Although no one has a crystal ball, some things happening today can be projected into the future. The entire grocery store, including meat and poultry, is seeing higher than average inflation. Retailers have begun to experiment with different unit sizes and in recent months there has been a shift to smaller packages.

“It is important for the industry to consider where the win nets out,” Roerink said. “Providing smaller unit sizes entails a risk for the department to lose some money toward a smaller purchase, but at the same time packages that are priced too highly may take certain consumers out of the purchase altogether.”

Another issue to deal with in the future affecting all forms of meat and poultry production and processing, and humankind, is the ever-growing population. The United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs projects the world’s population to reach 9.8 billion by 2050.

“Global population is another factor that will have an impact,” Hixon said. “As the world population grows to nine billion by 2050, the industry will need to continue to develop efficiencies related to production and logistics.”

With the transparency/sustainability/label attribute, etc., mindset of consumers growing out of a trend and becoming a mainstream attitude, there is no doubt it will affect consumer purchases into the future. Alternative proteins have gained a foothold in the market around this, as well as being an option to feed the growing population, and are on the mind of all in the meat industry, both within the alternative sector and the conventional and specialty animal protein sector. While both specialty animal proteins and alternative proteins are just a fraction of sales in the overall market, they are still worthy of attention.

Plant-based alternatives showed triple-digit growth early but slowed down significantly and has seen double-digit declines over the last year. The declines caused retailers to reevaluate merchandising decisions and move these items outside of the meat department, or just offer less SKUs overall.

“I do not believe, however, that the plant-based meat alternative trend has played out altogether,” Roerink said. “We are still too early in the innovation cycle to call it. We will continue to see new items become available with superior taste, texture and smell and as long as consumers are willing to continue to try them, I think we will continue to see ebbs and flows into the plant-based meat alternative market.”

Hixon said Midan’s research echoed Roerink’s sentiment.

“In research Midan did in 2021, almost half of meat consumers had a positive initial reaction when they heard the term ‘plant-based meat alternatives,’” he said. “However, in our 2021 research, only one in five surveyed meat consumers said they consume plant-based meat alternatives once a month or more. In the last year, we have seen a dramatic downfall in the number of plant-based units in the meat case.”

Cultivated meat, still not widely available, remains a question mark in terms of its future in the market. While some consumers believe it is a viable option, many don’t trust it for various reasons.

“Cultivated meat is an interesting area,” Roerink said. “People who have some concerns over the idea of eating meat and poultry from a health, animal, or planet point of view, like the idea of taking cells from the animal and growing it in a laboratory. However, the vast majority of Americans have some concerns relative to eating cultivated meat. A lot of these concerns center on food safety, taste, texture etc.”

According to Midan’s research, consumers have yet to make strong decisions on cultivated meat. As volume increases and pricing becomes more acceptable to consumers, Midan believes adoption of cultivated meat will exceed what has been seen for plant based.

“It will take time, but traditional animal protein production needs to be thinking about how to position their products to keep majority market share,” Hixon said.