Has Vegetarianism/Veganism Managed To Reduce Global Meat Consumption?
10. Meat Intake in several countries has changed, but why? (8 min read)
Dear reader, this post is the first of a two-part series.
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A couple of weeks ago, I read a post by Jessica Rath which showed some interesting data on meat consumption: Meat intake has declined over time in Germany and Sweden, while it has increased in the US.
Wait, I wondered… hasn’t veganism and vegetarianism increased in the US over the last few years1? Isn’t it more popular worldwide? A big sign is the meteoric rise of “plant meat” companies whose sole market claim is that there are enough carnivores who like to ditch meat, but the taste is too good to resist2.
How are 3 rich nations who can afford to eat what they want, and have historically embraced meat, have such different outcomes?
More importantly, as a vegetarian myself, there is a nagging question:
Has global meat consumption changed, and has the vegetarian and vegan movement had any impact?
Welcome to this week’s Climatonomics. Just stay with me… this is going to be far more interesting than you expect. The truth, in my humble opinion, shows the gap between our perception of progress and the reality of progress. Lets jump into the data.
Insight #1: Rich Countries Consume More Meat… But Not Always
This is a reasoning most of us are familiar with - as countries get more prosperous, their people eat more meat. Developing and under-developed nations consume less, because it is expensive.
Yet, this reasoning does not fully answer our question. I present you Chart 1:
Here you see the change in meat supply for a nation with time i.e. how many kilograms of meat is available per person. While this does not explicitly say how much a person consumes, it is quite close to the real number and is easier to measure accurately, even after accounting for meat exports3. After all, increased supply without demand is economically pointless. Note: This data does not include seafood.4
I have US, Australia, Germany, France and Sweden from the developed category. I show India and China from the developing category, while I have included combined data for all of Africa from the under-developed category (I acknowledge that there is a huge diversity of nations in the continent with varying degrees of economic success. But the comparatively smaller economies of individual African countries makes analysis less useful.). Also, the statistics for the entire EU closely track the three European nations, so I have not included it here for clarity.
To assess how rich the citizens of these nations are, here is Chart 2 showing how their per capita income has changed over time.
Ok, so what does the data tell us?
All developed nations have seen a massive increases in per capita income in the post world war II economic boom. All of them have a higher meat supply and trend kept increasing with income.
Sometime in the 1990s, the EU nations started to see a downward trend. But the US and Australia - countries with one of the highest per capita meat consumption - continued their upward trajectory. Remember that the level of climate awareness and vegan movement was tiny back then compared to today. So how did this happen?
China has seen a dramatic increase in meat supply, proportional to its twenty-fold increase in per capita income from 1961. And yet, India, which also saw a five-fold increase, has remained virtually flat.
All of Africa has a per capita income smaller than that of India, yet has three times higher meat supply.
Therefore, a popular consensus in our public discourse that higher GDP means higher meat consumption is only partially true. The key piece of this puzzle is a factor that is often overlooked:
The people themselves.
Insight #2: How Old Is Your Population?
Here is something you already knew, but likely never thought of in a national context. Old people eat lesser than younger people. And especially so for meat. So a rich society with a lot of senior citizens can afford meat, but their consumption is never going to be the same as their glory days.
I present you Chart 3: This shows the proportion of people in each country that are older than 64, as a percentage of the total population.
I think you see where this is going.
Even developed nations have different demographics, and some are comparatively younger than others. Developing nations and under-developed nations are typically younger and have higher population growth rates.
China is an exception, since it faces a massive demographic cliff because of its one-child policy.
US and Australia have only ~ 16% of the population over the age of 64, while the three European nations are in the 20-22% region.
While 6% gap between the EU and US, Australia may seem to be a small, it makes a huge economic impact, because it only increases every passing year. After all, you can’t get younger with time (Unless you’re a vampire. Or Tom Cruise. It’s one of life’s greatest mysteries5).
I mentioned in a previous post that Europe is facing a demographic decline, which would make it a smaller consumer in the future. We can already see its effects in meat intake, since older people have typically lesser protein requirements and are less likely to have physically-demanding jobs requiring a large calorie intake. See that peak in Germany’s meat intake in ~ 2000? That year, senior citizens only made up 17% of their population.
Although US and Australia had similar ageing trends till ~ 1980, high levels of immigration slowed down the process significantly, and their populations are forecasted to remain younger than most of the EU. A society with more young people entering the workforce have higher caloric and protein requirements, and meat consumption goes up.
Insight #3: The Role of Culture, And… Wall Street?
Until this point, its tempting to get the impression that meat consumption is entirely dictated by demographics and GDP. Although it explains the big picture well, each country has unique forces acting on it, and no one-size-fits-all metric can capture the complete reality.
To make it complete, we need to look at the final piece of the puzzle: Culture.
