Georgia’s meat producers, importers, retail chains and slaughterhouses signed onto a single trade association on July 10, wagering that a fragmented industry can act with one voice. The Georgian Meat Producers’ Association (GMPA) grew out of a livestock tracking project run by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, and its first job is closing a self-sufficiency gap that regional rivals closed years ago.
Half the meat on Georgian plates already comes from abroad. The households who still raise most of the rest have little formal say in how a national association gets run.
Producers, Importers and Slaughterhouses Get a Shared Table
The founding meeting brought together meat producers, importers, retail chain representatives, slaughterhouses and public and private stakeholders under one structure for the first time, according to Georgia Today, the English-language outlet that first reported the founding. Participants spent the session comparing organizational and membership models before settling on a structure meant to guide the sector’s development over the long run.
The sector is quite fragmented, which is why our objective is to consolidate stakeholders around their shared interests.
FAO project manager Mikheil Sokhadze said that in explaining why the association exists at all. He added that the group would help develop joint action plans, address existing challenges and assist the government in identifying and responding to issues within the meat sector.
The charter lays out four jobs for the new group:
- Cooperation – link producers, consumers, government agencies and international partners around shared interests
- Traceability – promote food safety, product traceability and compliance with international standards
- Policy – work with state and international organizations on meat sector legislation
- Financing – help members access financing, investment projects and support programs
Sokhadze said the structure borrowed directly from European practice. “In establishing this Association, we drew upon leading European Union practices, which we believe will significantly support the organization’s future operations and development,” he said. The group sits on top of NAITS, an electronic platform that records the full lifecycle of every tagged animal, from birth through to the slaughterhouse.
Georgia Still Buys Half Its Meat from Somewhere Else
The numbers behind Sokhadze’s complaint are stark. Tbilisi investment bank Galt & Taggart found that overall meat self-sufficiency reached just 50% in 2022, edging up from 48% in 2017. Poultry, the country’s biggest meat category by volume, sat at only 34%.
Meat and meat product imports hit $187.2 million in 2022, up 35% year over year, with more than a third coming from Brazil in the form of frozen poultry and pork. Exports totaled $48.4 million, up 57.9%, though most of that was re-exports rather than Georgian-grown product.
| Category | Self-Sufficiency Rate | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Georgia, poultry | 34% | Lowest of the three major meat categories |
| Georgia, pork | 48% | Second-largest import volume by value |
| Georgia, overall meat | 50% | Up from 48% in 2017 |
| Armenia, overall meat | 71% | Regional comparison |
| Azerbaijan, overall meat | 88% | Highest self-sufficiency in the South Caucasus |
Georgian statistics compiled by Galt & Taggart show self-sufficiency climbing from 48% to 50% between 2017 and 2022, a slow gain against faster-moving neighbors. A 2025 U.S. Department of Agriculture program notice put poultry import reliance at 72%, with American suppliers alone accounting for $12.6 million of that trade in 2024, competing against Brazil, China and Ukraine. It is a pattern that echoes flat herb output even as export earnings climbed elsewhere in Georgian agriculture: production lags while trade volumes move fast in both directions.
Who Raises Georgia’s Meat?
Mostly, it is not commercial operators. Households accounted for 40% of Georgia’s meat production in 2022, a structure that keeps costs low but profitability well below European peers, per Galt & Taggart. Poultry remains the sector’s most developed and most profitable segment.
Total revenue across Georgian meat producers reached roughly GEL 1.5 billion in 2022 (about $555 million). Processed meat manufacturers contributed GEL 531 million of that, while primary meat production, the raising and slaughtering side, accounted for GEL 930 million.
That household-heavy structure has run into friction with formal standards before. When Georgia tightened food-safety rules under its EU trade deal, a Kakheti sheep farmer and meat producer told the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in 2019 that the changes could push small operators out entirely.
“If farmers are not able to satisfy production standards they will be unable to sell their goods in markets,” Beka Gonashvili said at the time, adding that larger buyers would simply stop purchasing from producers who could not keep up.
The scale of today’s household-heavy system shows up in the newest production data. Slaughterhouses processed 113,900 head of livestock in the first quarter of 2026, 64% of them pigs and just under 30% cattle, alongside 2.33 million birds, according to Geostat, Georgia’s national statistics office. That output came from 111 active slaughterhouses concentrated in Kakheti, Imereti, Shida Kartli and Kvemo Kartli, producing 13,500 tons of meat for the quarter, building on a pattern already visible in last year’s slaughterhouse production figures.
NAITS Went from Pilot Project to Regional Export
The association did not appear out of nowhere. It sits at the end of a decade-long build-out of Georgia’s livestock tracking system.
- 2012: Georgia’s National Food Agency begins building a unified animal identification and registration system.
- 2016: FAO and Georgia’s Ministry of Agriculture launch a four-year, $5 million tracking project financed by Switzerland and Austria.
- 2017: FAO’s technical assistance project formally establishes NAITS, replacing paper forms with an electronic database.
- 2021: NAITS is handed over to the Georgian government after its first phase wraps up.
- 2022: NAITS II launches, extending the system to commercial operators and consumers.
- July 10, 2026: The Georgian Meat Producers’ Association is founded under the same project.
By 2020, the system had logged 5.4 million large ruminants identified since 2012, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health’s European regional office. Georgia was the first country in the region to run a system like it, and neighbors noticed. North Macedonia, Albania, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Mauritius have all expressed interest in adopting it.
The Financing Test Ahead
The GMPA says it will now chase two things most of its members have historically lacked: predictable financing and a seat in policy conversations. FAO’s involvement in Georgia’s countryside goes beyond livestock tracking. The agency has also run a rural youth skills program aimed at slowing emigration, a sign of how central the countryside has become to its Georgia portfolio.
The market the new group is organizing around is not shrinking. Georgia’s meat market generated $668.1 million in revenue in 2024 and is projected to grow at a 7.78% annual rate through 2029, reaching $971.9 million by 2029, according to Statista’s market outlook.
Georgia’s producers now have a shared table, a charter and a mandate. Closing a self-sufficiency gap that Armenia and Azerbaijan closed years ago is still an unfinished account.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is Georgia’s National Animal Identification and Traceability System?
NAITS is the electronic platform the National Food Agency uses to record and track livestock across Georgia, built with FAO’s help. It now holds information on more than 2 million bovines, sheep and other domestic animals across more than 25 system modules.
Who Pays for the Georgian Meat Producers’ Association?
The NAITS project behind the association is implemented by FAO in cooperation with Georgia’s National Food Agency, with financing from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Austrian Development Agency under a program called International Partnerships Austria.
How Self-Sufficient Is Georgia in Meat Production?
Overall self-sufficiency stood at 50% in 2022. Consumption still runs ahead of the global average at 38 kilos per person a year, though that trails Europe’s 63 kilos and North America’s 99 kilos per capita.
Which Countries Have Copied Georgia’s Livestock Tracking System?
North Macedonia, Albania, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Mauritius have all expressed interest in adopting Georgia’s model, and FAO has already piloted customized versions of the system in five Caribbean countries.
