Meeting the demand for meat – analysing meat flows to and from the UK pre and post Brexit

Background: Global trade has grown at twice the rate of the economy since the 1990s. Today’s food system is a complex network of trade dependencies and supply chains which underpin global food security. International trade is a crucial element in providing UK consumers with meat-based produce in their diet. The international meat trade was estimated at $112.5 billion (£74.25 billion or €104.10 billion) in 2015 and UK imports are worth over 5% making the UK the 5th largest market. Understanding how Brexit might alter the landscape for UK meat imports is an important socio-economic issue.Scope and approach: Data was analysed from the Chatham House resourcetrade.earth database, which is open access and collated from a range of global sources, allows analysis of data for imports into the UK of beef, pork, lamb and poultry and of exports of these meat types from the UK have been completed using R-studio statistical package.Key findings and conclusions: The UK’s global market significance in each meat type ranges from 3% in beef to 9.9% in sheep, and most imports originate from the EU especially Pork (99.8% from EU) and Poultry (95.5%). Analysis of the Food Safety QUAD countries (USA, New Zealand, Canada and Australia) highlights that the USA has capacity to cover any loss of imports to the UK from Europe post Brexit, with New Zealand and Australia being able to replace the 11.1% of lamb, which comes from the EU. The Rotterdam Effect is also explored highlighting how countries like Thailand and Brazil may offer future imports of poultry and beef if trade with EU becomes disrupted.