After years of steady decline, new figures show that bacon is coming back as a popular and versatile red meat.
Over 40,000 tonnes of bacon were sold by British retailers in the 12 weeks ending 1 January 2017, up by around 6% on the same period in the previous year, according to Kantar Worldpanel data.
AHDB Pork says sales were helped by falling prices, which restricted the growth of the category in value terms to 0.6% in the same period. This represents a recovery for bacon from the early part of the year, when the category was falling in both value and volume terms. This meant that over the year as a whole (52 weeks), bacon volumes were up 0.5%.
Data published by Kantar Worldpanel, suggests the bacon volume recovery was helped by falling prices, which restricted the growth of the category in value terms to 0.6 per cent.
Bacon has had bad publicity in recent years.
The publication of a World Health Organisation report suggested an increased relative risk of colon cancer due to high levels of red and processed meat consumption. This may have contributed to a worsening consumer perception of bacon.
AHDB Pork's proposal to spend an extra £1m on promoting British pork under a new three-year strategy for the sector was launched in December.
