American Meat: An Economic, Political, and Social Perspective
Meat consumption has become a pillar of American culture. A Thanksgiving table isn’t complete without a giant turkey centerpiece, Christmas is celebrated with a large juicy ham, and most other occasions — or typical family dinners — include meat. Unfortunately, the currently astronomical rates of meat consumption are unsustainable; the factory farming industry makes a resoundingly negative impact on clean water, uses the majority of farmland, creates significant contributions to carbon emissions and the depleting ozone, and produces a slew of other environmentally degrading effects. How did meat become such a staple in the American lifestyle?
Robert M. Chiles and Amy J. Fitzgerald explore this issue in their article, “Why is meat so important in Western history and culture? A genealogical critique of biophysical and political-economic explanations.”[1] During the colonization of America, clearing space to raise livestock was considered a form of civilizing the land. In England, the homeland of many early American settlers, only half the population could afford meat. With increased accessibility to land in the colonies, meat became much more available — its plenitude was a sign of prosperity and the betterment of life away from England. After the American Revolution, more urbanized development began, and with it came more infrastructure, like roads. A rift emerged between meat production and its consumers as farming was taken further from city dwellers and delivered by way of these new roads. This separation would continue later on as refrigeration and other preservation techniques were developed, further reducing the importance of purchasing meat directly from farmers as it could now be more readily stored and transported.
Following a cholera outbreak in early 1830’s, medical establishments discouraged the consumption of fruits and vegetables, and instead promoted meat. This further elevated meat’s status in society — it was thought that civilized people eat meat, while dirty, contaminated people eat fruits and vegetables. Meat became a symbol of American nationalism and pride. When industrialization hit, the meat industry underwent drastic changes, including significant reductions in the amount of space per animal, changes in the animals’ feed, and the development of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO) around the country. Horizontal and vertical integration occurred with the goal of creating the largest output at the lowest cost. The U.S. government’s push for economic growth during this time meant that reliable, affordable food needed to be available to feed America’s growing working class. Factory farming satisfied these needs.
The Department of Agriculture, as well as many new agricultural departments at universities arose to develop new farming technologies. These technologies made growing crops for the livestock more efficient. Smaller farms that used more traditional farming methods required more time and labor for smaller outputs, and thus started to be easily out-competed by factory farms. As American production continued to increase, meat started to be sold as patties, nuggets, and other easy-to-make forms that saved people preparation time while still satisfying their needs. After World War II, the economy boomed, and meat became even more affordable, with more than two thirds of American households being able to afford steak. Meat was a symbol of American prosperity and family values.
In 2016, 317 million metric tons of meat were produced in the U.S. The controversy regarding poor treatment of livestock aside, the meat production process has serious environmental impacts. Firstly, 80 percent of agricultural land is used for pasture or growing crops to feed livestock rather than humans. The total land area used for pastures is equal to 26 percent of ice-free land on earth, according to Bryan Walsh of TIME[2]. This means that massive amounts of deforestation have occurred — and continue to occur — to accommodate livestock, which contributes to biodiversity loss, diminution of animal habitats, soil erosion, flooding, disruption of earth’s water cycle, and decreases in the amount of vegetation available to absorb carbon. This is especially important because on average, 100 kilograms of carbon are emitted per every 1 kilogram of meat protein produced, and methane emissions from manure are also dangerously high.
Furthermore, the high levels of meat consumption in America mandate extensive and constant large-scale transportation, further contributing to carbon emissions. According to Bibi van der Zee of The Guardian[3], estimates of the proportion of greenhouse gas emissions caused by the meat industry range between 18 and 51 percent. The hormones fed to livestock, which become deposited in their feces, as well as the fertilizers used for growing livestock feed, pollute clean water. Feces and leftover crop residue end up in fresh water sources leading to algal blooms, thereby depleting aquatic life of oxygen. On top of that, one third of the world’s clean water is used directly in the meat production industry.
