The survey, conducted in June on a sample of 400 people aged 15 and over, shows that as many as 98.2% of Croatian consumers eat meat, but most of them cannot afford their favourite kind of meat.
A third of the respondents (33.6%) said they eat meat every day and a further 57.2% eat it several times a week, which means that more than 90% of them are major meat consumers. On the other hand, 4.1% said they eat meat several times a month, 3.3% do so rarely and only 1.8% said they do not eat meat at all.
Most of those polled (62.9%) mostly eat chicken, 18.9% mostly eat pork, 14.4% veal, 3.4% turkey, 0.2% lamb and 0.1% goat kid meat. When asked what kind of meat they liked the most, 39.4% said it was chicken, 24.1% cited veal, 14.9% lamb and pork and 6.4% turkey, while 0.3% singled out venison and 0.1% rabbit meat.
The discrepancy between the number of people who most often eat chicken (62.9%) and those who actually like it (39.4%) is due to the fact the chicken is widely available at affordable prices, the pollsters said.
As for smoked and cured meats, respondents said they mostly eat sausages (26.8%), bacon (19.9%), ham (17.3%), prosciutto (5.8%) and kulen (spicy sausage) (4.4%). However, they said their favourite processed meats are prosciutto (24%), sausages (20.4%), bacon and ham (both 16.4%), and kulen (15.4%).