Dive Brief:
- The U.S. meat and poultry industry contributes a total of $1.02 trillion to the national economy, equal to about 5.6% of GDP, per an economic impact analysis recently released by the North American Meat Institute (NAMI), hosted on the website www.MeatFuelsAmerica.com.
- About 5.4 million jobs come from the U.S. meat and poultry industry for a total of about $257 billion in wages, as of 2014 data. Another two million full-time equivalent jobs have resulted from companies that supply goods and services to the meat and poultry industry, such as trucking and container manufacturing.
- In addition to job creation, the report identified $108.42 billion in revenues for the federal, state, and local governments generated by traditional direct taxes paid by meat and poultry companies and their employees. When it comes to state sales taxes, meat and poultry consumption derive 3.26 billion.
Dive Insight:
The findings from this report demonstrate the massive economic impact of the U.S. meat industry at a time when a variety of factors are influencing consumers' perceptions of meat. Consumers and government officials have become increasingly worried about animal welfare, employee welfare, particularly in the poultry industry, and the use of antibiotics in animals raised for food.
The meat industry has battled health-related concerns propagated by the Dietary Guidelines, which recommend consumers limit their red and processed meats and only eat a certain amount of lean meat. These concerns mainly stemmed from meat's saturated fat content, though more recent research questions whether consumption of saturated fats increases risk of heart disease. The new data itself isn't entirely reliable.
That aside, consumers' increased interest in protein, has been vital to the meat industry in recent years. Meat companies are looking beyond traditional eating occasions and experimenting with more convenient and snack-friendly options through product reformulations and packaging innovations.
Meat snacks, such as protein bars and artisanal jerky, have experienced significant growth. Not all experiments have worked out, but the initiative is there for the meat industry to remain relevant as consumer preferences rapidly evolve.
But that rise in protein interest hasn't exclusively served meat companies. Plant-based proteins, from algae to insects, have also become increasingly popular and could dampen growth for meat sales and consumption in the coming years.