Scarcity could leave beef the caviar of the future
So said officials of the global Food and Agriculture Organisation at last week’s International Meat Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Henning Steinfeld, coordinator of livestock, environment and development initiative at the FAO (one of the United Nations specialised agencies), said beef will become an luxury food item by 2050 because of soaring costs of production, requiring up to five times the resources of chicken and pork.
He said beef could cease to be a mass product, because the growth of world population would make its production unsustainable.
But increasing consumption as population grows would likely steeply boost the price of beef, making it a product exclusively for the privileged and the rich.
Producers and exporters at the Congress predicted that global meat markets will continue to be buoyant due to limited supply of beef, lamb, and white meat.
Outgoing president of the International Meat Secretariat, Paddy Moore, told the congress that international trade in meat will grow despite occasional setbacks through animal diseases, food safety scares and issues of market access.
“Probably the greatest single challenge facing our industry is to reconcile the necessity of supplying high quality protein to an expanding world population with the imperative of ensuring that it is ethically produced, safe, wholesome and in harmony with the environment,” said Mr Moore.
