Demand for meat products in Malaysia

One distinct change in Malaysians’ food consumption behavior has been the preference towards meat products. The entire agri-food industry is impacted by changes in food consumption behaviors. This study attempts to provide a better understanding of meat consumption behaviors, by estimating income and price elasticities in Malaysia. Expenditure and price elasticities are estimated by Linear Approximate Almost Ideal Demand System (LA/AIDS) model in the first stage, followed by estimation of Engel function in the second stage in order to obtain the estimates of income elasticities for the meat products using Household Expenditure Survey 2004/05 data. The estimated positive and inelastic income elasticities indicate that all meat products are normal and necessity goods, except other meats. The estimates of the own-price elasticities of demand for all the meat products are greater than unity. This study shows that there would be increasing demand for major meat products among Malaysians in the future.