Burgers, salary, steaks, and other meat products take come up under scrutiny in recent years due to their impact on health, sustainability, and social justice issues. The number of companies working on meat alternatives in the U.Southward. is growing. Half of U.Southward. consumers under the age of fifty have already tried a establish-based meat product. Notwithstanding meat consumption in the U.S. is on the rising. As of 2017, America had the second-highest meat consumption in the world, surpassed only past Hong Kong. How much meat do Americans swallow, and what are the impacts of their meat consumption?

How Much Meat Is Consumed in the U.S.?

Americans consume around 274 pounds of meat per twelvemonth on boilerplate, not bookkeeping for seafood and fish, or private food waste. The full amount of meat consumed in the U.S. has increased past 40 percent since 1961. In 2017, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that Americans are exceeding the amount of meat recommended past national dietary guidelines, although women in the U.Due south. eat nearly a tertiary less meat than men, and effectually 42 percent less beef.

Beefiness and Veal

The U.S. has the world'south second-highest consumption of beef and buffalo afterward Argentina. In 2017 Americans consumed 81.74 pounds of beef and buffalo per capita, a 37 pct decrease from 1976, when Americans had reached a tape consumption of 129.65 pounds per capita. In the belatedly 1970s beef consumption started falling, due to scientific findings concerning the wellness impacts of saturated fats. In 2013 beef and buffalo consumption in the U.Due south. had dropped to under fourscore pounds per capita, simply then started rising once again.

Pork

Pork consumption in the U.Due south. fluctuated betwixt 72.64 and 53.19 pounds per capita between 1961 and 2017. The latest information shows that Americans eat an annual 66.18 pounds of pork per capita. The U.Due south. Census data and Simmons National Consumer Survey (NHCS) establish that 268 million Americans ate bacon in 2020, with over sixteen one thousand thousand eating five pounds of bacon or more during the year.

Poultry

Poultry is defined every bit domestic fowl, including chickens, turkeys, and geese. In 2017 Americans consumed a record 122.75 pounds of poultry per capita. According to the USDA, craven consumption has increased by 540 pct since 1910, from around 10.1 pounds per capita to 65.ii pounds in 2018. Since 1961 the consumption of poultry has more than tripled.

The growing popularity of chicken in the U.S. is linked to beefiness falling out of favor. For decades, consumers have been choosing craven over beef due to health and environmental concerns; however, eating farmed chickens has also been shown to exist problematic for several reasons.

Lamb

Since the 1960s the consumption of lamb and mutton in the U.Southward. has fallen from about five pounds to about one pound per capita. Near xx pct of lamb consumption in the U.Due south. occurs during the spring holidays. Urban consumers are more likely to consume lamb than consumers based in rural areas.

What Is the Nearly Consumed Meat in the U.S.?

Over the last iii decades, chicken overtook beef and pork to go the virtually ordinarily consumed meat product in the U.Due south. In 2020 Americans ate 96.4 pounds of broiler chickens per capita. Co-ordinate to data past the USDA and Economic Research Service, Americans are expected to consume 101.1 pounds of broiler chickens per capita by 2030.

Is Meat Consumption Increasing or Decreasing?

Meat consumption in the U.S. increased by 40 pct between 1961 and 2017. Globally, meat consumption increased by 58 per centum betwixt 1998 and 2018.

U.S. meat consumption is expected to increment by ane percent each year through 2023, co-ordinate to the recent Packaged Facts report Global Meat & Poultry Trends. While consumption of broiler chickens and pork is expected to rise, Americans are expected to swallow slightly smaller amounts of beef and turkey past 2030.

Is the Meat Industry Dying?

The number of Americans identifying as vegetarians has remained roughly the same at half dozen percent since 1999, according to Gallup surveys. The number of self-identifying vegans increased from merely 2 to three per centum between 2012 and 2018. Even so, and despite projections of growing meat consumption, 23 percent of Americans reported reducing the corporeality of meat they ate in 2019. The number of U.S. consumers who have tried institute-based alternatives has also risen to 70 percent.

