Speaker 1: We Americans love beef, which is a fact that will
Speaker 1: surprise exactly no one. The US is, after all, the
Speaker 1: biggest producer and consumer of beef products in the world,
Speaker 1: and yet beef is not, in fact the meat Americans
Speaker 1: choose most. That distinction belongs to chicken. We eat way
Speaker 1: more chicken and chicken wings, chicken sandwiches, chicken nuggets than
Speaker 1: we do burgers or steaks. Bloomberg's Leslie Patten and Matt
Speaker 1: Townsend went to find out why, despite americans long held
Speaker 1: preference for beef, chicken has come to dominate the US diet.
Speaker 2: You can get a bird to market now in about
Speaker 2: seven weeks, and it's twice as big as it was
Speaker 2: in the twenties and thirties.
Speaker 1: And how the nune to two please beef industry is
Speaker 1: working to climb back.
Speaker 3: They need more of different products to get beef into
Speaker 3: people's stomachs because right now people aren't going out and
Speaker 3: eating steaks as much as they used to, and things
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 1: And a little later we'll also hear from historian Emmelyn Roode.
Speaker 1: She's written a book about America's chicken obsession.
Speaker 4: I had to see the chicken industry growing bigger, expanding abroad,
Speaker 4: producing ever more chicken.
Speaker 5: Endless chicken is what I predict.
Speaker 1: I'm West Kasova today on the Big take the battle
Speaker 1: for center place on your dinner plate, Matt. This is
Speaker 1: not actually the story you set out to write, is it.
Speaker 3: It's not. The initial story was very simply gen z,
Speaker 3: which are you know? Twenty somethings weren't really eating beef
Speaker 3: as much, and Leslie had talked to I think an
Speaker 3: executive at Taco Bell basically saying we're doing everything we
Speaker 3: can to get more chicken in front of our customers.
Speaker 3: And then we sort of had that story and it
Speaker 3: was like a nice story, was interesting, but I started thinking, well,
Speaker 3: why is chicken so popular? How did it even get
Speaker 3: to this place? And the next step was, well, what
Speaker 3: is the beef industry trying to do about it? Like
Speaker 3: what is their strategy? We write a lot about companies
Speaker 3: and their strategies, but what is the beef's industry strategy
Speaker 3: to start growing again to combat Chicken's dominance?
Speaker 2: Just to paint the picture, I mean, in terms of consumption,
Speaker 2: we eat about double chicken as we do beef per capitall,
Speaker 2: I mean roughly fifty pounds of beef per person and
Speaker 2: one hundred pounds of chicken per person every year. It's
Speaker 2: not even close. And chicken has been taking share from
Speaker 2: beef and arguably from pork too.
Speaker 5: For a while.
Speaker 3: And the size of the beef industry is about eighty
Speaker 3: five billion dollars, which is a huge industry, and that
Speaker 3: doesn't even include the meat packing industry. That's another three
Speaker 3: hundred billion dollars. Granted, that's all kinds of meat that
Speaker 3: they process, so chicken, beef, and pork.
Speaker 1: And this decline in beef is kind of a big
Speaker 1: deal in the US, right because the US is the
Speaker 1: biggest beef producer in the world.
Speaker 3: Yes, the biggest beef producer, it's also the biggest beef consumer.
Speaker 3: The companies or the entities raising cattle are these little,
Speaker 3: mostly cattle farms run by a single family. There's roughly
Speaker 3: seven hundred thousand of them in the United States. It's
Speaker 3: a big industry, but it's dominated by these small, little
Speaker 3: family run farms.
Speaker 1: And that's different from the chicken industry.
Speaker 6: That's right.
Speaker 2: The chicken industry is largely vertically integrated, so you have
Speaker 2: the same companies handling everything from the hatcheries all the
Speaker 2: way up to bringing it to market in the grocery store.
Speaker 1: So here's the big question, why has there been this
Speaker 1: generational shift away from beef in toward chicken.
Speaker 2: The meat industry, whatever they produce, whether it be beef, chicken, pork,
Speaker 2: we eat it.
