This paper aims to identify and describe the determinants of consumer attitudes towards artisanal cheeses within the speciality cheese market and the reasons behind the growing interest in this premium value sector as evinced by two surveys of specialist food retailers and artisanal cheese consumers. The survey results obtained are presented in the context of a changing consumption culture and the concept of an emerging “postmodern” consumerism. Artisanal cheese consumers focus on the unique characteristics of the products and their distinctive character in relation to mass produced industrial cheeses. Price and functional properties of artisanal cheeses are less important in the consumer purchase decision. Artisanal cheese consumers are characterised by “variety seeking” behaviour. This is stimulated by the broad range of available flavours, tastes and cheese types and suggests a low degree of brand or even cheese‐type loyalty among such consumers. The “plural” nature of the “speciality” cheese market accommodates well the highly individual and fragmented requirements of consumers of artisanal cheeses.

Many on-farm-processed products frequently command a premium price, characterised as they are by unique sensory properties and image. Examines the nature of consumer judgements about product quality for farmhouse Cheddar cheeses based on utilities derived from the product attributes, and the trade-off against price. Determines key Cheddar cheese attributes through in-depth interviews with specialist cheese consumers and employs conjoint analysis to estimate the utilities associated with these attributes based on a wider choiceexperiment survey of farmhouse Cheddar consumers. A``price sensitivity meter'' technique was used to establish acceptable price ranges as perceived by the latter group. Results from market simulations suggest that the consumer price sensitivity for farmhouse cheese is likely to be low. The analysis also revealed that those attributes associated with the traditional characteristics of farmhouse Cheddar have the highest utilities and that any characteristics similar to industrial Cheddar were largely unattractive to the consumers of farmhouse cheese.

This Address considers a range of issues relating to the contribution of meat consumption and livestock production to global warming, given the need highlighted by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) to reduce global GHG emissions by over 50% by 2050. The IPCC Climate Change 2014 report recognised that demand oriented measures may also contribute to GHG mitigation. The paper reviews a number of studies which examine demand-led mitigation potentials, and concludes that such estimates ignore the market effects of changes in meat consumption habits or demand oriented policies. A simple partial equilibrium model of beef, poultry, pig and ovine meats is developed for the major regions of the world to explore the impact of a range of scenarios which might reduce meat consumption and GHG emissions. These include emissions taxation, long-term trends in reduction of red meat consumption in developed economy regions, and supply side improvements in livestock emissions intensities. The paper discusses problems associated with many published demand elasticities suitable for incorporation into a market model, problems of selection from widely varying published estimates and their appropriateness for longer-run projections. The dearth of published supply elasticity estimates is also highlighted. The modelling concludes that economic and population growth to 2050 without any mitigation measures will lead to a 21% increase in per capita meat consumption and a 63% increase in total consumption and GHG emissions by 2050. However, the mitigation projections from the scenarios explored only generate a 14% reduction in cumulative emissions from the baseline 2050 projections, insufficient to meet the CCC target. for correspondence. Thanks to Jonathan Brooks and Graham Pilgrim of OECD for the provision of information regarding global supply response equations in the FAO-OECD AGLINK-COSIMO model; to John Saunders of Lincoln University, New Zealand, for details of supply elasticities in the LTEM model; to He Yaqin, visiting scholar at Harper Adams University, for much of the initial data processing and organisational support; and finally to the Editor for some insightful comments on this final version.

A differential approach is employed to analyze demand for meat in the United Kingdom during 1989-99. Differential demand systems with fixed price effects (Rotterdam and CBS) better explain consumers' retail purchase allocation decisions for beef, lamb, pork, bacon and poultry compared with models containing variable price effects (NBR and differential AIDS). The real expenditure and the Hicksian demand elasticities are generally found to be quite different from earlier studies using AIDS models. A quality change index of meat consumption is constructed from the estimated CBS model estimation results and decomposed into real expenditure, substitution, trend, seasonal and residual effects.

La consommation de viande et de produits laitiers en 2050 : le potentiel d'approches axées sur la demande pour réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre Fleisch-und Milchverbrauch 2050: Das Potenzial nachfrageseitiger Lösungen zur Senkung der Treibhausgasemissionen Further Reading J J