BEEF

Startling supply contrast between UK and the continent UK beef output falls but consumption up Multiples and their major suppliers are coming under increasing political pressure to source meat from home producers, but it becomes harder to ignore a growing weight of evidence suggesting retailers and packers are caught in a supply trap. Pig numbers falling sharply while demand for bacon and manufacturing pork rises is the most obvious example, but in beef too the UK industry is losing supply capacity at an extraordinary rate. The contraction is due in part to the succession of livestock disease epidemics. Yet Continental Europe has also suffered plenty of disease outbreaks and health scares without the same structural consequences on the whole. Looking at the UK industry in the context of total EU meat production capacity reveals a fundamental change in the supply chain. Latest official beef supply and consumption forecasts from Brussels show a startling contrast between prospects here and on the Continent. Overall EU production is predicted to rise by about 3% this year, while UK production is set to fall 6%. By the end of this year UK production will be little more than a third that of the French beef industry, which is likely to push up output nearly 5%, and this despite the fact that France was epicentre of the BSE upheaval 18 months ago. The new data suggest the UK is becoming, in beef output as well as in the pig sector, a second rank player, comparable with Belgium. In consumption, however, this country is increasingly important. The UK is the second biggest importer of beef, and medium-term prospects suggest it will retain if not enhance this status, and buyers' procurement policy assumptions will need adjustment accordingly. {{MEAT }}