meat 2019__

(Unsplash, 2019)

This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the Globe Economic Forum.

Author: Alex Thornton, Senior Writer , Determinative Content

Meat can exist a touchy subject. Strict vegans and unrepentant carnivores rarely find any common footing. But whatever your view on the ethics of eating meat, there are some hard facts that should inform whatsoever debate.

Billions of animals are slaughtered every year

Humans are easily outnumbered by our farm animals. The combined total of chickens (19 billion), cows (1.5 billion), sheep (1 billion) and pigs (1 billion) living at any one fourth dimension is three times higher than the number of people, according to the Economist.

But those figures are dwarfed by the number of animals nosotros eat.

An estimated fifty billion chickens are slaughtered for food every year – a effigy that excludes male person chicks and unproductive hens killed in egg product.

The number of larger livestock, peculiarly pigs, slaughtered is besides growing, as the nautical chart below shows.

Image: Un Food and Agriculture Organisation / Statista

Nearly 1.5 billion pigs are killed to feed the growing appetite for pork, bacon, ham and sausages – a number that has tripled in the final 50 years.

One-half a billion sheep are taken to the abattoir every year. The number of goats slaughtered overtook the number of cows eaten during the 1990s, although the figure for cattle excludes the dairy industry.

When it comes to seafood, the number of individual fish and shellfish is most impossible to calculate. One hundred and fifty million tonnes of seafood were produced for homo consumption in 2016 – nearly half from aquaculture (for example trout or shrimp farms) rather than caught in fisheries.

We eat more meat per person than ever

In the terminal l years the number of people on the planet has doubled. Merely the corporeality of meat nosotros eat has tripled.

Virtually of this growing demand has come from middle income countries, and particularly People's republic of china, which became the world'due south biggest consumer of meat as its economy boomed.

In dissimilarity, the appetite for meat in Europe and North America has stabilized, and even declined.

India, despite rapidly catching up with China in terms of population, still consumes a tiny fraction of the world'due south meat.

Global meat consumption by region

Pork has long been the most pop choice at the dinner table. But poultry has now caught up, and is likely to overtake it. In 1961 just 12% of global meat production came from chicken, duck, goose, turkey and fowl. Now poultry makes up a third of all the meat eaten worldwide.

In dissimilarity, the well-nigh popular red meat, beef, has seen its global share virtually halve in the concluding fifty years, to 22%. Simply it however remains nearly v times more pop than lamb.

Meat production costs the World

The environmental cost of our growing appetite for meat is alarming. Agriculture is responsible for 10-12% of greenhouse gas emissions, with meat, poultry and dairy farming producing nearly iii quarters of that.

Meat farming produces much college emissions per calorie than vegetables. Beef is by far the worst culprit – four times higher than chicken or pork.

Greenhouse gas emissions per calorie

Image: World Economic Forum

But information technology is not but the greenhouse gases produced by livestock that damage the environment. Cattle farming, in particular, requires much more land than other forms of agriculture, which drives deforestation. The largest population of cattle in the globe is in Brazil, where numbers have quadrupled in 50 years, a trend that has led to the destruction of vast areas of the Amazon rainforest.

Much of this land is used to grow crops for animal feed – one third of the globe'due south grain goes towards feeding livestock.

Meat product is also a thirsty concern, at a time when the availability and abundance of fresh water supplies are becoming a major concern.

Epitome: H2o Footprint Network / Statista

Besides much meat is bad for our wellness

For many people, meat is an of import source of protein, vitamins and minerals. But some meats are high in saturated fats that tin raise cholesterol, and eating too much red and processed meat has been linked to bowel cancer. The burgers, steaks and sausages served upwardly in most wealthier countries tend to be a lot bigger than the recommended 70g a twenty-four hours.

It's been estimated that swapping some of the beefiness we eat for beans, peas and mycoprotein (derived from fungi) could reduce bloodshed by v-seven%.

Livestock provide livelihoods

Meat, dairy, fish and eggs provide 40% of poly peptide consumed globally, and in many parts of the world there is not yet a secure alternative.

Information technology'south estimated 1 billion people are involved in the rearing, processing, distribution and sale of livestock, with half of those reliant on livestock for their livelihood. Agronomics as a whole makes upwardly approximately iii% of global GDP, with livestock contributing twoscore% of that. The livestock economy is peculiarly important for poor rural populations in low- and heart-income countries.

The meat substitute market is growing

The search is on for alternatives which satisfy consumers' taste for meat. Some of these involve the cultivation of animal cells in labs – growing real meat in a petri dish rather than using an creature. Another approach is the engineering of institute- or fungi-based meat substitutes, to give them the taste and texture of beef, pork or chicken. And there are attempts to make insects – already eaten in parts of Asia and Africa – a more pop choice on menus worldwide.

For millions of people, eating animals is a style of life – ane of the cultural cornerstones of their domestic and social lives. For others, like Yuval Noah Harari, the mode mod agriculture treats animals is one of the "worst crimes in history".

Whatever your view, as the Earth Economic Forum'due south Meat: The Future series makes clear, as the world'south population heads towards 10 billion, the current trends in meat consumption and production cannot be sustained.