The average person now eats about six times as much chicken flesh as in 1961, according to a UN report that says global meat supply has risen fourfold over the past 60 years and is still expected to increase. The report also finds that pig flesh consumption has doubled, while cow flesh has stayed broadly flat.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation report shows farmed bird supply rising from below 3kg per person in 1961 to 17kg in 2022. Over the same period, pig flesh doubled to 15kg per person, and the average global meat supply increased from 25kg to 47kg per person.
The report warns that agriculture is the second most polluting sector of the global economy, with its planet-heating emissions forecast to rise by 7.6% over the next decade. It says farmed animals will account for an estimated 80% of that increase, while around 14% of meat and milk is lost during production or wasted after reaching shops and restaurants.
Daniela Battaglia, a farmed animal development officer at the FAO and co-author of the report, said, “The regional distribution and access is still very unequal … While high-income countries still have quite high and stable consumption, low-income countries are still constrained by the affordability of [animal products].” She said the FAO’s message to policymakers was to tackle the harms linked to meat production, including antimicrobial resistance and greenhouse gas emissions.
The report stops short of urging wealthy countries to eat less meat (let alone to switch to a plant-food-based system), despite the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identifying a shift from meat-heavy to plant-rich diets as one of the most effective ways to cut emissions.
Matthew Hayek, a food systems researcher at New York University, said to the Guardian that it “largely sidesteps” the implications of high meat consumption in richer countries. He added, “Their framing obscures the vast literature and strong evidence base showing that high levels of meat consumption have negative environmental impacts and are linked to a range of adverse health outcomes.”
