The tremendous lust for the flesh

Ingrid Müller is a chemist and medical journalist. She was editor-in-chief of for twelve years. Since March 2014 she has been working as a freelance journalist and author for, among others, Focus Gesundheit, the health portal ellviva.de, the publishing house living crossmedia and the health channel of rtv.de.

More about the experts All content is checked by medical journalists.

Meat is no longer a luxury food. People around the world are consuming more meat than ever. Right at the front: pork and schnitzel. A person eats a proud 1094 animals in the course of his life

Meat report 2013

People's hunger for meat is enormous. The average meat consumption of a German is 89 kilograms per year - 20 percent of it ends up in the rubbish bin. 85 percent of Germans eat meat and sausage every day or almost every day. Four times as much meat is consumed as in the middle of the 19th century and twice as much as 100 years ago, according to the Meat Atlas 2013, a report that shows global meat production.

According to this, men eat significantly more animal products than women, and a meat dish is usually served in restaurants too. The younger ones in particular grow hard: 19 to 24-year-old men are the biggest meat and sausage eaters, while women are 25 to 34-year-olds. Schnitzel is still right at the top of the hit list of the most popular meat dishes.

1094 animals in the belly

However, the meat industry has lost quite a bit of reputation and trust. Rightly so, because the list of disgusts is long: antibiotics in chicken, BSE, swine flu, bird flu, foot-and-mouth disease, rotten meat or imitation ham. This could be continued even further. Sales break down as soon as a germ is discovered. One consequence is the switch to organic meat, which is of course more expensive. Another is that young people in particular become vegetarians and vegans or at least limit their meat consumption. Even large companies and health insurance companies let the pork cheek be pork cheek in their canteens on some days.

Around 52 percent of Germans lose their own meatless days and try to curb their lust for meat, according to a survey by the opinion research institute FORSA. "They are not particularly successful at this yet," say the Fleischatlas authors. In the course of his life, a German devours 4 cattle, 4 sheep, 12 geese, 37 ducks, 46 pigs, 46 turkeys and 945 chickens - a proud 1094 animals!

Symbol of luxury

Globally, people are eating more meat than ever before. Mountains of pigs, cattle, chickens and sheep lie on the plates of the world. Meat is no longer a luxury food like the Sunday roast in the past, but has become an everyday product. However, according to the “Meat Atlas”, the global trend shows a dichotomy, namely a gap between rich and poor - with the poorer countries catching up rapidly.

While meat consumption is frozen at an extremely high level in most industrialized countries, it is climbing massively in developing countries, in some cases with double-digit growth rates. "In Asia, Africa and South America, the orientation of the poor to the rich can be seen in exemplary fashion, especially when it comes to meat consumption," the authors write. Where prosperity is growing, it is easy to see from the menu. Meat is "a symbol of advancement and luxury".

Hapless bristle cattle

Most pigs are consumed worldwide - the bristle cattle make up around 40 percent of global meat consumption. And that is only possible because the modern pig is quickly fattened to slaughter weight in gigantic stables. The poultry, especially the chicken, has caught up. The poultry are the cheapest. Beef, on the other hand, costs the most and is something for the pantry of the rich. That is why it is mainly the industrialized countries that strike here. With the exception of Argentina and Uruguay, the big beef producers, who usually eat the animal in the form of huge grilled steaks.

Fleischberg USA

The biggest meat eaters still live in the US - by far. In purely mathematical terms, every man there gets 196 grams of meat a day, women 125 grams. Nevertheless, meat consumption has plummeted by a full 12 percent since 2008. Even Bill Clinton no longer eats steaks, turkey and chicken after bypass surgery, as he announced. In contrast, China is the country that is catching up more and more in terms of meat consumption: within three decades, the country's meat consumption has quadrupled. Particularly popular: American fast food. Eating huge portions of meat is part of the new lifestyle there.

27,000 dead chickens - per hour

The global hunger for meat can only be satisfied if businesses produce animals on a massive scale. The farm, on which the animals were raised appropriately and fed with self-mown hay, has long belonged to the land of dreams. Today meat production is factory work - with animals. Keeping 40,000 chickens or 2,000 pigs under one roof "is no longer an exception, but the rule," according to the report. In Wietze in Lower Saxony, for example, the largest poultry slaughterhouse in Europe, 27,000 animals per hour, that is 135 million per year. Anyone who has ever seen the film "We feed the world" or "Our daily bread" knows how it works: head off every second.

Antibiotics with no effect

This factory farming has a price. Not in the supermarket, because meat is cheaper than ever, but for human health. According to the Meat Atlas, which is perhaps a bit drastic, it runs the risk of suddenly dying from harmless infections. But: there are bacteria that no longer respond to antibiotics. Anyone who becomes infected with them has a problem because common remedies no longer work.

Just yesterday, an investigation showed that Mettbrötchen are not as tasty as they might look. Those who love pork meat may be putting themselves at a greater health risk than expected, so the result. Around 16 percent of the 50 samples from ten German cities were contaminated with antibiotic-resistant germs - common antibiotics would be ineffective in the event of an infection.

Farewell to the mass animal

The reason is that antibiotics are used too often in animal fattening. Without them, modern animal production would no longer be conceivable. Diseases would spread rapidly among animals. The World Health Organization estimates that now more healthy animals than sick people are taking the bacterial killer. Because often not only the sick animal, but the entire herd is treated. It would be better if the animals didn't get sick in the first place, but that would mean saying goodbye to the current system of meat production.

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