18 billion farm animals die every year because their meat ends up in the trash

We live in a paradoxical world: while nearly three quarters of a billion people worldwide suffer from malnutrition, about a third of the food produced worldwide is wasted or lost. That’s about 1.3 billion tons per year, worth about $940 billion. And a significant portion of this food loss comes from animals; animals that were intended for meat consumption, but whose meat was never eaten.

The figures, which have been calculated for the first time for the entire world by a team of scientists from Leiden University in the Netherlands and published in the journal ‘Sustainable Production and Consumption’, are shocking: in 2019, 77.4 million tons of meat went from the six main types of meat Livestock species used for meat production – cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, turkeys and chickens – are lost in the food supply chain. This equates to approximately 52.4 million tons of edible boneless meat – or about one-sixth of total global meat production.

And this meat loss also includes the lives of an estimated nearly 18 billion animals raised and killed without their meat used for human consumption. 18 billion animals – that’s more than two for every person on earth. Broken down by animal species, these are:

For the research, Juliane Klaura’s team deliberately used data from 2019 to rule out the effects of the corona pandemic on meat production and consumption. It turned out that the reasons for meat loss and waste varied regionally. “In developing countries, losses usually occur at the beginning of the process, for example because cattle die from diseases during rearing or because meat spoils during storage or transport,” Klaura said in a statement from Leiden University.

A lot of meat is also lost in industrialized countries, says Klaura, but for different reasons. Here it is usually not the producers but the consumers who waste meat. For example, supermarkets build up too large stocks of meat and then have to destroy a large part of it. Restaurants would serve excessively large portions of meat and consumers would throw away meat that was past its expiration date.

“The United States is doing particularly poorly, as are South Africa and Brazil,” Klaura explains. In fact, residents of the countries mentioned waste an average of seven, eight to five animal lives per year. In India, on the other hand, the balance is much better: less than half of an animal per inhabitant is wasted.

The study authors emphasize that reducing meat waste would not only have an immediate positive impact on the welfare of farm animals, but also on the climate. A large portion of greenhouse gas emissions – almost 15 percent – ​​can be attributed to livestock farming. If we succeed in reducing meat losses, significantly fewer animals would need to be farmed, which would also reduce associated greenhouse gas emissions.

However, because meat is not lost or wasted in the same way around the world, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to reducing losses. “In developing countries it will be more about improving conditions for animals and the storage and transport of meat,” says Klaura. “In Western countries, a change in behavior will make the difference.”

The latter, as Klaura knows, will not be easy. “People quickly get upset when their diet has to be changed,” she says, referring to the situation in her home country of Germany. People feel like something is being taken away from them. And because of the emotions this evokes, politicians find it difficult to find a rational answer. “It can help to make it clear that billions of animals killed every year are not eaten. This can be an important first step towards positive measures,” Klaura hopes. (mr)