Looking at this phenomenon of exorbitant meat production and consumption through the lens of Jevons Paradox illuminates why meat has grown to such a large scale. The Jevons Paradox, developed in 1865, describes how developments in technology resulting in more efficient production processes decreases the cost of products, thereby causing the demand to increase[4]. Producers must continuously increase production in order to increase efficiency, while competing with others who are also becoming more efficient. Therefore, the amount of resources used will increase as a result of the increased market demand, and the environmental damages resulting from the production process will largely increase as well. As meat became more prevalent in American diets and population sizes increased, livestock farming became industrialized in order to meet rising demands. Small farmers were gradually replaced by large corporate farms that were able to save on space, time, and money by severely limiting the space their animals lived on and feeding them grain instead of allowing them to graze naturally. As reported by Ethics Insiders on Medium[5], the average time between a chicken’s birth and its entrance into the market in 1925 was 112 days, and it weighed around 2.5 pounds. By 2018, the days had shortened to 48 while the weight more than doubled to 6.2 pounds. Although one animal could now produce a larger quantity of meat, the demand for meat continuously increased the quantities of animals living on each “farm.”
This phenomenon illustrates the Jevons Paradox, as this increase in efficiency led to increases in the environmental harms associated with the meat production process. Before industrialized farming, much less farmland was used to feed livestock and more of it was allocated to producing food crops for humans. Crops supporting livestock result in a portion of “wasted” food, as food crop that could be used for human consumption is instead used to maintain the livestock. Less livestock piled onto small plots of land means less deforestation, and it also means less methane produced from very high levels of manure production. These polluting factors, while damaging and degrading, are the path to profit for industrialized farms. The few small traditional farmers who still raise livestock have a very small market — people who are willing to pay higher prices for organically and ethically produced meats. Consequently, these farmers are often completely pushed out by large meat corporations.
The Jevons Paradox, while useful for explaining many aspects of meat consumption in the United States, has some limitations. Although there are no vegan statistics from that time, being that the term “vegan” was only coined in 1994[6], the high cultural value of meat was not questioned the way it is today with the rise of the veganism movement. Currently, different factors are taken into consideration regarding what consumers want. During the initial industrialization of meat production, people relied upon cheap meat always available on grocery store shelves. While this is still a factor, people today are also more mindful of the health implications of meat, the treatment of the livestock, and the environmental impacts of production.
In “Impacts of Animal Well-Being and Welfare Media on Meat Demand,” Glynn T. Tonsor and Nicole J. Olynk discuss the increase in lobbying and petitioning for more humane treatment of livestock. They also examine the banning of pesticide and hormone use over the past decade, as well as the increased media coverage of these issues[7]. While their effects upon decreasing meat consumption have been relatively small, they are significant and show that people’s concerns about meat are real. With increasing media coverage and public attention, alternatives to meat are becoming much more prevalent at very comparable prices.
Treadmill of production theory can be seen almost as an extension of Jevons Paradox in the context of the American meat production and consumption industry. Treadmill of production theory is based on the idea that capitalist economies are dependent on constant growth. Nathan Palmer explains in Sociology in Focus, “capitalism cannot sustain itself unless the market of goods and services is continuously expanding.”[8] Companies need to continuously increase their growth and their efficiency. A nation’s economic wellbeing is calculated by its ability to grow profits. The “treadmill” is a constant run that companies and laborers must stay on, with resources, effort, and time as the inputs, and massive amounts of waste as outputs. Increasing their efficiency leaves companies needing to produce more to pay for their investments in efficiency, creating a vicious cycle. In Palmer’s words, “companies and their workers are running as fast as they can to generate profits. The faster you run this quarter… the faster you will have to run next quarter to squeeze even more profit out of the system.”
Populations grew during the industrialization period, and companies hired more and more workers to work longer hours to keep their metaphorical treadmills functioning, populations grew, and meat went into higher demand to feed those workers. More laborers were then needed to work in the growing meat processing plants, and the cycle continued.
There are several key factors that contribute to this American meat story. First and foremost, a very strong relationship exists between large American meat companies and the federal government. The government provides huge subsidies to the meat farming sector — according to the North American Meat Institute, the government spends approximately $38 billion on subsidies for the meat and dairy industries, compared to a meager $17 million spent on fruit and vegetable subsidies. In return, meat companies support political campaigns and lobbying efforts. In 2018, companies like Tyson and Smithfield Foods spent upward of a million dollars individually in just lobbying funds[9]. Furthermore, meat organizations such as the American Meat Institute, the National Meat Association, and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association donate large sums to specific politicians to encourage them to keep meat regulation down.
