The stats of meat consumption's weight on the environment

Note: Most of the data below comes from the excellent February 2008 MO magazine from Belgium, which accounts for a certain Benelux focus. I don't claim authorship, (I only translated from Dutch and reorganised some of the information), but I thought the data was astonishing and convincing enough to try to give it some extra reading)

• meat consumption is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the transportation sector, i.e., its time for a new diet: - less meat is not only good for our health, its good for the planet’s health!

• one steak generates as much CO2 equivalent emissions as 70 km in an average car

• before it gets on the plate it used up 5000L of water

• An average american eats 120Kg of meat per year. Belgians consume 102Kg, which compares to 1919 when they ate 30kg per year only (and survived fine!). The top5 meat per capita consumers: US, Spain, Denmark, France, Belgium

• Particularly worrying in this respect is that countries where meat consumption was not a great part of gastronomical traditions, are switching to western types of diet. Brazilians, Argentinians and Chileans may be consuming more meat as they grow richer, but they always did have a ‘meat tradition’. India’s increased consumption, on the other hand, has not only to do with increased wealth but also with changing dietary patterns (which, ironically are actually less healthy, since we all know that obesity, high cholesterol, diabetes, heart problems, and other health problems are linked, at least in part, to excessive consumption of meat)

• The explosive growth in production has required industrial animal farming, which put enormous strain in the environment. The FAO’s Livestock’s Long Shadow. Environmental Issues and Options (2006) points to greenhouse gases, water scarcity, landgrabs, and loss of biodiversity as effects directly linked to the current intensity and setup of meat production.

• The same report indicates that meat production is responsible for approximately 20% of greenhouse gas emissions, in CO2 equivalent. The main culprit is Methane, which is released in great quantities during digestion, especially by bovines, and Nitrous Oxide, which is released from manure. A few things must be stressed here:

  • Methane warms faster than CO2 – although its warming potential is 23 times that of CO2 if averaged over 100 years, it rises to 72 times, when averaged over 20 years, i.e, while averaged over 100 years, current meat production is responsible for 20% of global warming, in the short term the weight of methane, and therefore of meat production in global warming is still much higher. (If anyone can get precise numbers for this, feel free to send them through so I can post them)

  • Nitrous Oxide is even more powerful, at 296 the global warming capacity of CO2, and amounts to 2200 million tons CO2-equivalent.

  • To this we have to add the extra CO2 emitted from deforestation, energy usage in agriculture (warming of greenhouses, energy usage by machinery and transportation of feeds, animals and meat, etc etc).

• Furthermore the Belgian Onderzoeks- en Informatiecentrum van de Verbruikersorganisaties (www.oivo.be – Consumer Organisations’ Research and information Centre) has recently published a report (Stijgende vleesconsumptie: het milieu betaalt de prijs) highlighting that meat consumption is actually a enormously inefficient and round-a-bout way of obtaining sustenance. Obviously, meat and dairy products are important sources of protein, but when it comes to calories they are extremely wasteful:

  • On average, including all energy used along the process of production, it costs the input of 33 calories to produce 1 calorie of meat. How would you like to put your money into an investment that gave you this return of 3 euro per 100 (-97%) invested?

  • This compares to 0,46 calories to obtain 1 calorie of potatoes (+217%).

  • For growing poultry, the most efficient of meats, you need 3 kilos of feed for every 1 kilo of meat. For pork, 5,1 Kgs for each kilo of meat. For beef, it gets even worse.

• Meat production is also a gigantic water user. 1 Kg of pork requires 9700 Litres of water. Beef requires three times as much. This compares again to 150 Litres for potatoes and 106 for wheat. On average, 1 Kg meat requires 100 times more water than 1Kg fruit or vegetables.

• Since conditions for feed and cattle production are best where there is space, water, and heat, much of this production has been competing with rainforests, sensitive areas in terms of biodiversity, and small farmers supplying local markets in the developing countries who get kicked out to make way for huge expanses of agribusiness monoculture.

• In all of this bleak picture, the only solace for meat eaters is that there are ways of eating meat but be less damaging. Organic farming turns out to emit 40% less greenhouse gases (from different production methods but also because animals fed naturally produce less methane during the digestion process) and uses as much as 85% less energy. One should also think that non-industrial meat production, even when not fully organic, besides being more environmental promotes the animals’ well-being which not only is ethically sounder, but also improves quality and safety of meat.