I'll start off by using R.J. Hammond's article "British Food Supplies, 1914-1939" from 1946, since it names some good concise numbers that allow for good context to be established. Another good book on the subject is "Austerity Britain, 1945-1951" by Kynaston (2007), from which I also borrow conclusions on the subject.

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Between 1871 and 1911 the population grew from 31 million to 45 million. This is an increase of about 45% in population. Meanwhile, local agricultural production had actually decreased calorie-wise. Some of these foods could be imported, but certain types of meat, vegetables and dairy products were, and still are not as viable for long-distance travel. Even in our modern world of proper Air Cargo transport, meat transport is very rarely a possibility. As a result, British Agriculture made a switch in focus to livestock. During WW1, there were efforts to increase domestic food production, but the effects were minimal. The supply of food in 1918 was only 42% domestic, rather than 35% pre-war. In the interwar years British crop industry only further declined to levels below the pre-WW1 figures, while livestock numbers remained stationary. Do also keep in mind that Livestock needs food too, usually oats. The less oats Britain produced, the higher the share of oats that went to feeding livestock, and the more they had to import to support human food demands. So there is one problem already: Britain's food supply was increasingly dependent on grain imports not only to feed their people, but also to feed their livestock and keep up meat production. Given that Europe, Britain's largest source of grains, was about to absolutely blow itself to hell and back, this production obviously couldn't keep up, and would take time to restore.

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Now, as you mentioned, Europe was absolutely devastated by the war. This did indeed worsen the problem, especially considering how, due to the rising cold war, the previously viable farmlands in Eastern Europe would now be cut off from the rest of the world, even if they were to recover from the absolute destruction caused by the fighting on the Eastern Front. However, other factors were at play, and in this case, it is important to consider that the end of the war didn't just mean that everybody went home. A lot of British forces were stationed across the world, especially in occupation zones, and were in some cases still actively fighting. For example, because the Netherlands couldn't yet put forces on Indonesia to counter their independence movement, the British under Mountbatten were the initial allied armed response. These soldiers obviously had to be fed, and at this point in history, living off of the land in a destroyed foreign area you are occupying isn't exactly the best PR one could want. So these soldiers relied fully on their own countries providing them with rations. Additionally, the British were responsible for the people in the areas they occupied, which means feeding them as well, as their domestic production just wasn't ready yet to take that burden back for itself.

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War Austerity is also a political state of mind. We live in a time where a pandemic is going around rapidly infecting people, and as of right now the end is in sight, but not yet here. So far, every time the situation looked better, most countries didn't just drop all measures in a single day, and this will also be true when we eventually do reach the final stage of the pandemic. There will be a transfer period before we can fully go back to pre-covid life (if at all), because we don't want to and can't afford to undermine ourselves by rushing things and taking risks. Now imagine this feeling, applied to a centrally led economy after 6 years of the worst fighting the world has ever seen, with, in Britain's case, countless bombing raids, protracted fights across the world, and an almost total collapse of the international trade economy. Britain couldn't simply drop all the measures it had taken and revert back to business as usual. This took a long time, and rightfully so. The resources simply weren't there yet, and rushing things would do way more harm than good.

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To quickly summarize: Britain's domestic food production was mostly centred around livestock, which required oats, which were mostly imported from areas that would be inaccessible due to wartime German Occupation, post-war East-West tensions, and simply their outright destruction by the fighting. Additionally, British resources were still needed to feed occupied areas, while the war-time austerity measures couldn't simply be done away with.

P1 I answered a similar question a few years ago although primarily about rationing in general rather than just meat. Its not as strong as i would like, but i have reposted below...

The reasons: The control of Imports, Exports, Credit, Inflation as well as dealing with a worldwide food shortage.

