Summary: Beliefs, social rules, and food taboos influence the emotions we feel about food, determining our attitudes and consumption behaviors. The more a product represents values considered important to individuals, the greater the chance of being chosen for consumption. This article aimed to investigate levels of zoophagy and sarcophagy to propose an index to understand consumers' attitudes towards beef. Three hundred and eighty-five people answered a structured questionnaire that allowed them to assess personality traits and attitudes that can explain beef consumption, as well as its rejection. Factor analysis was the analytical model chosen to construct the attitude determination index. For the construction of the General Degradation Index (GDI), an attitude determination index associated with the degree of zoophagy was built first. The results indicate that extroversion, individualism, festivity, and immediacy were the traits that best characterized positive attitudes towards beef. On the other hand, negative attitudes of introspection, reflection, emotional character, and concern for the future marked the responses of those who answered.

The national animal protein sector in the last decades comes presented constants growth taxes, in production terms, export and consumption. Brazil has a potential domestic market for food consumption, mainly for meat, eggs, milk and fish. Its demand is connected to several factors, as prices, quality, nutritional aspects, preferences, taste and, mainly, the budget restriction, that is, the income. On the side of the external market, the country possesses release market buyer, but in some markets it ends face problems of commercial restrictions, added to the problems as the exchange rate, which impact in some cases in problems as supply excess. Observing the taxes of growth of the animal protein production in Brazil, it is noticed that the production grows to a larger tax than the domestic consumption. Therefore, this work analyzes a serious problem that it will be able to in the future to reach the Brazilian sector, that it is the excess of the product in the domestic market in the next years. In this context, scenarios were created with different taxes of growth of the income per head and of the production, with the objective of esteeming the production, consumption and possible surplus that it can happen at the domestic market in agreement with each presented scenario. This analysis can contribute to a series of impacts in the productive chain, including for public policy for the sector of meat , eggs, milk and fish .