Burgers, bacon, steaks, and other meat products accept come under scrutiny in contempo 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.S. consumers under the age of fifty take already tried a establish-based meat product. Yet meat consumption in the U.Due south. is on the rising. As of 2017, America had the 2nd-highest meat consumption in the world, surpassed merely by Hong Kong. How much meat practice Americans eat, and what are the impacts of their meat consumption?

How Much Meat Is Consumed in the U.Due south.?

Americans consume around 274 pounds of meat per twelvemonth on average, not bookkeeping for seafood and fish, or individual food waste product. The total amount of meat consumed in the U.Southward. has increased by 40 percentage since 1961. In 2017, the U.S. Department of Agronomics (USDA) reported that Americans are exceeding the amount of meat recommended by national dietary guidelines, although women in the U.Southward. eat about a third less meat than men, and effectually 42 percent less beef.

Beef and Veal

The U.S. has the earth'due south second-highest consumption of beef and buffalo after Argentine republic. In 2017 Americans consumed 81.74 pounds of beefiness and buffalo per capita, a 37 percent 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 apropos the health impacts of saturated fats. In 2013 beef and buffalo consumption in the U.S. had dropped to under 80 pounds per capita, simply then started rising again.

Pork

Pork consumption in the U.S. fluctuated between 72.64 and 53.nineteen pounds per capita betwixt 1961 and 2017. The latest data shows that Americans eat an almanac 66.eighteen pounds of pork per capita. The U.S. Census data and Simmons National Consumer Survey (NHCS) found that 268 million Americans ate bacon in 2020, with over 16 million eating 5 pounds of salary or more during the year.

Poultry

Poultry is divers as domestic fowl, including chickens, turkeys, and geese. In 2017 Americans consumed a record 122.75 pounds of poultry per capita. According to the USDA, chicken consumption has increased by 540 pct since 1910, from around 10.i pounds per capita to 65.2 pounds in 2018. Since 1961 the consumption of poultry has more tripled.

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

Lamb

Since the 1960s the consumption of lamb and mutton in the U.S. has fallen from nigh five pounds to nigh 1 pound per capita. Well-nigh 20 percent of lamb consumption in the U.S. occurs during the spring holidays. Urban consumers are more than likely to eat lamb than consumers based in rural areas.

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

Over the last 3 decades, chicken overtook beef and pork to become the most unremarkably consumed meat product in the U.S. 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 eat 101.i pounds of broiler chickens per capita by 2030.

Is Meat Consumption Increasing or Decreasing?

Meat consumption in the U.S. increased by twoscore percent between 1961 and 2017. Globally, meat consumption increased by 58 percent betwixt 1998 and 2018.

U.S. meat consumption is expected to increase by 1 percentage each year through 2023, according 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 by 2030.

Is the Meat Industry Dying?

The number of Americans identifying equally vegetarians has remained roughly the same at 6 percent since 1999, according to Gallup surveys. The number of cocky-identifying vegans increased from just ii to 3 percent betwixt 2012 and 2018. Still, and despite projections of growing meat consumption, 23 percentage of Americans reported reducing the amount of meat they ate in 2019. The number of U.Due south. consumers who have tried plant-based alternatives has likewise risen to 70 percent.

Investment firm UBS predicts that annual sales in the plant-based meat market will abound from $4.6 billion in 2018 to $85 billion in 2030. According to global consultancy AT Kearney, threescore per centum of meat eaten globally in 2040 will be from institute-based or lab-grown alternatives. In response to changing consumer preferences, traditional meat producers are increasingly adding plant-based alternatives to their product ranges. A 2021 study found that the boilerplate American believes that the U.Southward. could become completely plant-based by 2039. Yet when faced with falling local need, some meat companies instead resort to increasing their exports to countries with rising meat consumption levels. In September 2020, for example, the U.Due south. pork manufacture exported a record 29 percent of total pork production to buyers exterior the U.South.

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

Co-ordinate to a 2020 study, Americans waste around a third of the food they purchase, costing the average 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 matter.

The USDA estimates that only half of the torso of a slaughtered cow, pig, lamb, craven, or turkey ends up being eaten. Beef, for example, can be wasted as it moves from farm to retail due to damage during packaging, inadequate storage, or when inspectors refuse information technology for safety reasons. Within retail, packaging failures, colour changes, spoilage, and overstocking can all cause further loss. At the consumer level beef can exist wasted due to inadequate storage, spoilage, recalls, and when consumers prepare more than beef than they ultimately swallow.

Taking the number of farmed animals who dice before slaughter into account, the amount of meat wasted in the U.S. is even higher. Co-ordinate to Iowa State University, an estimated 1 out of 3 pigs born into the U.S. pork industry dies before slaughter.

Meat waste product entails wasting the land, feed, water, labor, antibiotics, and equipment needed to heighten animals from birth to slaughter. Farmed animals only convert 2 to 13 percentage of the calories they eat into edible trunk parts. Poultry wastes 77 percent of feed calories, pork 91 percent, lamb and mutton 94 percent, and beef 98 percent.

When we recognize the resource-intensiveness of fauna agriculture, we tin can see meat consumption itself as a class of food waste.

What Would Happen If Anybody Ate Less Meat?

Beast agriculture, including meat product, is responsible for at least 37 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Increasing global meat consumption pushes the planet closer to dangerous limits. Supposing that the whole world adopted the U.S. diet, 138 percent of the world's habitable land, more land than is available, would exist required to see human dietary needs. If the world instead adopted the more than plant-based nutrition(southward) of India, the area of habitable land currently used for agronomics could exist more than than halved, from 50 to 22 percent.

Reducing meat consumption and transitioning to more plant-based diets would forbid further deforestation, biodiversity loss, and environmental pollution; meliorate global health, including lowering the risk of zoonotic outbreaks and antibiotic resistance; reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and free up a large amount of country, which could exist used for reforestation. If the entire U.S. population switched from beef to beans, 42 per centum of U.S. cropland—267,537 foursquare miles—could exist repurposed for the restoration of ecosystems and more climate-friendly farming.

Establish protein can replace animal protein to meet human being dietary needs. Instead of monocultures used to grow beast feed, farmers could repurpose state to grow more diverse crops, such equally vegetables and pulses. Pulses have nitrogen-fixing properties, are a healthy source of protein with a long shelf life, and can significantly better soil fertility and reduce food loss in agriculture.

Eating Less Meat

Meat consumption in the U.S. remains loftier, despite the increasingly urgent need to change global eating habits. Animal products accept a significantly larger ecology footprint than plant-based products. According to scientists, a establish-based nutrition is "probably the single biggest fashion to reduce your impact on planet World."

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