Holy Cow! Americans Are Eating Less Meat

I stopped eating meat about 15 years ago not on philosophical grounds or because I embraced a vegetarian or (heaven forbid) vegan diet, but because meat was expensive and I realized that I felt better without it. And so except for the very occasional greasy Philadelphia-style cheese steak with fried onions and mushrooms, I have become a so-called flexitarian with a diet that is substantially meat free.

Americans, Mark Bitman tells us in an edifying New York Times commentary, eat more meat than any other nation in the world. One-sixth of the total, to be exact, although we’re less than one-twentieth of the population.

But that’s changing rapidly. The Department of Agriculture projects that after a fairly steady climb in meat and poultry consumption over the last half-century, consumption will fall again this year to about 12.2 percent less in 2012 than it was in 2007. Beef consumption has been in decline for about 20 years; the drop in chicken is even more dramatic, over the last five years or so; pork also has been steadily slipping for about five years.

The reason for the drop is that people are eating less meat because, like me, they want to eat less meat, but the response of farm organizations and meat processors is a fusillades of silly excuses.

Perhaps the silliest is a story in the Daily Livestock Report last month that blames the decline on growing exports, which it says makes less meat available for Americans to buy. It also blames the decline on ethanol, which has caused feed costs to rise, production to drop and prices to go up so producers can cover their increasing costs. It also blames droughts but not the recession, which certainly has to be a factor.

And then, inevitably, it blames the federal government for “wag[ing] war on meat protein consumption” over the last 30 to 40 years.

Bitman blows a large hole in this War on Meat flapdoodle by noting that the government continues to subsidize the corn and soy fed to livestock, gives a nearly free pass on environmental degradation and animal abuse, hasn’t made an effort to limit the use of antibiotics in animal feed, and continues to favor corporate meatbackers over smaller ranchers. Oh, and it also has been reluctant to tell consumers what I and an increase number of people know — that they should be eating less meat.

“[C]onscious decisions are being made by consumers,” Bitman writes. “Even buying less meat because prices are high and times are tough is a choice; other ‘sacrifices’ could be made. We could cut back on junk food, or shirts or iPhones, which have a very high meat-equivalent, to coin a term. Yet even though excess supply kept chicken prices lower than the year before, demand dropped.”

So people are choosing to eat less meat for the right reasons. Ta-da!