THE struggles of the poultry sector have continued into the first quarter of this year, with the industry unable to keep up with strongly growing demand.

Overall meat consumption in the UK was up by 1.2% during January-March, compared with a year earlier, and this was almost entirely due to consumers eating more poultry meat.

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However, home production of poultry was down by 0.4% during those first three months, and the higher poultry consumption was achieved through greater imports, and the diversion of exports onto the home market.

In fact, poultry was the only major meat category that registered a drop in output during the first quarter. Beef output was up 1.7%, lamb and mutton by 7.4%, and pigmeat (bacon and pork) by 5.3%.

It was a completely different picture for consumption of the different meat categories. Consumption of beef was virtually unchanged, with the higher production taken up by more exports.

For mutton and lamb, exports accounted for most of the extra production, so that domestic uptake was just 2.5% higher; while pigmeat consumption was even down by 2.3%. In the case of the latter, although pigmeat production was 12,400 tonnes higher during the January-March period, imports dropped by 8,800 tonnes and exports rose by 11,300 tonnes (all recorded as carcase weight or equivalent).

Production and consumption

Meanwhile the poultrymeat sector failed to take advantage of the buoyant demand situation. The gap between production and consumption widened during the first quarter by 22,500 tonnes, to 131,600 tonnes.

Consumption was up 20,600 tonnes on a year earlier, to 632,700 tonnes, making a rise of 3.4%. At the same time, home output fell 1,900 tonnes to 501,100 tonnes. Bridging the gap was a rise in imports of 12,400 tonnes (to 174,600 tonnes), and a drop in exports of 10,100 tonnes (to 43,000 tonnes).

This means that the share of domestic consumption taken by imports rose by one percentage point to 27.6%.

Total meat consumption in the first quarter stood at 1.30 million tonnes. Within this, market shares for the major meat categories came to 48.6% for poultry; 25.8% for pigmeat; 20.4% for beef; and 5.2% for sheepmeat.