Koreans, the ‘Chicken Nation’, consume 26 chickens per person per year

While Samgyetang is considered a representative summer health food for Koreans, it was revealed that each person consumed about 26 chickens in Korea last year. Domestic chicken consumption has doubled in 20 years.

According to the agricultural outlook statistics of the Korea Rural Economic Institute on the 21st, the number of chickens slaughtered in Korea last year exceeded 1 billion, reaching 1,011,370,000. If we simply divide this by the population (approximately 50 million), it means that each person ate 20 chickens.

However, the import volume of chicken is much larger than the export volume. Considering that the domestic consumption last year was 789,000 tons (tons), which was 30% higher than the production (607,000 tons), if we combine the domestically slaughtered chicken and the imported chicken, it can be seen that each person ate 26 chickens.

Last year's per capita chicken consumption by weight was 15.7 kg based on meat (meat excluding bones).

(syncopation)

According to the OECD's data on per capita consumption of poultry, centered on chicken, Korea's estimated consumption this year is 17.6 kg, which is higher than the world average (14.6 kg), but far below the top-ranking United States (49.3 kg) and the European Union (EU) (23.1 kg). The country that consumes the most chicken in Asia is Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country, with per capita poultry consumption reaching 47.4 kg. Japan and China's per capita poultry consumption is 13.4 kg and 14.1 kg, respectively, which is lower than Korea's. India's consumption is only 2.2 kg.

Last year, the per capita consumption of the three major types of meat in Korea was 60.6 kg, which was higher than the consumption of rice (56.4 kg). Pork (30.1 kg) was the most, followed by chicken (15.7 kg) and beef (14.8 kg).

“Koreans’ meat consumption is increasing, but it is lower than in Western countries,” said Song Woo-jin, a researcher at the Korea Rural Economic Institute. “Meat consumption, including chicken, will continue to increase in the future.”

Meanwhile, the time when chicken is consumed the most in Korea is definitely summer. Last year, the number of chickens slaughtered in July was slightly over 100 million. Compared to February, when the number of chickens slaughtered was the lowest, this is 30 million more.

In Korea, one out of six chickens slaughtered a year is a small samgyetang (chicken for samgyetang). The percentage of samgyetang is particularly high in July, when people eat a lot of samgyetang around the first and second hottest days of summer. Last July, out of the 100 million chickens slaughtered, about 30 million were samgyetang.

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