The Effects of Meat Production on the Environment

As of December 2015 the next American election year is quickly approaching as some of the world's greatest leaders, most powerful corporations and noteworthy minds converge within Paris, France. The reason for this gathering is a summit meeting to discuss climate change which is currently one of the world’s most pressing issues. Through scientific research we are increasingly aware of the devastating effects this phenomenon is having on our planet and all of it’s inhabitants. The only thing more startling than the way climate change is ravaging the planet is the human species’ en masse capacity to not only do little to nothing to avert continued disaster but even more so its inability to agree on its existence despite scientific evidence. Much of how this damage is occurring can be traced back to how humans consume. Primarily, we can diagnose the causation of many of the Earth’s environmental ails (climate change and global warming being among them) by looking at the consequences of how we manufacture and purchase our food.

The topic of global warming draws heated opinions from politicians, scientists and civilians alike though some are more educated on the subject than others. Regardless, of your stance it's easy to see that this is an issue of growing relevance and exposure. In a speech given at Georgetown University in 2013 current U.S. President Barack Obama implored political leaders to unite and address the topic of climate change in regards to the effect it was having on our environment. “In my State of the Union address, I urged Congress to come up with a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one that Republican and Democratic senators worked on together a few years ago. And I still want to see that happen. I'm willing to work with anyone to make that happen.” He asked corporations and retailers great and small to take actions toward sustainable practices and to produce their goods and services by using cleaner energy. In 2013 when he gave this speech he unleashed an action plan that would hold companies to task for emitting carbon pollutants into the air.

Attempts like these from our political leaders are a significant step towards progress but there is much more to be done. It’s easy to use imagery like the kind taken from the above referenced speech when conjuring images of air pollution. Tired smoke stacks bellowing black clouds of foul smelling waste into the sky is not hard to picture as though one were in some sort of dystopian nightmare. However, the thought of unwrapping a neatly packaged burger for an affordable price after rolling out of the drive-thru queue probably doesn’t elicit such heinous feelings as old buildings turned brown by their carbon secretions. And why should it? Billions of dollars are spent each year to market the consumption of fast food, steak, chicken and meat of all kinds as an affordable taste experience at fast food joints strategically placed on each block.

Images of meat conjure ideas of appealing low cost meals as just mentioned but they can also summon ideals of swordfish steaks and filet mignon that could be the beginning of elegant nights away from home. Meat has been marketed as more than a food. We’ve begun to associate it with luxury, convenience and status. Purchasing or cooking someone a steak dinner or a boiled lobster is considered an upscale gift. We do not associate that smoke stack or a burning sensation in our lungs or desolate stretches of deserted land with the burger in our hands or the pork belly on the prongs of our forks. This is unfortunate because the reality of meat production and consumption, especially en masse, has effects that are quite dark, effects that many corporations are heavily invested in marginalizing or hiding altogether in order to keep profits climbing upward.

According to a 2013 study published by the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity in 2012 the fast food industry spent over four and a half billion dollars to market their products. More specifically, the study found that marketing was targeted towards children, especially minority children, in order to make sales and instill what would hopefully be a brand loyalty that would be life long. One of the most obvious issues with this is that the corporations did this many times at the expense of the child and (as we will see) the environment. The top five fast food companies marketing in America were McDonald’s, Subway, Taco Bell, Wendy’s and KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken.) (Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity) What do all of these fast food chains have in common? Other than being American household names the companies all offer a meat-centric menu made with low quality ingredients.

As of 2012 Americans consumed 52.2 billion pounds of meat a year. This is five times the amount consumed only a little over one hundred years ago. The US formerly only consumed 9.8 billion pounds of meat in 1909. Despite the fact that the population only increased from around 90.5 million to 312.8 million the consumption of meat has increased exponentially rising with population growth and now surpassing it by over 1.5 percent in modern times. (Barclay) This is despite the fact that due to advances in agriculture there is growing accessibility to a great range of international produce at all seasons of the year that US denizens in 1909 could have only dreamt of. Initially, these numbers might seem promising in regards to the economy. More demand means more profit and production but what is the real cost of meat consumption? Human beings of all nationalities are paying dire consequences for what appear to be cheap meals.

