Livestock products hold a special place due to their role in providing protein and adding value to the agricultural sector. Given the significant share of red meat in household food expenses, examining the factors influencing its price changes can help improve decision-making in the supply chain of this product.

Therefore, this study investigates the factors influencing fluctuations in red meat prices in Iran over the period 2017–2024, using monthly data and applying a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) framework. According to recent research, this study used the red meat price as the dependent variable, while factors such as barley prices, red meat supply, imported meat, urban and rural household income, chicken meat prices (as a substitute), and the exchange rate were included as independent variables. The results of the instantaneous response functions show that the price of red meat is positively related to expected price shocks and the price of barley. Also, increasing imports in the short run reduces the price of red meat, but the effect of this policy is “reversed” in the long run. The variance decomposition results indicate that price expectations, the exchange rate, and imported meat account for 87.33%, 6.95%, and 2.02% of the forecast error variance of red meat prices, respectively. Since the domestic price of this product is affected by expected prices and input prices, planning to control these two variables will have a greater impact than a red meat import policy. Therefore, it is suggested that, to increase the public's access to red meat, policies should focus on increasing domestic production, and its financing should be carried out through saving foreign exchange resources from imports.