The role of culture is powerful, and goes far beyond the realm of demographics or even political systems. Let me show you can example with three wildly different nations: China, India and Argentina.
Pork is an important part of Chinese culinary culture, and an indicator of prosperity. Similarly, we are told that beef is very nearly an Argentinian birthright, while India has a strong religious and cultural preference for vegetarianism even among meat eaters.
This creates issues when educating people to limit consumption: Asking Argentinians to stop consuming beef is about as much a political suicide as asking Indians to start enjoying the said beef. Even totalitarian governments steer clear of opposing age-old cultural expectations, as I wrote some time ago:
And then there are exceptional circumstances that are hard to predict, even in rich countries. If you look at Chart 1 again, you will see a sudden decline in meat supply from around 2008-2014 for the US.
Hmm… wonder what happened to the Americans in 2008…
A sudden explosion of culinary morality? Animals unionizing and refusing to get slaughtered?
Turns out, meat just got more expensive, as I show in Chart 4.
The Great American Recession of 2008 decimated the population’s purchasing power, and recovery only began in the earnest around 2014. Meat became expensive relative to several plant sources, and people consumed less of it in time of economic crisis.
The US increased ethanol production for biofuels from corn and soy, raising demand (and therefore, prices). Meat production is heavily dependent on cheap soy and corn feed for the animals.
Unexpected droughts in the US Midwest - where most of the world’s corn is produced - reduced corn yields from 2010-2012. There were also agricultural supply chain disruptions affecting the meat industry in the US (my older post explains how) which drove up prices.
In summary, the US saw a 7 year decline in meat intake. But as the economy recovered, meat became cheaper again.
What does this mean for the vegan/vegetarian movement?
Has vegan/vegetarian activism made an impact? Remember, I answer this as a plant-eater who thinks industrial-scale animal cruelty is one of our greatest moral failings:
It has not made any appreciable difference.
The data shows that older demographics, poor economies and even recessions are the key drivers suppressing meat consumption.
I’ll get hate (probably justified) to say that even Wall Street has done more to cause vegetarianism/veganism than activism. Sure, they honestly couldn’t care less as long as there’s money to be made, but hey…
Think about that for a second. Freaking Wall Street. Haha. Have Lehmann Brothers saved more animals than overzealous vegans yelling “MeAt iS MuRdER”? I can’t help but chuckle. As a side note, providing such unsolicited insights also tells you how popular I am at parties6.
But I will hold back on declaring defeat. Why?
Because statistics are lagging indicators of social change.
People’s habits change slowly. Some folks change. Some don’t. Others die before making up their mind. All this takes time to show up in large scale statistics. We also see that studying global data is not too useful, since each country’s consumption profile is unique.
But the global meat consumption HAS changed in ways that is not apparent from this data. The truth gets more nuanced when you dig deeper. While meat consumption has soared so far, the future provides no such guarantees. Curious? Stay tuned for the part II of this post.
…….. And Thank you for reading! I am blessed to have readers from several countries in six continents. What did you think of this week’s edition? Are you surprised? Annoyed? Have more to add? Your words help me develop more useful content so fire away in the comments below! I’m here.
Anecdotally, as a vegetarian myself, I have had a much easier time finding meat-free options in American restaurants over the last decade, with more awareness of a meat-free diet than ever before.
Note: Folks that are have always been committed Vegetarian/Vegan have little interest in their burgers tasting like blood-dripping meat.
Exports are not a major part of all the meat produced in bigger countries, as a large percentage of meat is for domestic consumption.
Its a major omission because it has different metrics, since a lot of it is wild-caught (with a large illegal industry).
From Top Gun: Maverick
On a serious note, we can’t change people’s habits by pissing them off. True change needs more patience, and less judgmental dialogues.
Thanks for linking my article 😉. Your conclusions seemed a bit depressing at first: Germans/Swedes consume less meat simply because they have a larger percentage of old folks who eat less in general. I know a number of people in Germany who are animal activists/rescuers, and because of them I know that even small towns have vegan restaurants, and plant-based foods in supermarkets seem abundant, compared to the US. But even here being vegan is much more acceptable it seems; 20 years ago one solicited ridicule and heavy criticism when promoting a plant-based diet. "Carrots have feelings too" -- you probably know this idiotic crap... Maybe I'm prone to wishful thinking. You DO promise some hopeful facts in Part II, can't wait...
This was very interesting! I hadn’t thought about meat consumption declining with age and how that relates then to the age of a country’s population. But it sounds like the biggest driver of consumer behavior comes down to the age old dollars and cents. If meat (like oil) becomes more expensive than fewer people will choose to eat it as frequently.
A friend just moved to New Zealand and she was a bit shocked that the price of lamb there is higher than the NZ lamb exported to the US because they run on export pricing in country. Same with kiwi fruits. Would that make a difference in meat consumption?