Who needs to stop eating meat?
By Dylan Banks and Maya Kokerov
Whilst vegetarian diets are becoming more popular with trends such as veganuary on the rise, the global demand for meat production (and crops for animal feed) continues to increase. What is driving this growth and why is the issue of changing animal based protein so complex when examined at a global level?
The increased demand for meat and crop production
Researchers at the University of Oxford found that cutting meat and dairy products from an individual’s diet could reduce their carbon footprint from food by up to 73%. As the most significant study of its kind (at the point of publication in 2019), this study revealed the colossal imprint of livestock, providing just 18% of calories and 37% of protein while taking up 83% of farmland. The report suggested that avoiding meat and dairy is generally the “single biggest way” to reduce your environmental impact on the planet and that even the very lowest impact meat and dairy products still cause much more harm than the least sustainable vegetable and cereal growing.
Eating beef and lamb produces 14.1 C02e/kcal; chicken, fish and pork 3.8; and vegetables 2.8. Thus, red meat is the most carbon intensive way to get food energy.
“An Average American’s diet has a foodprint of around 2.5 t CO2e per person each year. For a Meat Lover this rises to 3.3 t CO2e, for the No Beef diet it is 1.9 t t CO2e, for the Vegetarian it’s 1.7 t CO2e and for the Vegan it is 1.5 t CO2e. Each of these estimates includes emissions from food that is eaten, wasted by consumers and lost in the supply chain.”
Sources: ERS/USDA, various LCA and EIO-LCA data
One study found that “land requirements decreased steadily as the proportion of food derived from animals declined, with the three vegetarian diets [i.e. Vegetarian, omnivore and vegan] requiring 0.13 to 0.14 hectares (0.32 to 0.35 acres) per person per year.”
Vegetarianism is perhaps driving some increase in the need for crop production as there are some plant based foods (which omnivorous diets also include) that come with a heavy carbon footprint, such as soy. There is a potential red herring in the line that vegetarianism is causing increasing demand for soy as 80% of soy production globally is used for animal feed.
Nevertheless, over the last 50 years the demand for meat has more than tripled, with the world producing 340 million tonnes each year. This demand continues to grow along with the population growth, and the industrial and economic development of Low Income Countries (LICs), Newly Industrialised Countries (NICs) and Newly Emerging Economies (NEEs).
An uneven growth in population is causing problems in food supply but it is not drastically increasing the demand for meat. For example, Africa’s population is increasing by 2.51 per cent per year and there are also differences between the countries within it. There is a clear positive correlation between areas with a large risk of famine, hunger, undernourishment and food security with population growth.
But it is not population growth which is causing such a huge global demand for meat. Meat consumption in Africa is much lower despite the growth, with some countries such as Mozambique consuming only 10 kg per person per annum. Rather, as countries become more economically developed, their population’s diet changes and their meat consumption increases. Grains they may have previously consumed as a majority of their diet are instead fed to animals to produce meat for humans. Ultimately, this aggregates food disparities as these typically more affordable grains which could be consumed by lower income individuals, are being fed to livestock which are in turn consumed by individuals with a higher disposable income, leading to an increased demand for overall food resources. As GDP increases, so does meat consumption on a per capita basis. Meat production has increased in Asia 15-fold since 1961 while North American production has increased 2.5 fold and European production has doubled.
Growth in per capita meat consumption has been largest in countries who have undergone a strong economic transition, such as China and Brazil. India has been a major exception to this pattern due to dominant lactovegetarian preferences in the population (consumption in 2013 was almost the same as 1961).
Although the changes in meat consumption have been the least drastic in the West, this is because it was already the highest there. It remains drastically highest in Western areas like Australia (116 kilograms per person per annum), Europe and North America (average consumption of nearly 80 kilograms and more than 110 kilograms, respectively). The relationship between per capita meat supply and the average GDP per capita shows a strong positive relationship between the richness of a country and their meat intake.
Meat consumption in the West remains highest globally, therefore, contributes to its significant proportion of environmental impact comparatively. Although the production may not be increasing as much as in developing nations, the consumption still remains so high because a large amount of meat is imported from other countries.
As disposable incomes increase around the world, and diets higher in meat are more accessible, the global drive for meat is increasing. However, the meat consumption in developing countries is still miniscule in comparison to the level of Western meat consumption in terms of per capita per person.
Food fairness: Our ‘right’ to meat?’
Ultimately, society needs to be planning or working towards reducing the amount of meat we produce and consume as a protein source. This is especially true for meat and animal products produced by monogastric animals such as cows which produce up to 200kg of methane per year.
However, the way in which this problem is addressed and balanced is a fundamental challenge because it would require global cultural shifts. The East and Global South are where the majority of farming and deforestation for meat takes place, largely in order to meet the meat demand of Western world. The West has historically used the resources and land of indigenous populations to produce meat for themselves and, now that the same people who’ve had their resources taken away are increasing their own meat consumption, are we in the West, in a position to dictate the way those resources are now used?
Are Western countries in a position to demand a decrease in animal protein production only after their exploitation of foreign resources has caused climate change. Arguably, it is unfair to now deny those populations the right to eat as much meat as we have and continue to consume.
Nutritional need and food fairness
A common misconception in the climate movement is that, as incomes rise above the poverty level and start to include more animal products in their diet, these dietary changes must be monitored by “active policy involvement” and restrictions. Some argue that the demand for animal protein should be prohibited from rising in developing areas because agricultural demand increases as there are more meat eaters in the world.
As the main consumers of meat, is it unreasonable to ask countries such as Brazil to stop deforestation for soy production to farm animals? Is even the notion that we should be leading by example culturally insensitive and inappropriate? Perhaps, our starting point in the West must be self-examination and taking responsibility for the damage caused as the largest consumers of meat.
The system fundamentally needs changing. There simply isn’t enough animal protein for everyone to continue consuming it at such unsustainable levels. It should also not remain the case that lower income groups are more likely to have nutritionally poorer, lower protein and more imbalanced diets than higher income groups with rich, high protein diets (which also carry different health risks). Restricting the protein consumption of developing countries on the basis that the planet is dying holds the underlying assumption that the West has a right to meat that other people don’t. The solution cannot be simply imposing restrictions on meat intake or production for certain people or countries.