For example, Steve Johnson of PBS reported that an E. coli outbreak in 1995 warranted a new bill about intensified meat testing, but Republican James Walsh, a New York member of the House of Representatives, delayed hearings for two years, thus, making the bill fall to the bottom of stacks of bureaucratic paperwork — never to come to fruition. In the 1996 election cycle, Walsh received upward of $65,000 from the agricultural industry. In 2014, the meat industry contributed $1.7 million to federal candidates, 83 percent of which went to Republicans. Overall, 79 percent of the $16.6 million that the meat industry has donated since the 1990 election cycle has gone to the GOP[10].
Here, we see a contemporary version of the Jevons Paradox — receiving subsidies from the government makes it more feasible for meat farms to exist and function, but instead of this allowing them to slow down, it creates incentive for them to make even more profit because the prices of meat are lowered, and the market demand is high. The “resource” that provides a more efficient process in this case is the money given by the government.
The treadmill of production idea plays a role here as well. This codependent relationship incentivizes meat companies to grow and maintain their relationship with the government; if they fail to monetarily contribute to political campaigns, regulations could increase, thereby limiting industry profits. Politicians often rely on the capitalist leaders of meat companies to provide essential support. Each year, factory farms want to increase the amount of meat they can produce while decreasing the time and energy it takes. They use fertilizers to grow more grain on the same amount of land in order to make each animal fatter to get more poundage from it. These farms feed the animals more hormones and antibiotics to make life in CAFOs realistic, and conduct a slew of other environmentally degrading practices, all while creating more waste, harmful emissions, and polluted runoff.
Small farmers are another group directly impacted by the growth of factory farming. As mentioned previously, small scale farming allows animals to graze naturally, and it doesn’t use fertilizers or hormones. This makes the farming much more labor intensive and requires more knowledge than running a CAFO. Furthermore, because the animals aren’t artificially fattened with grain and corn, the time it takes to produce a certain amount of meat is much longer, and thus outputs are lower. More land must be used for a smaller number of animals as well. Additionally, the butchering process in factory farms is far more efficient — not to mention, unbelievably inhumane — meaning that there is yet additional time for a small farm’s meat production process. Consequently, industrialized farming easily pushes small farms out of the market. Meat produced via industrialized farming is far cheaper and more abundant.
Aside from market perspectives, CAFOs have environmentally devastating effects upon farmer’s lives. CAFOs are usually set up in rural areas, due to the need for vast amounts of land, which is more protested in more populated areas. These facilities pollute land and water for miles around them, which affects the resale values of surrounding properties, which often belong to smaller scale farmers. Industrialized farming practices can also taint fresh water supplies used by their farms as well as others. They create loud noise from machinery and strong smells from overloading the land with livestock, disturbing life in the surrounding area. However, farmers of smaller scale operations rarely get a say in the fate of these large corporations due to their limited economic standing and lack of political influence.
Despite the negative implications perpetuated by industrialized farming operations, there are many actors who stand to benefit from the growth of factory farms, such as fertilizer companies. More farms mean more animals, which need more food, requiring grain to be grown more quickly. In an article in the Guardian, Kate Brown explores the story of the Koch Foundation. Founded by the two Koch brothers who made their billion-dollar fortune in fertilizer manufacturing, this foundation donated $1.7 million to Iowa State University in 2017. Iowa State is deeply involved with agricultural and meat farming research, with Iowa ranking as one of the US’s largest farming states. The Koch Foundation financially supports several right-wing politicians and is heavily pro free market. They have a vested interest in the meat industry because their fertilizer is highly purchased, which is a direct consequence of the kind of research conducted and produced regarding meat farming, hence their lofty support of Iowa State[11].
