Should We Eat Meat? summary

Have you ever noticed how prevalent meat eating is throughout history? It’s not a coincidence. In fact, meat served a crucial role in human evolution.

For instance, while historical meat consumption has fluctuated, purely vegetarian societies are few and far between. That’s because most cultures saw meat as an indicator of privilege and social status – a reasonable association, given that meat played an important function in the evolution of the human species, and especially our brains. All that protein and iron helped us grow bigger and better grey matter.

OK, so all this evolution happened millennia ago, but there has been a more recent evolution, and it all began in the nineteenth century.

Why?

For thousands of years domesticated meat production was done by either a farmer making use of grasslands in the country or by practitioners of mixed farming who integrated animal husbandry and crop production seamlessly into one another. But these methods are mostly a thing of the past.

Today, we have a systematic chain of meat production from breeding to raising to slaughtering to processing to distribution.

Does the acronym CAFO ring any bells? It stands for Confined Animal Feeding Operations – the kind of production plants that churn out all that cheap meat to meet demand.

Factory-style farms in affluent countries began producing chickens raised on standardized feed after World War Two. Then the method was used to farm pigs, and spread from wealthy countries to Asia and Latin America. Today this method of animal production dominates everywhere but Africa. CAFOs even play a role in cattle raising, but almost exclusively in the United States and Canada.

It’s simple enough to see that more animals mean more feed. But did you know that fodder is the main reason that meat is so environmentally costly?

That’s because modern meat production in CAFOs and feedlots depends on a steady and cheap supply of compound feed, a standardized composition of carbohydrates enriched with proteins, the most common of which is corn, with protein being primarily supplied by oilseeds – soy in particular.

Consider the fact that a pig will eat about 300 kilograms of feed before it’s slaughtered. That means as much as 500 square meters is needed to grow the crops necessary to raise one pig! On top of that you need tons of nitrogen to fertilize the crops, and lots of energy to produce that nitrogen in turn.

As a result, large-scale meat production has dramatically reshaped land use. For instance, most people are unaware of the extent to which domesticated animals dominate the zoomass, the mass of all terrestrial vertebrates other than humans. Even in huge, heavily populated countries like the United States, animals raised for meat weigh as much as the human population of the entire nation! About a quarter of the ice-free continental surface of the Earth is used for livestock grazing, and one third of all arable land produces feed crops for them.

So, you’ve seen how meat production plays a role in global warming and deforestation. But what’s the alternative? Is not eating meat the only option? Maybe not.

If the number of vegetarians increased, that would help, but given the centrality of meat to our diet this wouldn’t be a wise move. For instance, a vegetarian diet can be as nutritious as one that includes meat but it requires more effort. That’s because vegetarians are hard pressed to ensure their diets include enough metals. Since one kilogram of vegetables isn’t nutritionally comparable to one kilogram of meat, it’s much easier to achieve a balanced diet by eating meat, especially for a young child.

The truth is, current levels of meat production and consumption are not fixed. Although eating huge quantities of meat has become a mass phenomenon, it doesn’t have to remain one. We don’t even need to sacrifice our vital protein intake to do this.

That’s because there are other fantastic sources of protein beyond meat, like dairy products and eggs. While these can’t replace meat entirely, they can certainly put a dent in our consumption.