Meat

Consumption Rates

Americans seem to have a large and growing appetite for meat. Between 1909 and 1919, the average American ate about 140 pounds (lbs) of meat per year. In 2002, per capita annual meat consumption reached 275 lbs in the United States, the highest per capita meat consumption rate in the world. For comparison, in 2002, China's per capita meat consumption rate was 115 lbs, Italy's was approximately 198 lbs, and the United Kingdom's was approximately 175 lbs. Though humans consume more and more meat each year, tastes and preferences have shifted over the years.

Poultry only constituted about 8.5 percent of all meat consumed between 1909 and 1919. In the 1960s, poultry made up about 17 percent of all meat consumed, and between 1970 and 2005, per capita consumption of poultry jumped from 34 lbs per person to 74 lbs per person. While the popularity of poultry—particularly chicken—was growing, the consumption rate of red meat was dropping. Between 1970 and 2005, per capita consumption of red meat declined by 22 percent. Still, red meat remains the main source of protein in the U.S. diet, with beef the most preferred.

Production

Keeping up with this growing demand for meat required changes at all levels of production and consumption. During the 19th century, meat production evolved from local, highly skilled butchering to consolidated industrial production. The development of the refrigerated railcar and slaughterhouse centralized meat production in Chicago, distributing pork, beef, and poultry across the nation. At [Page 524]the same time, wastes from the slaughterhouses concentrated in the Bubbly Creek tributary of the Chicago River. Upton Sinclair called this body of water Chicago's “Great Open Sewer” in his 1906 book The Jungle, and public uproar surrounding revelations of unsanitary meatpacking practices in that book led to the creation of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that same year. The industry began to decentralize in the early 20th century, in part due to a transition from using rail to trucks to transport meat. Subsequently, meatpacking operations developed in several states.

Over the decades, animal farms have grown in size to both meet the needs of the population and to remain economically competitive. North Carolina, a top producer of both hogs and turkeys, experienced a 300 percent increase in the number of animals per square mile between 1977 and 2006. On a larger scale, the total number of cattle on the planet has nearly tripled since the early 1900s. Additionally, modern cattle are much larger than their predecessors and can be brought to slaughter earlier compared to the past.

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