Meat Atlas: How over-consumption and intensive meat production wreck the planet

The first international Meat Atlas in English language, published today by Friends of the Earth Europe and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Green Political Foundation based in Germany, offers new insights into the big business of the global meat trade and its environmental and social impact.

The way we produce and consume meat and dairy needs a radical rethink, says the report, which offers alternatives to today’s intensive farming methods, heavily dependent on scarce land and water resources.

Barbara Unmüßig, President Heinrich Böll Foundation: "Intensive meat production isn’t just torture for animals. It destroys the environment, and devours great chunks of our raw materials which we import from the global South as animal feed. After China, Europe is the biggest importer of soya. Argentina and Brazil are dramatically increasing their soya cultivation, and it’s being fed almost exclusively to the animals we slaughter. Rising meat consumption is forcing up land prices. This has devastating consequences: Nearly a third of the world’s land is being used to grow animal feed. Meanwhile, small farmers are losing their land and their livelihoods. That schnitzel on our plates jeopardises the food security of many people in the global South."

How much does a butter chicken really cost? The report reveals the hidden costs paid by the taxpayer and the environment. In Europe alone, there’s an estimated 320 billion Euros of damage to the environment due to intensive farming.

Stanka Becheva, agriculture campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe said: “Diet is no longer a private matter. Every time we eat, we are making a political choice, and we are impacting upon the lives of people around the world, on the environment, biodiversity and the climate. Huge amounts of resources go into the food on our plates. Sustainable alternatives exist to the dominant destructive, corporate-controlled and intensive global system for producing meat.”

The report outlines the impact of intensive meat and dairy production on freshwater usage and land. Worldwide agriculture consumes 70% of available freshwater, one third of which goes towards raising livestock. The increasingly intensive livestock sector is also one of largest consumers of land and edible crops, with more than 40% of the annual output of wheat, rye, oats and maize used for animal feed, and with one third of the world’s 14 billion hectares of cultivated land used to grow it.

To produce a kilo of beef, you need 15,500 litres of water – the same amount required to produce 12 kilos of wheat or 118 kilos of carrots. To make a hamburger, you need more than 3.5 square metres of land.

The report warns that the trade talks between the EU and the US risk pushing food and farming standards down on both sides of the Atlantic. Big food and biotech companies want to lift EU restrictions on genetically modified (GM) foods and animal feeds, and are challenging consumer labelling laws. They also want to undermine the EU’s ‘precautionary principle’ which sets food safety standards, and aim to further globalise and industrialise the meat industry.

For more information and hard copies of the report please contact:

Heinrich Böll Foundation, India Office
Tel.: 011 2685 4405 or 011 2651 6695
Gitanjali More: gitanjali.more@in.boell.org
Caroline Bertram: caroline.bertram@in.boell.org

All graphs are published under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-SA 3.0). The correct reference is "CC-BY-SA Heinrich Boell Foundation, Friends of the Earth Europe".