Speaker 6: So a lot of it boils down to how much
Speaker 6: is there.
Speaker 2: And these chicken companies have been able to just ramp
Speaker 2: up production with bigger birds faster to market. You can
Speaker 2: get a bird to market now in about seven weeks
Speaker 2: and it's twice as big as it was in the
Speaker 2: twenties and thirties. So a lot of it is just
Speaker 2: a supply thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And if you look at the beef industry, I mean,
Speaker 3: it was the dominant meat consumption industry in America for decades.
Speaker 3: The consumption pattern goes up and up and up until
Speaker 3: the seventies when the US government for the first time
Speaker 3: puts out these nutritional guidelines, and what they basically say
Speaker 3: is Americans should eat less red meat, eat less beef
Speaker 3: to reduce the risk of heart disease, and also eat
Speaker 3: more chicken and fish. That reverberates across the country. Doctors
Speaker 3: across the country tell their patients, if you want to
Speaker 3: be healthy, this is what you should do. You should
Speaker 3: eat less beef and eat more chicken and fish. So
Speaker 3: that has a big effect on beef, and if you
Speaker 3: look at the per capito of consumption, it basically starts
Speaker 3: tailing off almost immediately after these guidelines come out. And
Speaker 3: so then the next thing that happens is processed food
Speaker 3: sort of booms. Chickens an obvious cannon for processed food.
Speaker 3: It's cheap, it's relatively blands, a lot of people like it,
Speaker 3: and things take off, and processed food we get chicken McNuggets,
Speaker 3: happy and barbecue, we get chicken fingers, we get all
Speaker 3: the things that we have now in chicken. So you
Speaker 3: got the health aspect, you got the processed food, and
Speaker 3: then the cost just keeps going down for chicken. They
Speaker 3: figure out ways to increase automation, to make the birds bigger,
Speaker 3: to cut down the time it takes to get them
Speaker 3: to slaughter, and so all these things just sort of
Speaker 3: happened in the late seventies and early eighties, and beef
Speaker 3: starts declining and chicken just takes off, and that's where
Speaker 3: we are today.
Speaker 1: And lessly when that was happening, when beef was kind
Speaker 1: of slowly riding down. The beef industry made this big
Speaker 1: push to try to make America want to eat more
Speaker 1: beef again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the big one that I think most people
Speaker 2: can remember is the Beef It's What's for Dinner ad.
Speaker 7: You can have a great beef dinner and lo time
Speaker 7: at all, well, with almost no time at all.
Speaker 1: Beef It's What's for Dinner.
Speaker 2: The ad really drove home the message that beef is
Speaker 2: part of this kind of like American way of life.
Speaker 2: It was versatile too, with everything you could flavor it
Speaker 2: however you wanted. You could eat a Kung pal steak,
Speaker 2: you could have burgers on the grill, you could have
Speaker 2: a casual ribi here and there. It was a versatile
Speaker 2: meat too, which is kind of interesting. Now arguably, I
Speaker 2: think chicken has taken over that kind of versatility type message.
Speaker 3: It was definitely a big marketing effort. And the Beef
Speaker 3: Board is this sort of quasi government entity where it's
Speaker 3: funded by each purchase of a cow. Dollar goes to
Speaker 3: the Beef Board. And these boards exist for all different
Speaker 3: kinds of products. They're overseen by the Department of Agriculture.
Speaker 3: It's everything from cheese to pork, to avocados to popcorn,
Speaker 3: and the big goal is to increase the consumption and
Speaker 3: demand for these products, these US made products, these US
Speaker 3: produced products.
Speaker 1: Well, what's really interesting about the Beef Board too, is
Speaker 1: like here you have the US government saying, hey, Americans,
Speaker 1: don't eat as much meat because it's not good for you,
Speaker 1: and then you have this quasi governmental body pushing meat,
Speaker 1: advertising meat to the very same people. And so it
Speaker 1: seems like the US government was giving very mixed messages
Speaker 1: about what Americans should be eating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that point has been made for sure that it
Speaker 3: seems hypocritical to say, you know, this thing is potentially
Speaker 3: bad for you, but hey, we're going to create this
Speaker 3: entity that will fund campaigns and commercials and you know,
Speaker 3: educational programs to get people more interested in beef.