Start by briefly considering the British economic position at the end of the war. The war was expensive, government debt was high. Domestic debt was high but could be dealt with safely, foreign debt was even more crucial. Britain had ran significant trade imbalances from countries within and without the Sterling areas since the very late 30s during the rapid increase in rearmament after the Munich crisis. Trade imbalances within the Sterling area (Dominions and India for example) were basically held as promissory debt and there was a lot of it. This debt meant that these countries had already paid for British exports that had not yet been delivered. Imbalances outside the Sterling area needed to be settled through the transfer of foreign currency or gold. Simply Britain had ridden up a lot of debt, sold their assets and securities, run down their foreign currency (especially dollar!) and used most of their gold.

Enter Lend Lease…Lend lease had enabled Britain to do several things. A) ignore the pressing demands to export to balance imports, b) To commit a far greater proportion of its industries to produce war material. and to specialise and rationalise its imports and productions. C) Temporarily ignore dollars and their lack of them. Basically as the US were in the short term “giving” Britain materials it made sense for Britain to slowly stop buying and selling things from other countries. Some historians such as RAC Parker, Corelli Barnett and George Peden view US policy through Cash&Carry to Lend Lease as a systematic attempt to strip Britain of its economic strength and to peacefully replace it as the sole economic superpower.

Regardless of US malicious intent or otherwise, the war ends and Lend lease stops abruptly and other governments would like their debts settled (or at least negotiated and accounted for). Britain’s economy had been mostly geared towards the production of war materials using “free” US raw materials. It had limited remaining cash, gold or credit. There was a sudden cashflow crisis and the new British government had to seek an enormous US government-government loan in order to secure the dollars to start importing the products it had just had frozen via Lend Lease. At a similar period the British also sought to minimise and renegotiate their debts with India and other Dominions. The whole period is described by some as a “Dollar Crisis”.

So while not in anyway Bankrupt, the British government had a huge short term problem that might spiral out of control. Short term it needed Dollars, credit and debt restructuring. Medium term it needed to promote exports in order to start clearing trade imbalances and allow the imports they needed and to try and “win” back markets entirely lost to the US. The other side of this coin is it needed to control the extent of already massive imports. In the longterm it needed to slowly reconfigure its economy back to something more suitable for peacetime, while undertaking significant domestic reforms of social spending. Doing all of this in a way that did not knock something out of alignment and cause further problems. They needed to do it in a way that retained confidence in the Pound and for credit.

Now lets think briefly of rationing. In general I think people get the wrong end of the stick when considering British wartime rationing. In part I suspect this comes via the general cultural led approach to remembering rationing. Its all “thrift” and “dig for victory”. That is not to downplay its importance to peoples lives or the way it is analysed in history, but It does tend to distort its image and purpose. I think the dwelling on food as the commodity rationed doesn’t help either. When people tend to think of rationing, I think they think of allocating (rationing) the supply of scarce things, like shortages after a natural disaster in order to be fair. But that doesnt quite apply to the situation Britain was in. Shipping blockages aside, anything could be supplied if it was wanted enough. What British rationing was intended to do was rationing the demand and to get away with the smallest amount possible to free up money and carrying capacity for war material. Britain could have had more food. Much much more. But it was restricted to allow greater amount of money, shipping, labour etc being used for war.

This sounds like a small difference but its massive. Rationing is a really powerful way for a government to control the economy in a way they would not normally be able to get away with. In wartime, by controlling demand of just, for example, one commodity a government can help to moderate prices and wages, nudge labour use, nudge allocation of transport and power use, reduce imports, reduce the outflow of cash or accumulation of foreign debt, and promote savings and therefore availability of domestic credit. Theoretically, if done thoroughly and correctly, rationing of consumer demand might do enough to control imports, shipping, currency and labour that controls of those things might not be needed. Britain did both, it controlled shipping' labour and credit control as well as controlling demand.

In wartime those nudges and controls were aimed at maximising war effort and smoothing any problems those decisions made in terms of fair distribution and public satisfaction. In the financially chaotic first years of peace, they were aimed at controlling imports and maximising exports as well as controlling any scary changes in prices and wages. Britain felt it needed to closely manage its economy to not only clear its debts and balance tight finances, but possibly to emerge as a new powerful exporter back to broken Europe