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Despite western trends it seems that global meat consumption is on the rise.
Living in London as I do you might get the impression that every man and his dog is a trying to cut down on meat. Londoners are very used to being slapped in the face by ‘Veganuary’ after Christmas each year – a public movement that tries to encourage people to adopt a plant-based diet for one month. Veganuary had a record year in 2019, with 400,000 global participants.
Our office’s fridge is always stocked full of oat milk, and we often head to one of the local vegan eateries for lunch, of which there are several. I’ve personally been trying to live a vegan lifestyle for a while now and am seeing more and more people joining me in the quest to resist cheese.
That’s why I was so surprised to read this recent article in The Economist, which told me that global meat consumption has actually been on the rise for the past few years.
I’m not gonna lie to you guys, my initial reaction was anger (are you kidding me? I’ve been sacrificing ham and cheese toasties and Sunday roasts for nothing!). Despite the irrationality of this response (veganism is clearly my choice) I was relieved to read that the stats aren’t quite as bad as they seem.
The year of the pig
The centre of this trend, which has seen global meat consumption rise by an average of 1.9% a year and fresh dairy consumption by 2.1% a year – as of a 2017 census – is predominantly in China. Over the years no animal’s presence on menus has bulked up faster than the Chinese pig.
Annual pork production in that country has grown more than 30-fold since the 1960’s, to 55 million tons a year. It’s predominantly to feed these porkys that China now imports 100 million tons of soybeans each year – two thirds of all trade in that crop.
It’s likely that meat consumption has risen such in China due to citizens becoming wealthier – the Chinese economy is stronger than ever before, and as such their diets have come to resemble western ones. Between 1961 and 2013 the average Chinese person went from eating 4kg of meat a year to 62kg. ‘Unlike decades ago, there are no longer large chunks of the population out there that are not yet eating meat,’ says Joel Haggard of the US Meat Export Federation.
Impact of the west
Despite this, China still hasn’t beat the west when it comes to overall agricultural damage to the environment. The main environmental issue meat production poses to the world is the feeding and farming of livestock, necessitating huge amounts of grain production and many acres of land. However, this impact is about half as much for pigs as it is for cows, traditionally the west’s preferred meat.
Pigs require no pasture (though this brings up ethical issues) and are efficient at converting feed into flesh. On the other hand, cows are ruminants, meaning they belch methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. A study of American farm data in 2016 estimated that, calorie for calorie, beef production requires three times as much animal feed as pork production and produces almost five times the amount of greenhouse gases. Other estimates suggest that it uses two times as much water to both produce feed and nourish the livestock. Dire.
So, it’s a good thing that the main culprit for this higher meat consumption is pork not beef. However, in other good news, it seems that although the west’s meat consumption has remained stagnant for the past five years, the growth is focused predominantly in chicken and white meats. Beef consumption is falling, in the US and Australia particularly. Academics at Kansas State University have, interestingly, linked this trend to the increase in female employment rate. It’s likely that working women (who’re still the ones often at the stove, booo) find beef more trouble to cook than chicken. Hey, we’re not complaining, chicken is dope (as far as I remember).
Shifts like that are probably the most that can be expected in rich countries over the next few years. Despite eager predictions of a ‘second nutrition transition’ to diets lower in meat and higher in grains and vegetables, Western diets are so far changing only in the details. Beef is a little less popular in some countries, but chicken is more so; people are drinking less milk but eating more cheese.
The EU expects only a tiny decline in meat-consumption, from 69.3kg per person to 68.7kg between 2018 and 2030. Collectively, Europeans and Americans seem to desire neither more animal proteins nor fewer.
