LIVESTOCK AND MEAT MARKETS
Over the past 12-18 months, livestock and meat prices increased rapidly as the world emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic and its associated lockdowns. Price increases in these markets were so pronounced that analysts dubbed the phenomenon “meatflation”, intended to highlight the large effect that meat price increases played in overall food inflation around the globe. This was driven by both supply and demand factors. On the demand side, as economies opened up, demand from the food service industry increased. This combined with pent-up demand during the pandemic and ensured strong demand for all livestock products. In terms of supply, disease outbreaks, such as the BSE outbreak in Brazil and Avian Influenza outbreaks in Europe and more recently in the USA and Canada, further added to trade disruptions and supply and demand imbalances. High feed costs due to supply disruptions in grain markets also added to constrained supply.
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