Per capita meat consumption in Ethiopia has declined from 20 kg/capita/year in 1961 to 8 kg/person/year in 2004. FAO has been the prime source of Ethiopian livestock data though it has been acquiring the information through estimation of related resources. Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia (CSA) started undertaking nationwide household surveys in 1996 and its result on livestock consumption data differed from FAO. In this paper, patterns of meat consumption in urban/rural Ethiopia between 1996 and 2004 were analyzed using cohort specific model by categorizing households according to level of income. Feasible general least square (FGLS) estimation technique was conducted to identify the key determinants affecting meat consumption in Ethiopia. Comparison of meat consumption by FAO and CSA was also done.

The result showed that the response of meat consumption to income was higher in urban than in rural areas. Rural meat consumption made significant improvement between 1996 and 2000 but lost the momentum between 2000 and 2004. In urban areas, on the contrary, there was continual improvement throughout this period. The result of economic analysis revealed that urbanization and income have been found to be positively and significantly influencing meat consumption in Ethiopia at 1% and 5 % significance level respectively. On the other hand, level of cereal production and price of meat did not significantly affect per capita meat consumption. The comparison between FAO and CSA data showed that the former overestimated the per capita meat in Ethiopia by more than 100% compared to the CSA household survey result. The disparity arose from overestimation of rate of livestock utilization than number of livestock. Therefore, the level of consumption in Ethiopia must have been lower than commonly reported by FAO.