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to move, as it would be consumer driven, seek ways of increasing efficiency and be to the benefit of
the sector. Moving down the other route diverts the focus away from sheep as the main part of the
business, the fear is that although sheep might be an integral part of the farm, and may be necessary to
benefít ffom environmental or landscape, leisure or tourism related activities, there may be little
incentive in keeping consumer/market requirements in mind.
Demand for sheep meat is however, expected to remain on a broadly downwards trend, perceived as it
is as an expensive meat and perhaps less versatile than other meats. Production looks set to fall as
well. Although it is difficult to predict the trend over the next decade, the decline in demand could be
in the order of up to 10 per cent.
CONCLUSIONS
The livestock sectors in the UK have faced major economic problems in recent years, exacerbated by
disease. Continued low retums at farm level, changing support mechanisms and, more recently,
increased competition from imports have forced many livestock producers to scale back their
enterprises and some to cease production. The outlook in the medium term looks equally challenging
and the likely scenario is that, the overall availability of livestock is going to decline.
These challenges imply that if livestock producers and the industry chains they supply are to survive
in the UK at anything like the size they attained in the last decade of the 20* century, major structural
changes are required. For some, maintaining production on the previous scale is already unachievable,
and they need to develop smaller, tighter, more focused sectors to compete.
REFERENCES
Anon, 2001 - “Green Pressure Paying Off’, Farmers Weekly 4 May 2001.
English Nature, 2001 - The State of Nature. English Nature. May 2001.
ISC, 1999 - The Abattoir and Meat Processing Industry in Great Britain. 1999. ISC MLC, Milton Keynes.
ISC, 2001 - “Collaborative Marketing for Local Regional Branded Products”. Report for the Countryside
Agency. February 2001. ISC MLC, Milton Keynes.
MAFF, 2001 - Task Force for the Hills. March 2001 MAFF, London.
MLC, 2000 - New Horizons. The Global Meat Market to 2010. MLC Planning and Forecasting .July 2000.
Milton Keynes.
MLC, 2001 - UK Weekly Market Survey. 9 Febmary 2001. MLC Economics, Milton Keynes.
OECD, 2001 - “Agricultural Outlook 2001 to 2006”. OECD. Paris.