Consumption pattern, consumer attitude and consumer perception on meat quality and safety in Southern India

The present study was carried out to understand the awareness, purchasing behaviour and consumer perception and awareness towards meat and meat products quality, safety, regulation, and poisoning. For this, 260 volunteers from Bengaluru district were selected and were surveyed. The study group comprised of 194 males and 66 females. The educational background of respondents was found to vary between uneducated to Post graduate level. The study indicates that close to 50 percent respondents purchased meat directly from butcher shop, while only 13.1 percentages opted frozen meat. The weekly consumption was highest frequency (147) of meat consumption. Majority of respondents (71.5%) used color as indication of meat quality. Gravy type product was most preferred type in home, followed by biryani type and dry type meat products. The willingness to purchase frozen meat (16.9%) and awareness of processed meat (33.1%) indicate huge opportunity for meat industry in future. For major proportion of correspondents (91.5%) animal welfare was not a matter of concern. Fortunately 92.7 percent of respondents have not seen any type of food poisoning attributed to consumption of meat and meat products which may be due to traditional cooking practices in India which destroys majority of meat borne pathogens. Apart from these findings there was high variation in preference towards meat, perception on meat quality, perception towards processed meat. The result of current study gives an idea on the future strategies need to be adopted by meat scientists to understand felt needs of consumers and ways to tackle food safety issues in India. From the view of using marketing tools more effectively and defining new strategies, determination of consumer preferences and the factors affecting them have great importance