Meeting the demand for meat – analysing meat flows to and from the UK pre and post Brexit

Publication date: Available online 25 January 2019Source: Trends in Food Science & TechnologyAuthor(s): Guy M. Poppy, Jenny Baverstock, Joseph Baverstock-PoppyAbstractBackgroundGlobal trade has grown at twice the rate of the economy since the 1990s. Today’s food system is a complex network of trade dependencies and supply chains which underpin global food security. International trade is a crucial element in providing UK consumers with meat-based produce in their diet. The international meat trade was estimated at $112.5 billion (£74.25 million or €104.10 billion) in 2015 and UK imports are worth over 5% making the UK the 5th largest market. Understanding how Brexit might alter the landscape for UK meat imports is an important socio-economic issue.Scope and approachData was analysed from the Chatham House resourcetrade.earth database, which is open access and collated from a range of global sources, allows analysis of data for imports into the UK of beef, pork, lamb and poultry and of exports of these meat types from the UK have been completed using R-studio statistical package.Key findings and conclusionsThe UK’s global market significance in each meat type ranges from 3% in beef to 9.9% in sheep, and most imports originate from the EU especially Pork (99.8% from EU) and Poultry (95.5%). Analysis of the Food Safety QUAD countries (USA, New Zealand, Canada and Australia) highlights that the USA has capacity to cover any loss of imports to the UK from Europe post Brexit...
Source: Trends in Food Science and Technology - Category: Food Science Source Type: research