Global meat consumption is forecast to grow by two percent annually until the end of 2015 as the population and incomes rise and more people move to cities, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), but the Rome, Italy-based FAO warned that increased trade and transport links raised risks of the spread of animal diseases across borders.
Since the early 1980s, global meat output, consumption, and trade have expanded considerably, particularly poultry and pig meat, driven by population growth, rising incomes, urbanization, changing diets, and opening up of markets, FAO said.
“These trends are set to continue with global meat consumption estimated to increase annually by two percent through 2015,” FAO said in a document circulated at an inter-governmental meeting on meat and dairy products in late August. Most of this increase will occur in the developing world, where consumption is expected to grow by 2.7 percent per year, compared to 0.6 percent per year in rich countries, FAO said.
“It is expected that global production of meat will increase at a similar rate to demand and that with progressive reductions in trade barriers so will trade in meat and meat products,” the United Nations (UN) agency said. “However, increased volume of trade and improvements in transportation, infrastructure, and technology hold potential risks of spreading of animal diseases rapidly worldwide.”
Demand for White Meat
FAO said recent animal disease outbreaks in major meat exporting countries, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), had accelerated a shift in consumption away from red meat to poultry. FAO forecasts a much sharper increase in demand for white meat than red meat. The UN food body predicted a 2.9 percent per year increase in demand for poultry meat until the end of 2015, against a 1.4 percent increase in demand annually for beef.
Animal disease outbreaks, such as Britain’s BSE crisis of 1996/97 and the Netherlands’ classical swine fever epidemic of 1997/98, had diverted trade, shifting market shares between exporters of the same product, the FAO document said. According to FAO, the cost of BSE in Britain in 1996/97 amounted to $3.8 billion and the cost of classical swine fever in the Netherlands in 1997/98 was $2.3 billion.
In Britain, the cost of foot and mouth disease (FMD) last year totaled $9.2 billion, compared to $6.6 billion in Taiwan in 1997. In addition, there are hidden costs to animal disease epidemics. In total, 4.03 million, 11.0 million, and 6.24 million animals were slaughtered in Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Britain respectively.
“The disposal of slaughtered carcasses has huge environmental implications; during the first six weeks of the UK [United Kingdom] FMD outbreak, the burning of carcasses released dioxins into the atmosphere amounting to some 18 percent of the UK’s annual emissions,” FAO said. “Furthermore, the mass slaughter of animals resulted in the loss of bio-diversity of native livestock populations, with some breeds left critically endangered following the UK FMD outbreak.”
October 2002 Render