Speaker 1: Leslie. At the same time that beef is becoming less
Speaker 1: popular and the US government is warning people off of it,
Speaker 1: chicken is like rising really quickly, and they too, were
Speaker 1: really pushing to make that happen. It wasn't just like
Speaker 1: an accident.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 6: I mean a lot of it comes down to again,
Speaker 6: that supply factor.
Speaker 2: So these companies are breeding chickens to be bigger faster basically,
Speaker 2: so they have giant breasts. Now it comes down to
Speaker 2: like an animal welfare issue. Then at some point and
Speaker 2: people are realizing this more and more that these chickens
Speaker 2: are grown so big so quickly that they're not able
Speaker 2: to have proper organ function and their lives are horrible.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, this increased supply so much
Speaker 2: so quickly it drives price down too, right, so it
Speaker 2: kind of becomes the obvious protein choice for people in
Speaker 2: the grocery store.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you look at restaurants, I mean the
Speaker 3: hottest thing in restaurants is chicken. And we have the
Speaker 3: fried chicken sandwich, wars.
Speaker 1: Guys New Buffalo Rans chicken sandwiches, get or sells things up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, tainly McDonald's spicy Crispy chicken sandwich donald.
Speaker 8: The choice is yours, the hoard yourself with any of
Speaker 8: the all new Royal Chrisby chicken sandwiches today, all the
Speaker 8: Egburger key.
Speaker 3: And a lot of that is because won the price.
Speaker 3: But also it's like chicken can be put into anything.
Speaker 3: That's another advantage that it has over beef and beef
Speaker 3: you know, through its marketing and some of the other things.
Speaker 3: Is trying to lessen that gap and say like, hey,
Speaker 3: we're versattle too, but chicken still dominates in that respect
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 1: So here we are. We've come to this place where
Speaker 1: chicken is just so much more popular than beef, and
Speaker 1: you auctually have the results of a survey that kind
Speaker 1: of explained why can you just tell us what do
Speaker 1: people say about why they're eating so much more chicken
Speaker 1: than they are beef?
Speaker 6: Right now, let's start with hells right, that's one of
Speaker 6: the biggest things in our poll.
Speaker 2: We found that fifty eight percent of people said chicken
Speaker 2: was healthier, seven percent said beef, about twenty three percent
Speaker 2: said it was equal. So you can see there that
Speaker 2: chicken has a clear advantage for health.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the other thing is cost. And the scary
Speaker 3: part for beef is that beef has always sold itself
Speaker 3: on taste and experience, and people still say in this
Speaker 3: poll that they think beef is tastier than chicken or
Speaker 3: the reason why they eat beef, the biggest reason is taste.
Speaker 3: The takeaway is, I mean, that's an opportunity for beef
Speaker 3: because people still really like beef, but they're just eating
Speaker 3: more chicken, which is kind of the whole situation here.
Speaker 3: Because chicken has all these advantages cost people think it's healthier.
Speaker 3: The big question for beef is what do you do
Speaker 3: with that opportunity because right now chicken is the one
Speaker 3: that's narrowing the gap on taste, which is the one
Speaker 3: advantage beef has. And if they keep narrowing the gap
Speaker 3: on taste, that's really scary for the beef industry.
Speaker 1: After the break, have a Second World War shifted the
Speaker 1: American diet from beef to chicken. I want to keep
Speaker 1: talking with Matt and Leslie in just a bit, but
Speaker 1: first let's take a step back. Here. We're hearing all
Speaker 1: about how popular chicken has become despite Americans' love of beef.
Speaker 1: But when exactly did that happen and why? No one
Speaker 1: knows better than Emmeline Rude. He's an historian and author
Speaker 1: of the book Tastes Like Chicken, A History of America's
Speaker 1: favorite bird.
