Statista also highlighted that Chinese consumers are gradually changing their attitudes to become more positive of plant-based meat in China. This can be seen in a recent survey done which showed that up to 31% of respondents would consider eating similar amount of both conventional meat as well as plant-based meat. Interestingly, a substantial 23% of respondents will eat just a small amount of real meat or completely replace meat with plant-based meat. This signifies a change in attitude to consider meat alternatives in their diets. Despite the interesting statistics, we have yet to see the trends reflected in actual consumption volume.
When looking at domestic meat production, pork dominated with 54% of total meat production in 2020, followed by poultry (31%), mutton/lamb (9%) and beef (6%). In 2021, China produced up to 53 million metric tonnes of pork as compared to 6.98 million tonnes of beef/veal and 5.14 million tonnes of mutton/lamb.
Despite the high production volume, China still needed to import up to 3.7 million tonnes of pork in 2021 to make up for the shortfall.
