USMEF Meat Consumption Starting To Rebound In Asia

While the U.S. is in the middle of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, there may be some good news to report on the coronavirus front. Dan Halstrom, President and CEO of the U.S. Meat Export Federation, said consumption of red meat, specifically beef is starting to rebound of weeks of declines. He noted many of hardest hit restaurants in SE Asia are reporting more and more customer as they try to return to a normal way of life.

“While we’ve been dealing with the coronavirus for the past couple of weeks here, they’ve been dealing with it in Asia since early January.  And I’m happy to report that we’re actually seeing some very good signs out of Asia specifically Taiwan and Hong Kong in China.  People are getting back to work, restaurants are reopening.”

Halstrom noted by no means is meat demand returning quickly, and while it’s not at pre-coronavirus levels, numbers are headed in the right direction. He added when looking at China as a whole, beef sales year over year are up, which is encouraging.

Halstrom added while so much attention has been placed on COVID-19, African Swine Flu will most likely have a bigger impact on American producers in 2020. He said as it sits right now, 25% of the world’s hogs are missing because of AWF, which will push up protein demand, which is good news not only for American pork producers, but beef and chicken as well.

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