Most people in India, including government officials, don t believe a huge increase in meat consumption will happen, but I think they re in for a big surprise. Our study showed that in the last 10 years prices for livestock products went up and income growth for rural people in India was slow. In fact, however, consumption shot up. Imagine what will happen if real incomes do grow more rapidly as a result of India s ongoing policy reforms. The reasons, says Hazell, are many.
Television is everywhere.
Restaurants and street foods are more prevalent. Transportation is better, so rural people travel to town more often. The middle class is growing larger, and others see how they live. And advertising works. In the early 1990s, on average, each person in the developed world ate nearly four times as much meat and consumed nearly five times as much milk as each person in the developing world.