Chicken meat eating up its competition
Do you remember when a chicken was a special treat, shared as a Sunday roast or for a special occasion?
Here’s some history on chicken meat…
Prior to the mid-1960s, chicken meat primarily came from the processing of laying hens at the end of their productive life or surplus cockerels from the egg industry. The improvement of chicken breeds specifically bred for the purpose of meat production started to make an impact on the availability of chicken meat and this was when statistics started to be collected on chicken meat production and consumption for the first time. In this period Australias consumed approximately 5 kg per person a year. This represented a minuscule 5% of all meat eaten by Australians.
In 2018, ABARES (Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences) released updated statistics on Australia’s agricultural commodities, on their website. You can see how much the industry has grown! In 2017-18 ABARES forecasts that Australians will consume approximately 49 kg per person. That’s 44% of all meat (excluding fish and seafood) consumed in Australia. It is expected in another 5 years, chicken meat consumption is projected to have climbed to 51.5 kg per person per annum.
The graph below shows just how much meat consumption has changed in the past two decades.
