Assessment of Meat Consumption Pattern in Mirab Abaya Woreda, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

<span style=font-size:11.0pt;font-family: times= new= roman,serif;color:windowtext=>1. Abstract <span style=font-size:11.0pt;font-family: times= new= roman,serif;color:windowtext=> A cross sectional study was conducted on 100 representative people, selected using random sampling technique, in Mirab Abaya Woreda, Southern Ethiopia from December 2017 to June 2017 to investigate the major meat sources, consumption pattern/frequency, importance and challenges of meat consumption in the study area. A semi structured questionnaire survey method was applied to achieves these objectives. The study was showed that all the respondents, 100%, were consumed meat. Among the meat consumed, beef was the most popular one and consumed about 65 % and this followed by chevon and mutton, 18% and 17% respectively. The majority of the respondents’ frequency of meat consumption was once per a month, 72% and few of them consume meat one per a week, 19% and only during the holiday time, 9%. Out of the total respondents, most of the respondents, 86%, replied that their consumption meat purchased from hotel, restaurant, butchery and abattoir whereas some of the respondents were obtained meat for consumption direct from market purchased and fattened in individual house animals slaughtered, 10% and 4% respectively. The respondents were had awareness for the meat importance; most of them they replied that meat could use for disease prevention (46%) and body building (19%) whereas some of them thought for give strength (13%), as source of energy (11%) and protein (9%) and because of its part of holiday (2%). Both the raw and cooked meat eating habit was the dominant (75%) and followed by cooked (21%) and raw (4%) meat eating habit in the study area. But, the challenges of meat availability for consumption were low income capacity (52%), less meat quality (14%) and Cost/high price (13%), health problem due to increase body fat (10%), fasting (7%) and supply shortage (4%). All the respondents were preserved the consume meat to prevent the meat spoilage through different methods, but the principal preservation method was dry salt preservation, 65%. In conclusion, this study identified that the low frequency of meat consumption, the presence of raw meat consumption, better understanding of meat importance and low income of the respondents was considered as the principal challenge of meat availability for consumption. Based on this conclusion, this study recommended that the meat consumption pattern or frequency and awareness raise on zoonotic disease transmission via raw or undercooked meat should be improved in the studied area. 2. Keywords: Beef; Chevon; Consumption Pattern; Mirab Abaya; Mutton; Preference