Investment firm UBS predicts that almanac sales in the establish-based meat market will grow from $4.6 billion in 2018 to $85 billion in 2030. According to global consultancy AT Kearney, 60 percentage of meat eaten globally in 2040 volition exist from institute-based or lab-grown alternatives. In response to changing consumer preferences, traditional meat producers are increasingly adding found-based alternatives to their product ranges. A 2021 report found that the boilerplate American believes that the U.Due south. could go completely plant-based past 2039. Yet when faced with falling local demand, some meat companies instead resort to increasing their exports to countries with rise meat consumption levels. In September 2020, for instance, the U.Due south. pork industry exported a record 29 percent of total pork production to buyers outside the U.Southward.

How Much Meat Is Wasted in the U.S.?

According to a 2020 report, Americans waste product around a third of the food they purchase, costing the boilerplate household $1,866 per year, or $240 billion for the whole population. Fresh meat requires processing, and is a highly perishable production, which increases the likelihood of waste.

The USDA estimates that only half of the torso of a slaughtered cow, grunter, lamb, craven, or turkey ends up existence eaten. Beef, for example, can be wasted as it moves from farm to retail due to damage during packaging, inadequate storage, or when inspectors reject it for safety reasons. Inside retail, packaging failures, color changes, spoilage, and overstocking can all crusade further loss. At the consumer level beef tin be wasted due to inadequate storage, spoilage, recalls, and when consumers prepare more beef than they ultimately eat.

Taking the number of farmed animals who die before slaughter into account, the amount of meat wasted in the U.Due south. is even higher. Co-ordinate to Iowa State University, an estimated i out of 3 pigs born into the U.S. pork industry dies earlier slaughter.

Meat waste entails wasting the land, feed, water, labor, antibiotics, and equipment needed to raise animals from birth to slaughter. Farmed animals simply convert 2 to 13 percent of the calories they swallow into edible torso parts. Poultry wastes 77 percent of feed calories, pork 91 percent, lamb and mutton 94 pct, and beefiness 98 percent.

When we recognize the resources-intensiveness of beast agriculture, we can see meat consumption itself as a form of food waste.

What Would Happen If Everyone Ate Less Meat?

Animal agronomics, including meat production, is responsible for at to the lowest degree 37 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Increasing global meat consumption pushes the planet closer to dangerous limits. Supposing that the whole earth adopted the U.S. diet, 138 percent of the world's habitable land, more land than is available, would be required to meet human dietary needs. If the earth instead adopted the more than plant-based diet(s) of Republic of india, the expanse of habitable state currently used for agriculture could be more than halved, from 50 to 22 percent.

Reducing meat consumption and transitioning to more than constitute-based diets would prevent further deforestation, biodiversity loss, and environmental pollution; improve global health, including lowering the risk of zoonotic outbreaks and antibiotic resistance; reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and free upwardly a big amount of land, which could exist used for reforestation. If the unabridged U.Due south. population switched from beef to beans, 42 percent of U.S. cropland—267,537 square miles—could be repurposed for the restoration of ecosystems and more climate-friendly farming.

Found protein can replace brute protein to meet man dietary needs. Instead of monocultures used to grow animal feed, farmers could repurpose land to grow more diverse crops, such as vegetables and pulses. Pulses take nitrogen-fixing properties, are a healthy source of poly peptide with a long shelf life, and tin significantly improve soil fertility and reduce food loss in agriculture.

Eating Less Meat

Meat consumption in the U.South. remains high, despite the increasingly urgent need to change global eating habits. Animal products have a significantly larger environmental footprint than plant-based products. According to scientists, a plant-based nutrition is "probably the single biggest manner to reduce your touch on planet Earth."

Since U.S. citizens accept one of the highest rates of meat consumption globally, more people eating a institute-based nutrition is critical to reducing the land's emissions, and transitioning towards a more sustainable organization of nutrient production.