At this year’s World Pork Expo, Radio Oklahoma Ag Network Intern Maci Carter had the chance to visit with Rupert Claxton, the meat director of Gira Foods. Claxton and Carter discussed economic hardships for the industry, movements away from pork, turning the pork markets around, and more.
“We’ve got this huge inflationary surge, that’s taking away people’s disposable income,” Claxton said. “So, at a global level, people don’t have the money in their pocket to go and buy food and meat that they had, and when they look at their choices, they tend to downgrade on meat very early on in that process.”
Claxton said that with his job, he gets the opportunity to travel internationally and look at the meat industries from many angles. His observations have been that COVID created a huge hurdle, and in the recovery of that, downgrading meats has been a large result.
“We know if we look at the sustainability agenda, the animal welfare agenda that’s being pushed, that we’re seeing some of the younger generations off to eat less meat,” Claxton said. “So yeah, I think we’re getting very near the top end of what a US consumer will eat at a per capita level, and the industry has to start to think about how to address what it does next, and how it goes off for that consumer.”
While the U.S. is the number one consumer of meat around the world, Claxton said he wonders how much more American consumers will intake. With a moral change in public views, Rupert thinks the industry needs to start considering that it could max out on what buyers will want.
Claxton said that the U.S. is very competitive in pork exports, however, there is some competition with Canada, Europe, and Brazil. They each have their own edge working to their advantage, but the U.S. is still a big player.
“As we’ve seen that disposable income squeezed, we see people trade down the kind of meat that they buy,” Claxton said. “In poor parts of the world, we see people changing the frequency with which they’re eating meat, so they’re not having meat with every main meal, but they may be going from five days a week to three days a week, two days a week, and in some cases stopping completely.”
With economic upsets around the world, Claxton said meat intake is changing. Trading down meat products is certainly taking place, he added, and even in more extreme measures if we look beyond U.S. borders.
“The industry standpoint, for a long time, has been not to engage on this, because they understand that it’s really hard to communicate with the anti-meat lobby,” Claxton said. “It’s about changing the topic at a rate at which the industry can move and comply with. So, for me, the key is for the industry to be part of the conversation.”
Claxton said that when it comes to anti-meat and sustainability movements, being a part of the conversation is vital. The anti-meat industry will not win, he added, but if the conversation can be guided and if it can meet the new needs of consumers, then the damages can be minimized.
“We’re in a really difficult patch today,” Claxton said. “But I think in six months’ time and heading out into the next 12 months, then it looks a little bit better. But it’s all about cost control. There are lots of moving pieces; the detail is going to be what makes it or breaks it. But I think that the industry will come through this.”