American consumers, another group of significant actors, want to know they will always have affordable, accessible meat available to them at their local grocery store. However, shifts in the past decade have made consumers more conscious of what is in their food, how it’s processed, who is involved with its production, and its health implications. As a result, veganism has increased in popularity in recent years, and many meat-free products have become readily available. It’s not clear whether this trend will continue and to what extent it will affect the meat industry. In their 2013 paper on sustainability and meat consumption, Hans Dagevos and Kantine Voordouw discussed consumers’ awareness and sympathy toward the environmental impacts of the meat industry and the lack of politicians’ attention towards addressing it. This demonstrates that, despite greater consumer demand for more regulated meat production, politicians have too much to lose from disrupting the meat industry to make any restrictive policy changes[12]. The snowball effects explained by the Jevons Paradox and the treadmill of production theory have created a situation in which the stakes are too high for any immediate action.
The authors also discuss the growing value of environmental issues and the ethical concerns that people around the world share, specifically related to meat. There is data showing an increasing amount of people, specifically in Europe, who are considered “meat-reducers” — they have not yet fully cut out meat, but they avoid eating it on certain days of the week. The continuity of this trend, specifically in the United States, is not yet known, but these growing values indicate that change may be near.
Bibliography
[1] Chiles, Robert M., and Amy J. Fitzgerald. “Why Is Meat so Important in Western History and Culture? A Genealogical Critique of Biophysical and Political-Economic Explanations.” Agriculture and Human Values; Dordrecht 35, no. 1 (March 2018): 1–17. http://dx.doi.org.proxy.library.cornell.edu/10.1007/s10460-017-9787-7.
[2] Walsh, Bryan. “New Study Shows the Major Environmental Impact of Meat Production | TIME.Com.” TIME, December 16, 2013. http://science.time.com/2013/12/16/the-triple-whopper-environmental-impact-of-global-meat-production/.
[3] Zee, Bibi van der. “What Is the True Cost of Eating Meat? | News | The Guardian.” The Guardian, May 7, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/07/true-cost-of-eating-meat-environment-health-animal-welfare.
[4] Bauer, Diana, Kathryn Papp, John Polimeni, Kozo Mayumi, Mario Giampietro, and Blake Alcott. “The Jevons Paradox and the Myth of Resource Efficiency Improvements.” Sustainability : Science, Practice, & Policy; Bethesda 5, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2009). http://search.proquest.com/sociologicalabstracts/docview/1432160587/citation/B2C37AE4EEAF42CBPQ/1.
[5] Insiders, Ethics. “Should Governments Subsidise the Meat and Dairy Industries ?” Medium (blog), December 19, 2016. https://medium.com/@laletur/should-governments-subsidy-the-meat-and-dairy-industries-6ce59e68d26.
[6] Hancox, Dan. “The Unstoppable Rise of Veganism: How a Fringe Movement Went Mainstream.” The Guardian, April 1, 2018, sec. Life and style. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/apr/01/vegans-are-coming-millennials-health-climate-change-animal-welfare.
[7] Tonsor, Glynn T., and Nicole J. Olynk. “Impacts of Animal Well-Being and Welfare Media on Meat Demand.” Journal of Agricultural Economics 62, no. 1 (2011): 59–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-9552.2010.00266.x.
[8] Palmer, Nathan. “Why I’m Okay with Being Eaten by a Bear.” Sociology In Focus. Accessed April 7, 2019. http://sociologyinfocus.com/2013/12/why-im-okay-with-being-eaten-by-a-bear/.
[9] “Meat Processing & Products: Lobbying, 2018 | OpenSecrets.” Accessed April 7, 2019. https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/lobbying.php?cycle=2018&ind=G2300.
[10] Johnson, Steve. “The Politics Of Meat | Modern Meat | FRONTLINE | PBS.” Accessed April 7, 2019. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/politics/.
[11] Brown, Kate Cox and Claire. “US Academics Feel the Invisible Hand of Politicians and Big Agriculture.” The Guardian, January 31, 2019, sec. Environment. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/31/us-academics-feel-the-invisible-hand-of-politicians-and-big-agriculture.
[12] Dagevos, Hans, and Jantine Voordouw. “Sustainability and Meat Consumption: Is Reduction Realistic?” Sustainability : Science, Practice, & Policy; Bethesda 9, no. 2 (Summer 2013). http://dx.doi.org.proxy.library.cornell.edu/10.1080/15487733.2013.11908115.
