News

Survey shows consumers still choose meat/poultry

U.S. consumers still like their meat and poultry. According to the 11th Annual Power of Meat Study – eight out of 10 consumers said meat and poultry were key sources of nutrients in their diets.  Anna Marie Roerink, a principal with 210 Analytics which conducted the study, tells Brownfield that negative messages about eating meat and poultry have not impacted consumption, “Now we see people move towards leaner cuts or maybe portion control or maybe skipping that second helping but in terms of their total meat protein consumption we’ve actually seen very little change.”

She says consumers do want transparency and the industry has responded, “We actually saw some really robust gains, between 20 and 30%, for segments such as organic, hormone-free, antibiotic-free, natural.”

But, she says it’s important to keep in mind that those are very small segments, dollar-wise, compared to conventional meat and poultry.

She says shoppers also are more concerned about overall price than price per pound, “There’s still a lot of caution out in the marketplace in terms of grocery purchasing and just spending in general. We just see shoppers, in general, but specifically millennials paying more attention to that total package price.”

The survey of more than 13-hundred Americans was released by the Food Marketing Institute and the North American Meat Institute.