Belarusians Turned Vegetarians Now

It’s not about healthy lifestyle.

Sales of raw unprocessed meat have been falling since 2019, and beef has almost disappeared from the rations of Belarusians. At the same time, the demand for processed meat products is growing, the Belarusians and the Market writes about it.

In Q1 2024, retail sales of raw meat decreased by 0.6% compared to the same period last year, according to Belstat data. For the whole of 2023, they decreased by 4.6%, and over the past five years, the drop has reached 20%. So, if in 2018 349,700 tons of meat, including poultry and offal, were sold, in 2023 – only 280,000 tons.

How the dynamics for the first quarter have changed over 7 years is shown in the picture.

At the same time, beef completely leaves the diet of the Belarusian people. In the first quarter of this year, less than a thousand tons of this type of meat were sold, which is 9.3% less than in the same quarter last year. The current reduction occurs after the prolonged collapse of 2019-23 – then the decline reached 20-25% annually.

The long-term decrease is in the case of pork. Demand for chicken stopped falling – 30,000 tons (+1%) were sold in the first quarter. However, sales of this product decreased last year and the year before last by 4-6%.

A healthy lifestyle has nothing to do with it

You might think that Belarusians, following the fashion of rich European countries, are replacing meat with more dietary products. However, the dynamics of demand for fish is also negative: in the first quarter, its sales decreased by 2% and fell in 2022-23.

At the same time, consumption of non-dietary processed meat products is growing: in the first quarter, they added 4.7% after an increase of 4% in 2023. Citizens are not in a hurry to abandon canned meat – the dynamics of demand for them is subject to fluctuations and responds to crises. Thus, canned food sales grew in 2021 and 2022, fell in 2023, and returned to growth in early 2024 (+4.6%).

How else do Belarusians compensate for the intake of protein?

It is difficult to answer this question, since Belstat for some reason removed milk and dairy products from its statistics – we do not know how their sales changed. As for dairy products, data on cheese is only available, and it looks beautiful: Belarusian citizens are increasing the purchase of cheese for the second year in a row – 10.600 tons were sold in the quarter, that is, ten times more than beef!

Consumption of other delicacies is also impressive: sales of molluscs and crustaceans for the 1st quarter increased by 31% after 39% in 2023. True, the volume of consumption of this product is small: 2,000 tons were sold in the quarter. But again, compared to beef, this amount already seems decent. And remembering the meme about the "Belarusian shrimp", we note that, according to Belstat, 40% of the sold mollusks and crustaceans were of domestic origin.

Eggs are also a source of protein for Belarusians – their sales have increased slightly over the past few years, and in the first quarter of this year, they increased by 4%.