Mark Bittman regularly writes about food for The New York Times, and his January 27 article focuses on the cheap and abundant availability of meat in the American diet, comparing it to a similar addiction for oil. Both meat and oil are subsidized commodities, he notes, and its wide availability is having some unfortunate effects.
He cites these statistics: "Americans eat about ... eight ounces [of meat] a day, roughly twice the global average. At about 5 percent of the world’s population, we “process” (that is, grow and kill) nearly 10 billion animals a year, more than 15 percent of the world’s total. Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s icefree land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation."
Horrifyingly, with all the hunger in the world, he says, "the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens." Deforestation, pollution, climate change, health problems for both people and the animals themselves ... all are factors that cry out for a change in how harmful our food system has become.
He concludes: "Perhaps the best hope for change lies in consumers’ becoming aware of the true costs of industrial meat production."
Read the complete article here.
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