Speaker 4: Chicken for most of American history, which is sort of
Speaker 4: a random bird that people had in their farmyard. They
Speaker 4: largely kept it for eggs. Eggs are very convenient, good protein.
Speaker 4: Chickens conveniently lay a lot of them repeatedly, so it
Speaker 4: was great to have chickens around, people rarely ate them
Speaker 4: because a then if you killed all your chickens, you
Speaker 4: would not have eggs anymore. And also, it's just very
Speaker 4: hard to keep large flocks of chickens for the purpose
Speaker 4: of meat. Before modern veterinary science, chickens had a lovely
Speaker 4: tendency to just die in any sort of large flock. Basically,
Speaker 4: for most of American history, chicken was just this rare,
Speaker 4: luxury food that maybe you'd have once a week, the
Speaker 4: famous roast chicken on Sundays.
Speaker 1: So what changed that over the course.
Speaker 5: Of the twentieth century.
Speaker 4: Firstly, veterinarians and breeders and farmers solved the problem of
Speaker 4: the fact that chickens would always die. I mean, they're
Speaker 4: vaccinated for disease. They were kept in enclosed spaces that
Speaker 4: prevented the transfer of avian flues. They also discovered vitamin D,
Speaker 4: so when you keep animals inside without light, they'll to
Speaker 4: develop what is called rickets, so joint issues. So when
Speaker 4: they figured that if you could supplement chickens with vitamin D,
Speaker 4: they could keep them indoors. Thus you can have a
Speaker 4: factory farm chickens in a shed. This is the course
Speaker 4: of the early part of the twentieth century, and so
Speaker 4: in the nineteen twenties you get the birth of actually
Speaker 4: chicken oriented farms, so farmers just with the purpose of
Speaker 4: growing chickens for markets.
Speaker 1: During World War Two is really when chickens started to
Speaker 1: come forward in American's diets.
Speaker 5: Why was that so Initially it was rationing.
Speaker 4: So as part of the war effort, US government thought
Speaker 4: that the only thing that they needed to feed to
Speaker 4: their fighting men was red meat, and they also sent
Speaker 4: a huge amount of red meat abroad to help the Allies.
Speaker 5: And so red meat was rationed.
Speaker 7: Americans not in the armed forces. We'll get less of
Speaker 7: the common foods to which they are accustomed. But by rationing,
Speaker 7: by sharing what we have and by using our food
Speaker 7: supply wisely, our nation at war can still support our healthy,
Speaker 7: active people.
Speaker 4: And so initially chicken was not and so people were
Speaker 4: very excited about eating chicken. There was a huge growth
Speaker 4: in chicken production, huge growth in chicken consumption. By the
Speaker 4: end of the war, there was so much demand for
Speaker 4: meat that chicken was actually rationed as well and taken
Speaker 4: by the US government.
Speaker 5: But that initial period really marked a huge growth in
Speaker 5: chicken productions.
Speaker 4: There was a huge investment in it, which probably in
Speaker 4: turn sparked the reason why the US government was so
Speaker 4: concerned at the end of World War Two that the
Speaker 4: chicken economy just sort of plummeted. So they had all
Speaker 4: this money invested, so many people who worked in the industry,
Speaker 4: and so when the war economy ended, they were obviously
Speaker 4: concerned about said industry, thus giving all of this technical,
Speaker 4: agricultural all this research knowledge to the chicken firms. The
Speaker 4: post World War two period, these farms just exploded. They
Speaker 4: became these massive vertically integrated chicken firms, so vertical integrations
Speaker 4: essentially they just own the entire process of making a chicken,
Speaker 4: so from egg to slaughter. These are the big firms
Speaker 4: like Tyson Foods, which I'm sure everyone who eats chicken
Speaker 4: has heard of.
Speaker 5: You also get this huge advances in breeding. A lot
Speaker 5: of it was driven by the US government.
Speaker 4: There was this, I find quite hilarious program called the
Speaker 4: Chicken of Tomorrow Contests.
Speaker 5: Right after World War Two.
