11.12.2014

Poultry meat is the only meat of which production and consumption are expected to expand significantly over the outlook period (by 7% each between 2014 and 2024). Supported by sustained global demand, the EU will maintain its market share with EU exports accounting for 10% of global trade.
Poultry meat currently enjoys several comparative advantages over other meats, e.g. affordability, convenience, absence of any religious guidelines limiting consumption, healthy image, limited greenhouse gas emissions, lower production costs, short rearing time and lower levels of investment required. As a result, production and consumption have been steadily increasing for many years now. This increase was mainly concentrated in a number of Member States that are major producers - Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland (which together accounted for 44% of total EU production in 2013). Overall production in 2014, is expected at around 13 million tonnes.
The production of poultry meat is expected to continue to grow steadily over the outlook period, but the rate of growth is very likely to slow to 0.7% per year, having averaged 1.7% over the past ten years. With feed prices remaining lower than in recent years throughout the outlook period, strong domestic and world demand will together contribute to the increase in production, with total EU production expected to reach almost 14 million tonnes by 2024.
Thanks to its relative cheapness and healthy image, poultry meat will continue to be the fastest growing part of the meat market in terms of consumption (out of the four main types of meat), with increases both in volumes consumed (by 0.6% per year, to reach 22.8 kg per capita by 2024), and in market share (rising to 32% by 2024).