What if meat consumption would decrease more than expected in the developed countries?

As a complement to the analysis of the baseline scenario used for the European Commission agricultural market outlook, a first alternative scenario envisaging a lower meat consumption trend have been elaborated. It shows that a decrease in per capita meat consumption in developed countries and selected Latin American countries would impact on the world and EU meat markets, and consequently on markets of crops used as feed, prices being under pressure despite the continuing increase of meat consumption in the rest of the world. In a second scenario where the decrease of meat consumption is compensated by an increase intake of plant products and certain other animal products such as dairy or eggs, the impact on markets other than the meat ones is mitigated, although the beef meat sector is even more affected by an increase of dairy products outputs. This possible evolution would be a challenge for farmers, who can rely for this on the CAP policy tools, in their diverse implementation among Member States