Source: Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE, 9/14/15


With the price of red meat high in Japan, and getting higher, chicken is enjoying record-setting popularity, reports USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, in a recent Global Agricultural Information Service report.

Japanese food prices overall have gone up since last year, due to a new consumption tax hike to 8 percent from 5 percent and the fall in the value of the yen, the report said. Consumers there are ripe to trade down and have done so, substituting poultry for pork and beef in record volumes.

Total broiler consumption in Japan in 2015 is expected to reach 2.245 million metric tons, the report said, exceeding 2014’s record levels. Japanese broiler production also is expected to rise, to 1.375 million metric tons (665 million broilers) and imports — mostly from Brazil — are projected up to 900,000 metric tons this calendar year.

Household consumption data for the first half of 2015 reveal that consumers spent more money to buy about the same quantity of chicken and pork purchased over the same period in 2014. Those higher expenditures have come at the expense of reduced household spending on beef, the cost of which is up by double digits over 2014 levels.

Increased availability of broilers from Thailand coupled with a widely publicized food safety scandal involving imported prepared poultry products, have fed into expanded production of Japanese domestic prepared poultry products and reduced prepared product imports. A significant decline in imports of prepared products from China has led the trend. Meanwhile, raw broiler imports from Thailand will reach 87,000 metric tons in 2015, nearly doubling over year-earlier levels, when the country regained access to the Japanese market after resolving lingering avian influenza concerns.

Brazil is the dominant supplier to the Japanese market with a 77 percent market share, although that share is down 7 percentage points from 2014. Thailand’s market share is projected to reach 17 percent in 2015, up 10 percentage points from 2014.

FAS projects that Japan’s record high 2015 broiler meat consumption will hold steady at around 2.44 million metric tons in 2016.

For more stories, go to www.meatingplace.com.