It’s easy to understand why that if we’ve grown up in a culture inundated with the advertisements of these fast food monoliths we no longer question their inherent existence, the quality of their goods, the effects of their production or what consuming them does to our bodies or our world. Yet, when we take a step back from all of that and look at what it takes in order to produce this much meat at such a small cost what we find doesn’t induce hopeful emotions. We aren’t filled with the nostalgia associated with prying open a tiny toy from it’s plastic wrapper, still slick with french fry grease, after fishing it from the crumpled paper bag of a Happy Meal. In 2008, The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that about 20 percent of the world’s grasslands and pastures had been degraded by the overgrazing of livestock. The waste produced be these animals caused an estimated half of the world’s soil erosion and sediment pollution as well as a third of the world’s water pollution.

Livestock not only produces methane gas but it requires energy to keep these animals warm, fed and cared for before they can be slaughtered. This requires a lot of energy which is usually reliant on non-renewable resources like oil and natural gas. Because of this, the FAO estimates that livestock production also generates about twenty percent of the greenhouse gases humans create. This of course, is an enormous contributing factor to global warming and climate change. When looking at statistical evidence the results are quickly and astoundingly clear that our current meat production and consumption is incredibly detrimental to our planet and human beings across the globe. (Myers, Norman, and Spoolman)

One begins to question the logic of taking perfectly good, carefully grown food resources and filtering them through other animals that are mass produced for the sheer purpose of ending up in a Wendy’s hamburger. Fields of soybeans and corn, for instance, food that could be used to treat world hunger and poverty are fed to cows that will ultimately be killed. In the process 37 percent of the world’s synthetic pesticides are used to treat the plants these animals consume. The runoff of these chemicals and the waste of the animals creates vast amounts of air and water pollution that is not easily undone. This in turn contributes to biodiversity loss as it kills off rodents and insects---like bees---that are crucial to pollination which of course is a needed natural service in order for plants to continue to reproduce. (Myers, Norman, and Spoolman)

Livestock are also treated with antibiotics and hormones on a regular basis as a preventative measure and to make them grow unnaturally fast even if they are not sick. This means that when a human consumes the meat they are ingesting antibiotics that they don’t need in addition to consuming the flesh of creatures that were consistently exposed to chemical poisons. In regards to health issues this raises obvious concerns as doctors are becoming more aware that these actions are creating bacteria that’s begun to evolve into more resistant, deadly strains. What this means in regards to human health is that since humans are ingesting secondhand antibiotics regularly through meat and dairy when they don’t need them it will be harder to treat them if they ever contract a bacterial infection. From an environmental standpoint, however, this is concerning due to the energy, chemicals and additional resources it requires in order to produce these antibiotics. (Gallagher)

Accessible, drinkable water is another resource in which the planet is currently in dire need of. With record droughts hitting the State of California in the US or the nation of Syria in West Asia and many people all over the world not having access to clean water it’s important to understand the concept of virtual water. Virtual water is hidden or indirect uses of water. It is a little more difficult to track virtual water because it is water that has often times been consumed (by livestock or humans) or used to produce a different resource like bread or plastics. The World Water Council tells us that nearly 38 percent of the world’s virtual water goes into producing meat while only about 8 percent goes into vegetable production. When you begin to consider that 783 million people in the world do not have access to drinkable water the idea of using this precious resource to sustain cattle and poultry that will ultimately be slaughtered begins to seem a bit backwards at best and despicable at worst. In fact, to produce only a quarter pound of hamburger meat it takes over 52 gallons of water, 6.7 pounds of feed and 74.5 square feet of land for grazing and growing the food needed to sustain the animals. (Barclay) Meanwhile, one in nine human beings on this planet do not have enough food to lead an active healthy lifestyle. This kind of unsustainable behavior results into consequences that far outlive the humans that we neglect. Due to excessive pumping of groundwater or diverting river sources to irrigate the crops needed to feed livestock and produce meat we will continue to deplete water. This will cause an eventual degradation and desertification of land until, not unlike oil, we will need to seek out the resources of other countries to sustain us more so than we already do. (Myers, Norman, and Spoolman)

Acknowledging and addressing the issues of climate change and environmental destruction bear consequences far greater than saving a solitary tree or a handful of emaciated polar bears. The issue is also not as black and white as smoke rising into the sky, or illustrated green sludge dribbling into our rivers. The causation of climate change, global warming and pollution is far more subtle indeed. What’s worrisome is there are many corporations whose survival is tied to the production and selling of meat despite the global consequences. The solution doesn’t have to be as drastic as eliminating meat from our diets entirely but substantial changes to our consumption methods do need to be made.

