We raise 18 billion animals a year to die — and then we don’t even eat them. “Around 1 out of 4 animals raised for food end up as food waste.”
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I decided to end my vegetarianism at a friend's party because he had a full bowl of pulled pork that would go to waste if I didn't start eating.
The numbers in that article tingle my bullshit detector.
1 in 4 animals (so 25% of meat) are wasted, and 1/3rd of that occurs at home (in North America). So I'm throwing away 8% of the meat that I buy? The number is obviously not zero, but 8% feels high both personally and as an average.
The numbers in the article about processing are super fuzzy, but they seem to say that a large area of loss is at the processing stage and seem to indicate this is calculated relative to using 100% of the animal. But that's just not practical. You can't scrape every bit of meat off of every bone and sell it. And when you try you get branded as selling "pink slime" or whatever. Meat processors are presumably largely rational businesses. They'll harvest as much as is financially viable. Presumably even the waste from that process isn't going straight into a landfill but is being processed for gelatin or something.
Anyway, doesn't mean that we shouldn't be thoughtful about ensuring that animals raised for food are treated well and processed humanely. But "1 in 4 are wasted" smells like propaganda.
There is also the ‘nose to tail’ movement which addresses acceptance and consumer demand for what have traditionally been less desirable animal parts. I wouldn’t say it was made famous entirely by Fergus Henderson but St John framed it in a context which captured the food scene imagination and inspired chefs to think differently and that ripples into consumer preferences eventually. Modern agribusiness is so commercially focused, it will work to extract every single cent so distilling it down to 1 in 4 is over simplistic. The cost of extracting maximum yield may not offer ROI so there is probably the commercial ceiling which sits lower than 100% utilisation of the animal. But then that spoils the soundbite.
Fuzzy numbers or not, factory animal farming is generally a blight on humanity. I’m trying out going vegetarian in 2024.
The Vox article (and i do indeed wonder about Vox sometimes) cites a study, which describes its methodology in getting to the 1 in 4 assertion, if anyone wants to take the time.
I'll never understand the impulse to criticize statistics before reading the source material. The study methodology seems reasonable, and is very clear about the definitions used.
FSC: Food Supply Chain
MLW: Meat Loss and Waste
SDG: Sustainable Development Goal
To be fair, the quote from Vox also shows a misunderstanding of the study... I think?
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