New research finds UK consumers willing to spend more on British meat

A new research conducted at the University of Kent has revealed that meat consumers in the UK are willing to pay an additional cost for British produce.

The change in consumer behaviour follows the meat scandal in 2013, when it was discovered that numerous processed beef products sold in the UK were found to contain horse meat.

Following tests, some of the products were declared unfit for human consumption. The scandal was first identified by Irish food inspectors.

Carried out by professor Iain Fraser in the university’s School of Economics and Mohamud Hussein from the Agribusiness Solutions Hub, this research has found that meat consumers in the UK are willing to pay £2/kg more rather than consuming meat with no information about the country of origin.

The study also noted that beef products have seen the biggest increase in consumers valuing country of origin labels.

In addition, retailers across the UK have voluntarily started to highlight the importance on origin labels as a response to changing consumer behaviour.

The initiative has made mandatory food labelling requirements seem ‘unneccessary’, at least for a short period of time.

The research findings are based on the analysis of monthly shopping data from Kantar Worldpanel’s survey, which involved 30,000 households representing the UK population.