Poultry overtakes beef on Swiss plates

The average Swiss ate more than one kilogram of meat a week last year. Pork remained the most popular sort, but poultry overtook beef for the first time.

Average per capita meat consumption was 53.74kg, an increase of 0.2 per cent, the sector’s umbrella group Proviande said on Friday.

Eighty per cent of meat consumed came from within Switzerland, little change on 2010.

All types of meat apart from pork, game and rabbit showed an increase in per capita consumption.

Despite a 1.7 per cent decrease, pork remained the most eaten meat (25kg per capita), ahead of poultry (11.4kg) and beef (11.29kg).

Poultry was more popular in French-speaking Switzerland than in the German-speaking part of the country and in cities than in rural areas.

The Swiss Vegetarian Association told swissinfo.ch there weren’t exact figures for the number of vegetarians in Switzerland, but looking at other countries it reckoned five per cent of Switzerland’s 7.8 million inhabitants didn’t eat meat and 0.5 per cent were vegan.