Trends in the consumption of animal food products in Mediterranean countries

Future perspectives of the feed sector depends greatly on the evolution of animal food product consumption trends. The objective of this paper is to analyse those trends in Mediterranean countries taking the EU as a reference as it is thought that they are mainly dependent on economic development. However, this is only true to a certain extent as the consumption of animal food products in Arab countries has remained quite stable in the last ten years while per capita income has increased substantially. Moreover, animal food consumption is not expected to increase further in the future as income elasticities are very low. In non-Arab Mediterranean countries, the feed sector has future opportunities as pork, poultry and eggs consumption has increased. Alternative measures have been used to determine if whether animal food product consumption patterns are converging among Mediterranean countries, on one hand, and among EU countries, on the other. Results from both dynamic factorial analysis and convergence has shown that a divergence process is taking place in both cases and that it is not possible to talk about a single European diet or a single Mediterranean diet. Feed companies must be aware of such trends in order to implement the appropriate marketing strategies in each geographical area.