Global meat production and consumption continue to climb year over year, but beneath this broad growth lies a dramatic, underrecognized reshuffling of the world’s protein market. A growing divergence is emerging between different livestock sectors: beef cattle are becoming increasingly scarce, driving up beef prices, while chicken production — which can scale far faster to meet shifting demand — has emerged as the primary engine of growth for the global meat industry, with pork occupying a middle ground between the two. This shift is not a traditional meat crisis that leaves grocery shelves empty, but a quiet, structural reordering that is changing what consumers around the world find on their plates. To understand the future of meat, analysts say we must look beyond consumer demand to the fundamentals of supply across the value chain: livestock herd sizes, feed and water availability, disease risk, and the biological timeline required to bring new generations of animals to market. For beef, this timeline has become a fundamental economic constraint.
The global beef market is still recovering from a period of widespread herd reduction across major producing nations. Persistent drought, sky-high production costs, and thin profit margins have pushed farmers to slaughter cattle earlier than planned, shrinking overall supply. When prices began to rise in response, a unique paradox emerged: a rancher can either sell a heifer today for a high price, or keep it to breed for future calves — and calves take years to reach slaughter weight. This means that high prices can actually make beef production less flexible in the short term, prolonging supply shortages.
The OECD and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) project that global beef prices will peak in real terms in 2026, before declining gradually as major producers rebuild their herds. But due to cattle’s long biological production cycle, this recovery is unfolding slowly, turning time itself into a defining economic factor. Unlike factories that can add production capacity in months or poultry producers that can ramp up output in weeks, beef ranchers cannot speed up their production timeline to match sudden shifts in demand.
Compounding tight supply is sustained demand growth from Asia, led by China, which remains a dominant force in global meat markets. The latest OECD-FAO forecast projects that China’s beef imports will grow by 500,000 tons by 2035, even as its domestic pork sector stabilizes. This ongoing demand means the already tight global beef market cannot count on a quick return to pre-shortage conditions, as China continues to compete for available supplies on global markets when domestic production lags behind demand.
At the same time, China is working to protect its own domestic beef sector: in January 2026, it imposed a 55% tariff on beef imports exceeding set quotas from major suppliers including Brazil. By June 2026, Brazil had already used 98.5% of its allotted quota, and in September, Brazil announced it would access unused Uruguayan quotas to gain extra access to the Chinese market. This development makes clear that global meat trade is increasingly shaped by trade policy, not just basic supply and demand dynamics.
To add another layer of uncertainty for the beef sector, animal disease has emerged as a new threat to global supply chains. In June 2026, the United States confirmed its first-ever domestic case of New World screwworm in cattle in Texas. The parasitic worm lays eggs in open wounds, and its larvae feed on living animal tissue, capable of causing severe economic damage to livestock herds. The impact quickly extended beyond the small number of infected animals: the U.S. initially closed all cattle border crossings with Mexico before beginning a phased reopening. By late August, the Douglas, Arizona border crossing reopened under new strict inspection and safety protocols, and as of September, restricted infection zones remain in place in Texas, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture monitoring the situation closely. The outbreak highlights just how vulnerable modern meat supply chains are: an epidemic does not need to kill millions of animals to cause widespread economic disruption. Even limited restrictions on livestock movement can disrupt regional markets, shift prices, and reshape global trade flows.
Against this backdrop of beef supply constraints, poultry has a decisive competitive advantage: speed. Unlike cattle, which require years to reach market weight, chickens mature in weeks, allowing poultry producers to adjust output much faster in response to shifting prices and demand. This advantage has made poultry the fastest growing segment of global food supplies.
According to OECD-FAO projections, global total meat consumption will grow by roughly 12% by 2035. The vast majority of this growth will come from poultry: chicken and other poultry consumption is expected to rise by 29 million tons, a roughly 20% increase, accounting for around two-thirds of all additional meat consumption over the next decade. By comparison, beef consumption is projected to grow by just 8% over the same period. This gap creates a built-in buffer for the global meat market: as beef becomes more expensive, consumers do not need to cut back on protein intake — they can simply switch to chicken. This dynamic makes the overall meat market more resilient, while permanently shifting the composition of protein consumed around the world.
Europe offers a clear preview of how this sectoral shift plays out in practice. The European Union expects total meat production to decline over the next decade, with beef and pork facing the most intense downward pressure, while poultry output expands. Multiple factors are driving this shift: high production costs, changing consumer habits, environmental policies, demographic shifts, and the simple reality that chicken is far cheaper and more efficient to produce than beef. Importantly, this shift does not mean that millions of Europeans are becoming vegetarian. Instead, diets are changing primarily because one type of meat has become relatively more expensive than another — a more powerful driver of dietary change than most public discussions of food choice acknowledge.
Despite poultry’s growing role as a buffer for global protein supplies, it is not a risk-free solution. Poultry production is heavily dependent on feed supplies, which are tied to volatile global grain and oilseed markets. Energy prices, fertilizer costs, drought, geopolitical conflict, and trade restrictions can all push up chicken prices over time. Animal disease also remains a persistent structural risk for the sector: the OECD-FAO highlights highly pathogenic avian influenza, African swine fever, and foot-and-mouth disease as ongoing threats that can disrupt production, trade, and pricing. The key difference, however, is that poultry producers can scale back up much faster after a disease outbreak than cattle ranchers, a major advantage for consumers. This speed also comes with a tradeoff: the poultry sector is far more dependent on an interconnected, large-scale system of feed supplies, livestock production, slaughterhouses, transport, and export markets, making it vulnerable to systemic disruptions across the supply chain.
This shifting dynamic has redefined the core challenge facing the global meat industry. It is no longer simply a question of whether the world can produce enough meat — it is whether the industry can deliver the right meat, quickly enough, to where it is needed. A drought in a major beef-producing region can impact meat prices for years. A single disease outbreak can close a national border within days. A rise in soy prices can eventually reach consumers through higher feed costs. An import tariff can permanently redirect a major trade route. As one sector comes under pressure, another steps in to fill the gap.
Overall, the OECD-FAO projects that global total meat production will rise by around 12% between 2026 and 2035, reaching roughly 412 million tons. This means the world will not face a broad shortage of meat, but the composition of that production will change dramatically: more poultry, relatively less beef and pork, with larger geographic shifts across producing regions. The geographic center of production is also shifting: most new demand will come from middle-income countries, while Asia will account for more than half of all new production, with Southeast Asia alone making up 39% of global growth in meat consumption by 2035.
At its core, this shift reflects a forced flexibility for the global meat industry that is here to stay. Where beef runs up against hard biological, land, and climate limits, chicken can adjust far faster to meet demand. Where Europe reduces beef and pork output, poultry can absorb much of the remaining consumer demand. Where China requires more meat imports, global trade flows reorient to meet that need. Where disease or climate disrupts production in one region, other regions expand output to fill the gap.
For consumers around the world, this means meat will remain widely available, but the type of meat on offer will continue to change. The core question for the future of the industry is not just how much meat the world can produce — it is what type of meat the world can afford, economically, environmentally, and biologically. And with that question, the next great shift in what we eat is already underway.