Speaker 9: The committee made plans for a series of state and
Speaker 9: regional Chicken of Tomorrow contests, end with a national contest
Speaker 9: in June nineteen forty eight, A and p all for
Speaker 9: ten thousand dollars in.
Speaker 7: Five thousand dollars for the national champion.
Speaker 4: The ultimate aim was to produce chickens with large breasts.
Speaker 4: This is the era of barbecue culture. They wanted to
Speaker 4: find a part of the chicken that could beat with
Speaker 4: a steak with a pork chop on the grill the
Speaker 4: every American could enjoy. And the winner of that contest
Speaker 4: is actually the ancestor of the majority of the chickens
Speaker 4: that we eat today.
Speaker 5: So it had a huge, huge effect on breeding. Combined
Speaker 5: with this with.
Speaker 4: Huge discoveries and nutrition, namely the fact that corn, soy
Speaker 4: and antibiotics were basically chicken super fuel, and then you
Speaker 4: get a massive explosion in chicken productivity and later on
Speaker 4: a massive growth in chicken eating.
Speaker 1: So one of the names we tend to associate with
Speaker 1: the rise of chicken and this change of people's attitude
Speaker 1: toward chicken was Frank Purdue. Can you tell us about
Speaker 1: him and why he was so important to changing the
Speaker 1: way Americans think about chicken.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, Frank Purdue his family were chicken farmers. They
Speaker 4: owned a farm in Maryland. He inherited the farm sometime
Speaker 4: in the middle of the century. His innovation was that
Speaker 4: he basically branded chicken. He went on TV and sold
Speaker 4: his brand of Purdue Chicken.
Speaker 1: I thought my.
Speaker 10: Purdue fresh carny scheme, he was tender like no rock
Speaker 10: cornish game Hen. So I decided to see if I
Speaker 10: was right. I had my fresh cornish scheme in tested
Speaker 10: it against all the frozen competition and found my cornish
Speaker 10: is at least forty more tender than any of them.
Speaker 10: If you thought a frozen rocke cornish game Hen made
Speaker 10: good eating, way do you taste the one? It doesn't
Speaker 10: come frozen like a rock.
Speaker 4: His big innovation was making this mass commodity into a
Speaker 4: product of a brand name, and a result, he could
Speaker 4: sell it for higher prices. So, starting in the nineteen
Speaker 4: seventies is when Purdue comes out as America's favorite chicken producer.
Speaker 1: And will be so special about his ads because I
Speaker 1: remember even as a kid, they were everywhere.
Speaker 5: People really connected with him. Just as a spokesperson.
Speaker 4: I read a lot of articles about him, and half
Speaker 4: the people are calling him a huckster. Half the people
Speaker 4: are calling him sort of America's darling. I think he
Speaker 4: was just very honest. He was very frank. He often
Speaker 4: told people to call him if there were issues with
Speaker 4: their chicken.
Speaker 10: If you're not completely satisfied, write me and I'll give
Speaker 10: you your money back.
Speaker 1: The other big trend I suppose is the chicken nugget
Speaker 1: and really the rise of fast food embracing chicken and
Speaker 1: increasing demand. How important has fast food been to changing
Speaker 1: the way people eat?
Speaker 4: The more chicken people eat, I think it has really
Speaker 4: promoted chicken consumption to obscene levels.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's ironic because most people.
Speaker 4: They had all these consumer reports in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 4: asking people why they're eating more chicken, and they'd always
Speaker 4: say for health reasons, for health reasons, this is a
Speaker 4: healthier option. And then they had corresponding surveys to see
Speaker 4: what chicken products people were actually eating, and the number
Speaker 4: one products were chicken nuggets and fried chicken. Fast food
Speaker 4: definitely was bolstered by this wave of chicken being the
Speaker 4: new healthy product.
Speaker 5: And it also helped that chicken is.
Speaker 4: A food that doesn't really have any religious bands on it.
Speaker 5: It's not like pork, where a lot of people see
Speaker 5: it as unclean.
Speaker 1: So Emmelyn, where do you think the industry goes from here?