If meat were truly a luxury item instead of a perceived low-end luxury this would cut down on the production of meat greatly. However, in order for companies to make up for a much lower amount of meat being produced they would have to drastically raise the cost of their products. The fast food high-rollers like McDonald’s can be almost guaranteed to not do this because their entire business model is based around very affordable hamburgers purchased en masse. They, and the rest of the major fast food retailers, would have to entirely restructure their business models with no guarantee that the a public, who they have spent many years marketing too as fast and cheap, would continue to be interested in their product especially at a much higher cost to themselves.

Effectually, the mass production of meat has created a very harmful cycle of damage that these companies hid from the public eye in order to continue to grow their profits. Ultimately, at the financial gains of these companies the health and environment of human beings across the world have suffered and will continue to suffer. Ultimately, sadly, we are exchanging short-term convenience for political power, access to food that is healthy and sustainable and better health conditions for ourselves, our children and our planet. Even without examining the ethical connotations or consequences of meat consumption we can still see that our habits are detrimental to our environment and sustainability as a species.

By consuming from companies that mass produce meat we are contributing to climate change and global warming as well as the pollution, degradation and desertification of land that will hurt America’s ability to sustain itself for generations to come. In an article published by The Guardian, writer Adam Briggs comments thusly, “Ahead of the talks in Paris, both the US and the UK should be sending a strong signal to the rest of the world that diet has a major impact both on our health and on the future of our planet. The US has emphatically failed to embrace this opportunity and there is very little reason to be optimistic about the UK. This is a missed opportunity with implications far beyond politics and economics: the planet is at stake.”

When the red tape strung by profiteers is snipped away the course of action we should be taking as a nation and a global society is clear. We should change our demand for meat products by limiting our meat intake and consuming products that are produced in a way that is not harmful to our environment. If we do not reject the habits of consumerism built around us by marketers and lobbyists with billions to spend and choose to purchase our food consciously and ethically large corporations will continue their habits until demand far outweighs supply. They will continue to destroy the environment with minimal repercussions in order to increase profit shares. Human beings reproduce at an exponential rate and we are destroying our land’s capacity to grow food of any kind largely in part due to the mass production of meat. It will only be when the demand of food far outweighs the supply of it that corporations will begin raising the cost. This has and will put the average consumer under duress.

We can avert this scenario and begin reversing the effects of climate change by changing the demand of products. If we as a society begin to emphasize our interests on meal options that reduce, omit or include only responsibly produced meat items we can alter demand and thusly the need for meat production. When one refuses to consume meat on a regular basis or purchase items that were created and mass-produced at the expense of the environment you are turning the tides. If we expect companies to place importance on the environment then we must first choose ethical consumerism over the convenience of mass meat manufactured en masse.

Resources and Citations:

Berners-Lee, Mike. "Would Eating Less Meat Really Reduce Climate Change?" The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 29 Nov. 2015. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.

Obama, Barack. "Remarks by the President on Climate Change." Remarks by the President on Climate Change. Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. 25 June 2013. Speech.

Walsh, Bryan. "The Triple Whopper Environmental Impact of Global Meat Production | TIME.com." Science Space The Triple Whopper Environmental Impact of Global Meat Production Comments. Time Magazine, 16 Dec. 2013. Web. 1 Dec. 2015.

Myers, Norman, and Spoolman. Environmental Issues and Solutions: A Modular Approach. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 2014. Print.

Ociari, Megan. "Fast Food Companies Still Target Kids with Marketing for Unhealthy Products." Yale News. Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, 4 Nov. 2013. Article.

Barclay, Eliza. "A Nation Of Meat Eaters: See How It All Adds Up." NPR. NPR, 11 Aug. 2014. Web. 01 Dec. 2015.

Briggs, Adam. "Eating Less Meat Isn't Just Good for You, It Could save the Planet." The Guardian. The Guardian, 28 Nov. 2015. Web. 1 Dec. 2015.

Gallagher, James. "Farmers Urged to Cut Antibiotic Use - BBC News." BBC News. BBC News, 8 Dec. 2015. Web. 09 Dec. 2015.