Fast Facts About Meat Consumption
November 24, 2010 – 10:18 pm by MarinaHanes
In order to mass produce meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner, an extraordinary amount of livestock has to be raised, fed, watered and slaughtered. Throughout this process, a cycle of waste and contamination occurs, which is why reducing the amount of meat you consume every day can help the environment and keep money in your wallet.
Producing meat is a wasteful process all the way around. These simple yet shocking statistics below help put the bigger picture into perspective.
Fast Facts about Meat
- 66% of grain harvested in the United States is fed to animals raised for slaughter, but this grain could be used to feed humans.
- Large amounts of water are wasted to clean and hydrate livestock.
- Manure from livestock results in nitrate polluted runoff.
- 40% of the world’s agricultural lands are seriously degraded.
- Meat eaters take in 14 times more water and use 20 times more energy since that water and energy went into producing the meat for human consumption.
- 86% of food poisoning outbreaks originate from animal food sources.
In our culture today, meat is a staple for people’s meals, but in the past, it was saved for holidays or special occasions. Fortunately, meat isn’t the only source of protein. You can consume enough protein from a variety of beans, nuts and whole grains. These alternative sources are lower in fat and cholesterol and they can keep our world a cleaner place. Reducing your meat consumption is a healthy move and going one step further to eliminate it from your diet can reduce this wasteful cycle.
One Response to “Fast Facts About Meat Consumption”
I think it’s important to point out that this stuff applies to industrially-produced meat.
It is very possible to raise meat sustainably (e.g. Joel Salatin’s methods). Animals can be raised on land not suitable for growing other food (e.g. arid saltbush plains, hilly/rocky land, etc), and can be fed with the byproducts of other pursuits (e.g. oilseed pressings, prunings, grass clippings, garden waste, vegetable scraps, fish guts, etc).
Adding animals into a vegetable garden or small farm properly will actually increase the total amount of food that can be produced, not only through direct yields (eggs, meat, milk, etc), but also through faster nutrient cycling (food-to-manure is a faster process than composting) and reduced workload (e.g. using pigs to plow an area before planting, ducks for pest control, chickens to control weeds and remove seeds from mulch and compost, etc).
All that said, this is not the way we generally produce meat. It’s true most people eat too much of it, and the type of meat they’re eating is produced at a significant environmental cost.
I guess I just take issue with blanket statements like “producing meat is a wasteful process all the way around”, “meat eaters take in 14 times more water and use 20 times more energy” and “throughout this [meat production] process, a cycle of waste and contamination occurs”. Those things are only true if meat is raised in the wrong way to begin with.
By Darren (Green Change) on Dec 15, 2010