> Correlation is not causation. As a European myself here is another correlation that probably has a lot more to do with the fact that people in Europe are not buying as much high quality food […] After the politicians printed so much money in order to pay for COVID costs, general inflation has accumulated to 18% or so, split in two years of 8-9%.

It's a nice theory and it would be very believable, if the trend to eat less meat would be a recent change. However per capita meat consumption has been dropping in Europe for 15 years straight. The biggest decrease was from 2015-2020 which was a 0% inflation period.