Speaker 4: Honestly, I've been asked this question a lot, mainly people
Speaker 4: hoping that we'll have a lovely food system with all
Speaker 4: local farmers and everyone.
Speaker 5: Will be very happy.
Speaker 4: But I honestly think the chicken industry will just continue
Speaker 4: to grow because, I mean, chicken comes in this very
Speaker 4: unique place in our modern discourse. So obviously beef and
Speaker 4: pork are getting a lot of flack for their environmental impact.
Speaker 4: Chicken does have its own environmental impact, but it's not
Speaker 4: quite to the same level as beef and pork, so
Speaker 4: it's kind of avoids all of those environmental issues. It
Speaker 4: also avoids all of the health issues going against it,
Speaker 4: again the saturated fats of red meat, so it has
Speaker 4: that going for it. Also, I don't think there's quite
Speaker 4: as much public sympathy for chicken. I know a lot
Speaker 4: of animal welfare activists sea chickens as their number one
Speaker 4: priority to end animal suffering. They want to end the
Speaker 4: chicken industry, but I think in the broader general public
Speaker 4: people don't really care so much about chickens.
Speaker 5: So honestly, I just.
Speaker 4: See the chicken industry growing bigger, expanding abroad, producing ever
Speaker 4: more chicken.
Speaker 5: At ever more low prices. Endless chicken is what I
Speaker 5: predict Emmelin Rude.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for speaking with me today.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: When we return. Matt Townsend and Leslie Patten on how
Speaker 1: the beef industry is trying to make a comeback. So, Leslie,
Speaker 1: is there anything that the beef industry can actually do
Speaker 1: to balance the scales? Chicken was able to kind of
Speaker 1: reinvent itself. Is beef trying to reinvent itself?
Speaker 2: Well, the Beef Board, the Beef checkof that does a
Speaker 2: lot of the marketing for the industry. They're really targeting
Speaker 2: right now. It seems like millennials and that's a big
Speaker 2: demographic obviously, with a lot of spending power, and a
Speaker 2: lot of these people are parents, and the beef industry
Speaker 2: realizes that they have this ad campaign it's called Beef
Speaker 2: in the Early Years, and it basically says, you should
Speaker 2: be giving your baby beef as young as six months old.
Speaker 8: We want to give our babies the best experts agree
Speaker 8: the iron, zinc, coaline, and high quality protein packed into
Speaker 8: every bite of beef supports the fast growing bodies and
Speaker 8: developing brains of babies and toddlers.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because these millennial parents then they're really shaping
Speaker 2: the diet, habits and taste preferences of their children so young.
Speaker 2: So could this be a potential growth theory.
Speaker 6: Maybe they really.
Speaker 3: Want to promote that this health idea and versatility innovation
Speaker 3: in the beef industry, there hasn't been a lot of it.
Speaker 3: One of the successes they have had is beef jerky.
Speaker 3: One of the things that beef has struggled in is
Speaker 3: that it hasn't gotten into like the snack category. If
Speaker 3: you think about chicken I mean chicken nuggets, I mean
Speaker 3: like the perfect.
Speaker 1: Snack, especially chicken fries.
Speaker 3: Now that's something that the industry will point to, is like,
Speaker 3: look what we've done with beef jerky, which has always
Speaker 3: sort of been a thing, I mean think about slim
Speaker 3: gems and things like that. But now it's actually there's
Speaker 3: a decent size of a category around it. But they
Speaker 3: need more of that. They need more sort of different
Speaker 3: products to get beef into people's stomachs because right now
Speaker 3: people aren't going out and eating steaks as much as
Speaker 3: they used to and things like that.
Speaker 1: Leslie, does chicken beef have anything to fear from plant
Speaker 1: based meats.
Speaker 6: As of right now? No, not really.
