Some Quantitative Relationships in Meat Marketing

This article represents the early stages of a broad enquiry into the marketing of meat. As such the results are tentative only and often uncompleted. To date the work has been concerned mainly with fat lamb prices and supply although a number of side excursions have been made. It has been calculated that total expenditure on meat at the retail level has kept pace with the growth of money income; in other words, when money income increased by, say, one per cent, consumers spent one per cent more on meat (lamb, mutton, beef and pork). While the total quantity consumed per year per caput has not risen substantially considerable shifts have occurred in the consumption of different types of meat and, in particular, the consumption of lamb has increased at the expense of beef consumption. The changes in consumption of these two commodities are closely associated with changes in the price ratio of these two commodities and income.