But the majority of beef's lost market share has gone to poultry. The problems in the beef industry will not be solved until we understand why consumer expenditures for beef have fallen and what is needed to correct this problem. The starting point for most cattle producers is to begin to understand just what is the demand for beef. To most cattle producers the concept of per-capita consumption is equated to the demand for beef. If per capita consumption rises then beef demand must be increasing.
Nothing is further from the truth.
It is a measure of the amount of beef available to the consuming public divided by the population level. This is not a demand measure. But, per-capita consumption is a good way to explain the relationship between the three major competing meats. The graphs in Figure 2 show the per-capita consumption of beef pork and chicken from 1960 to 1998. It is apparent that the per-capita consumption of beef rose during most of the 1970's and has since declined.