Outlining the current prospects for the worldwide meat industry prior to the World Meat Congress in Cape Town South Africa, Mr Brown said that while rising prices might hit consumption in some countries overall the outlook for the industry is good.

China, the USA and EU lead the way with half the total meat consumption in the world.

And Mr Brown said consumption is going to grow strongly with China seeing 30 million tonnes of consumption growth in the next decade.

With pig meat leading the way as the most popular meat, urbanisation and economic growth in developing countries are going to be the main drivers for the meat industry in coming years.

Consumption growth is also going to be seen in Russia, but China will lead the way in both growth in consumption and production of pig meat.

He said that the problems that China had seen last year with the disruption to the industry through an outbreak of PRRS had seen pig meat prices double and these had become more attractive to the Chinese producer, forcing domestic production up.

Mr Brown added that the forecast will also see a further competitive advantage for the South American players in the market, particularly Brazil.

He said that Brazil will be able to provide lower feed grain prices because it has the capacity for arable expansion and it has no problem with manure disposal - a problem that has hindered the growth of the European industry because of environmental concerns.

Brazil, he added also has the ability to site farms and meat plants near to the feed production areas.

Worldwide, the difficulties to achieve sufficient profit against rising production costs have seen a structural change to the industry, and have been a catalyst for concentration of the industry and integration.

However, he said that the industry can expect an increase in exports from Brazil and also see Russia tighten its borders to imports as it attempts to build its own domestic supply.

Mr Brown said he expects to see a similar scenario to the one that has occurred over US poultry exports to Russia, where the authorities have stemmed the growth of imports and then put political pressure on to reduce them.