Speaker 2: Plant based is just a tiny drop in the bucket
Speaker 2: at this point. It garnered a lot of buzz and
Speaker 2: hype and excitement when it first came out for what
Speaker 2: it was and what it was able to do, and
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to discount that at all, but people
Speaker 2: just aren't buying it right now, like these big companies
Speaker 2: like Beyond Meat Impossible foods like they thought, and a
Speaker 2: lot of it is costs. They haven't gotten the cost
Speaker 2: down to where it's comparable with actual meat yet. Right now,
Speaker 2: we're all facing huge grocery price increases, our food bills
Speaker 2: are going up, so it's hard to see people splurging
Speaker 2: on plant based in the immediate future if they can't
Speaker 2: get the cost down to a comparable meat level.
Speaker 1: Matt, One thing I wanted to ask you about too,
Speaker 1: is you know, we're talking all about beef consumption in
Speaker 1: the US, but what about overseas? Is that a potential
Speaker 1: for like a growth market. Chicken is really popular overseas too,
Speaker 1: but what about beef?
Speaker 3: It is yeah, that the beef industry actually signals that
Speaker 3: increase the exports is sort of their biggest opportunity or
Speaker 3: their biggest goal to increase demand for their products. Again,
Speaker 3: the beef industry in the US is the biggest exporter
Speaker 3: of meat in the world. The biggest markets are you know,
Speaker 3: in Asia, it's China, It's Korea, and China looks like
Speaker 3: obviously because the growing metal cluster, that's the biggest opportunity.
Speaker 3: That's where the most growth has been in beef consumption globally.
Speaker 3: But overall, beef consumption in the world is actually kind
Speaker 3: of flat to declining, and even in some major markets
Speaker 3: that have chuily been known as big beef eating countries
Speaker 3: like Brazil and Argentina, beef consumption is either going down
Speaker 3: or it's flat, and chicken, just like the US, is
Speaker 3: sort of coming up, and I think in Argentina they
Speaker 3: expect that maybe this year is the first year that
Speaker 3: chicken will surpass beef, which is surprising me think about
Speaker 3: all these South American sort of barbecues and the sort
Speaker 3: of long tradition of barbecues and beef in those countries.
Speaker 2: China's really a big opportunity for beef and for meat
Speaker 2: in general, because meat consumption per capita in China lags
Speaker 2: most of the Western countries, including the US, so there's
Speaker 2: the possibility for sure of higher consumption, including of beef,
Speaker 2: especially with urbanization and higher income levels that are making
Speaker 2: meat more affordable for more people. But the thing is,
Speaker 2: beef is really a distant third right now, after pork
Speaker 2: and chicken. I mean, pork is really the dominant meat
Speaker 2: in China.
Speaker 6: Still and has been for a long time.
Speaker 2: But one interesting thing I saw from a Mackensey study
Speaker 2: is that for people in China who can afford to
Speaker 2: pay for meat, they consider beef healthier than pork. Not
Speaker 2: necessarily healthier than chicken, but they consider it healthier than pork.
Speaker 2: So maybe there's room for beef to take a little
Speaker 2: share from pork in China.
Speaker 1: Obviously there's a lot of effort being put into trying
Speaker 1: to either increase the popularity of chicken further or to
Speaker 1: bring beef back up. Five years from now, ten years
Speaker 1: from now, do you think they're going to have moved
Speaker 1: the needle on people's tastes if.
Speaker 2: We look out five or ten years, I think what
Speaker 2: we're going to see as things are roughly the same
Speaker 2: in terms of trends, right, so, chickens continuing to take
Speaker 2: share from beef. Pork is hanging in there, probably pretty
Speaker 2: stable like.
Speaker 6: Where it has been.
Speaker 2: You know one area that could change that is potentially
Speaker 2: if beef comes up with some great innovation or really
Speaker 2: hops on that protein trend that it's kind of forgot about,
Speaker 2: forgot to advertise itself as high protein during all these
Speaker 2: high protein diet trends. That could help the industry. But
Speaker 2: it's hard to see these trends changing too much. But
Speaker 2: that being said, if they come up with the new
Speaker 2: beef jerky, maybe we'll see that change.
Speaker 1: Leslie Matt, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 6: Thanks for thinking of us, Thank you.
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