Facts about beef in Australia

There’s a lot of beef (no pun intended) about Australian beef at the moment. It’s the nation’s favourite red meat and is also the third most consumed meat in Australia, after chicken and pork. The Australian red meat market is huge — it was worth $3 billion in 2015-16. And with good reason: It’s premium quality and has a unique flavour profile.

In fact, Australian beef stands out as being one of the best in the world when it comes to flavour, texture, marbling and fat cover — that means an even thickness of fat throughout the steak instead of large pockets so common with grain-fed beef from other countries.

• Australians eat an average 33kg of beef and veal per person- per year. This has remained relatively constant for the last 15 years.
• Over the last recorded 12 months Australians spent $6.7 billion on beef. In terms of volume beef is the second most popular fresh meat consumed through the food service industry (after chicken).
• In total Australian beef cattle farmers produce 2.1 million tons of beef and veal each year.
• The consumption of beef accounts for 24.7 percent of world meat consumption.
• Australia is a small producer of beef but is the second largest beef exporter (behind Brazil).