 2007 fell by 24 per cent to 3.9 million kgs from 5.1 million kgs. The average price per kilogramme increased to £6.10 (an increase of 17 per cent). Perhaps significantly, the only cut within the beef category showing an increase in quantity sold was mince with an increase of 2.3 per cent.
Lamb
Lamb market share of the meat and poultry sector has shown a one per cent increase to 18 per cent from 17 per cent. There has also been a marked increase in the number of people purchasing lamb with the data showing that 43 per cent of consumers are buying lamb product, an increase of 13 per cent. The most dramatic increase in cuts of meat has been lamb mince as compared against cuts from all categories, with sales up by 37 per cent.
Other Meats & Poultry
Bacon and Sausages are the categories showing the highest increases in consumption. Although one of the smallest categories in the sector with total sales being just three per cent, the quantity of bacon purchased has increased by 20 per cent to 421,000 kgs and the spend for these purchases is up 47 per cent to £2.4 million.
Meat is the new Chinese staple
BEIJING -- To understand the changing dietary habits of Chinese, it helps to listen to 6-year-old Lin Xingni talk about her favorite foods.
"I like to eat chicken and fish. I also like pork ribs," she said.
"You see? Everything is meat," said her father, Lin Yong, an entrepreneur.
Not finished with her list, Xingni chattered on: "There's a McDonald's near my home. But my father doesn't let me go."
Chinese are eating more meat than ever. In 1980, the average Chinese ate 32 pounds of meat per year. By 1995, per-capita meat consumption had climbed to 86 pounds. Last year, Chinese wolfed down more than 117 pounds of meat on average, a little more than half of what an average American eats. Yet the carnivorous trend line keeps going up.
A steady dietary transition is under way in China, as the country grows more prosperous. Barely half a century ago, the nation suffered a famine so severe that several million people died of hunger. Back then, the Chinese diet was mostly limited to rice, a limited selection of vegetables, tofu and the rare meat dish.
Now supermarket shelves sag under an array of foods. Meat is widely available. Fast-food restaurants dot the urban landscape, ranging from domestic noodle chains to familiar foreign brands. One chain in particular, KFC, is all over China, with 2,200 outlets in 450 cities. McDonald's trails with 930 restaurants in the country.
And Chinese are consuming not just more meat. Lester Brown, the head of the Earthwatch Institute, a research center based in Maynard, Mass., described the phenomenon as "moving up the food chain," noting that Chinese also are eating more eggs, milk and high-protein foods.
How China will satisfy its rising hunger for high-protein foods is yet to be seen. Its agricultural sector already has made a remarkable transition to satisfy a population that has swollen to 1.3 billion. China produces half the world's pork, 30 percent of the world's rice, 20 percent of the world's corn, a fourth of the world's cotton and 37 percent of the world's fruit and vegetables, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates.
But China now is running up hard into constraints. It imports two-thirds of its soybeans, and wheat production is falling. It's at the threshold of becoming a net meat importer.
China is already the world's largest grain producer, ahead of India and the United States, but experts such as Brown say that the nation's rising meat consumption will force China to go abroad in the future to search for grain to fatten its cows, pigs, chickens and farmed fish.
China has yet to promote agro-industry seriously -- a move that would improve yields -- because doing so would throw many of the country's 345 million small-scale farmers out of work.
"One American farmer does what a village does here," Brown said.
