The beef industry in France: Gearing up to demand ?

Abstract

The beef sector in North America as in much of Europe has not industrialized as rapidly as other animal production industries (pork, poultry). Alongside this, the market share for beef in household meat consumption has dwindled. Apart from a penalizing price effect, various studies in North America (Wachenhein and Singley, 1999; Goldsmith et al., 2002; Schroeder and Kovanda, 2003) have accounted for this in terms of a lack of vertical coordination in the sector, the absence of a channel captain at the processing stage, and the dearth of product differentiation initiatives directed at customer expectations. The purpose of this contribution is to analyse the case of the French beef sector and to compare and contrast findings with the situation described in the U.S. and Canada. The processing sector has undergone slow industrialization since the 1950s. Health scares since the mid 1990s have speeded concentration and led to the introduction of innovative technical and organizational tools. However, these tools were not always designed to meet consumers’ long-term expectations, which returned to centre stage once the food scares were over. And so, as in North America and in many other European countries, coordinated efforts by all the links in the supply chain, under the impetus of a channel captain, seem more necessary than ever to match supply characteristics to those of demand.