How much does it cost to eat meat without cruelty to animals?
While many people love meat dishes, they are also passionate about animal welfare, and the Internet is often ablaze with topics and content related to animal cruelty. The educational YouTube channel Kurzgesagt explains the reality of the miserable treatment of farm animals out of the reach of consumers.
While most meat producers strive to provide the best possible life for their animals, the livestock industry is under market pressure for lower prices.
Kurzgesagt prefaced his presentation by saying that 'livestock farming is very complicated,' and for the sake of simplicity, he divided livestock farming in the West into three categories: 'proper,' 'prison,' and 'torture camp,' depending on the condition of the livestock.
The first thing we'll look at is chicken, one of the most common meats. There are about 26 billion chickens on Earth, the same number as all other bird species combined. At first glance, chickens may seem unintelligent, but they are actually social creatures, known to have the ability to communicate, solve problems, and empathize.
Despite this, approximately 90% of the world's egg-producing chickens are raised in torture camps.
In order to prevent the chickens from hurting each other under extreme stress, many chicken farms have their beaks removed. In Europe and the United States, the situation is improving significantly due to legal regulations and consumer efforts, but still, more than 50% of chickens are confined to small cages.
Amazingly, doubling the cage space and moving the conditions of the hens from torture camps to prisons only increases the price of an egg by 0.02 euros, from 0.3 to 0.32 euros.
Furthermore, even if the chickens are allowed to leave the coop and have access to vegetation, the fee is only 0.37 euros (about 57 yen).
Even more cruel than the parent hens is the culling of male chicks, which results in 7 billion chicks dying shortly after hatching each year.
In France and Germany, the practice has been banned and only females are allowed to hatch from eggs, which brings the cost per egg down to 0.42 euros (about 65 yen).
Paying 0.85 euros (about 132 yen) more per dozen eggs would significantly improve the treatment of chickens, and paying an additional 0.6 euros (about 93 yen) would prevent chicks from being culled.
The problem with chicken meat is even more serious than with eggs. Many meat chickens are genetically engineered to gain weight rapidly, and they suffer from problems until they die, such as strain on their internal organs and difficulty walking due to being overweight.
While it's hard to come up with exact figures, if American chicken farmers switched to slow-growing breeds, the price of a single serving of breast meat would increase by about $1.50, or $0.09, to $1.59.
90% of meat chickens in the EU are crammed into overcrowded, dark and poorly ventilated prisons and torture camps. Giving these chickens 30% more space, access to perches, sunlight and fresh air would cost an extra $0.13 per serving of meat.
Fewer than 5% of chickens are raised in a relatively decent, or 'proper,' environment. Chicken meat is so cheap that meat from chickens raised in decent environments can be nearly double the price of normal chickens, depending on the part of the chicken.
Next, let's consider pigs. Pigs are as intelligent and social as dogs, and are playful and often kept as pets.
But there is a big difference between pet pigs and farmed pigs, with over 90% of pigs raised for food being kept in conditions that resemble torture camps, where the pigs are raised on concrete floors with no bedding and in conditions far from what they need.
Due to extreme stress, piglets are often caught fighting with each other, so their tails are docked without pain relief to prevent them from being bitten, and the mother pig is confined to a narrow metal restraining device called a 'crate'. This causes extreme suffering for the mother pig, and the piglets are separated from their mother when they are only three weeks old. 'How would a dog feel if it saw them being treated like that?' Kurzgesagt asked.
First, if pigs were released from crates and their treatment improved from torture camps to prison-level, the price of one serving of pork would increase by about 0.2 euros (about 310 yen) from about 2 euros (about 310 yen).
Even with painless treatment using anesthesia, the price increase per kilogram of meat is only about 0.01 euros (about 2 yen), and a Danish study found that giving pigs 30% more space, more bedding, and other animal-friendly measures would only cost an extra 0.2 euros per serving.
An additional 0.4 euros (about 62 yen) per serving will allow pigs to have access to the outdoors for at least 40% of their lives, and an additional 0.8 euros (about 124 yen) will increase the pig's space indoors by 4 to 5 times.
Only about 1% of EU pigs are raised in such conditions. Whether or not these conditions are truly adequate is still up for debate, but raising pigs in at least a reasonably decent environment is possible for an additional cost of 1.2 euros (about 186 yen) per serving of pork.
Finally, let's consider cows. A typical beef cow spends two-thirds of its life grazing outdoors in a natural environment, so it is treated better than other livestock.
But the rest of their lives are no less miserable, with a third of their short lives spent in prison- or torture-camp-style 'feedlots,' where they are fattened for slaughter.
In the United States, it is said that less than 5% of cows survive to the end of their lives on pasture, but a German study showed that even if this situation were improved, the price of beef would only increase by about 15%.
Dairy cows fare even worse than beef cows, spending most of their lives indoors and suffering from problems like sores and ulcers on the pads of their feet due to the hard concrete floors.
But such an environment is not necessary to produce affordable milk. In Germany, for example, switching to outdoor grazing would only increase the price of a litre of milk from 1 euro to 1.1 euros.
As a rough summary, improving living conditions for common food animals from torture camps to decent ones would require price increases of about 15% for beef and milk, about 50% for eggs and pork, and about 100% for chicken.
While this may seem expensive, meat prices in developed countries are at historic lows. For example, in the United States, the world's largest meat consumer, the average person spends $337 a month on food, of which $88 is spent on meat, eggs, and dairy products. If these prices were to rise by an average of 50%, that would amount to an additional $43 a month, but still be roughly the same as in 1987.
In Germany, the average person spends about 70 euros (about 10,850 yen) a month on meat, eggs and dairy products, so if that rose by 50%, it would be about 105 euros (about 16,300 yen).
'Combined with the fact that about 20 percent of the meat purchased by consumers is wasted, meat is too cheap to be consumed within its expiration date and its value is being underestimated,' Kurzgesagt said.
As an individual consumer, you can help protect yourself from animal torture by carefully checking the breeding labels on the meat you buy. If there aren't any, it's almost certain that the meat came from animals raised in torture camps.
Of course, there are problems with labels. Some retailers label ethical meat as a 'luxury item' and slap unnecessarily high price tags on it. And labels like 'organic,' 'natural,' and 'ecological' often have nothing to do with animal welfare. For example, non-GMOs provide no benefit to the health of the animals or the people who eat them, but are a whitewash to make meat from animals raised in unnatural conditions look 'natural.'
'If you can afford it, and you want to get meat that is at least torture-free, your best bet is to choose labelled products. Also, choose organic products if possible, and if you have the time, research local farms and see them for yourself before buying meat,' Kurzgesagt said.
You don't have to be vegan to reduce animal cruelty, but if you find it difficult to afford to spend the same amount on meat as your parents did, cutting down on your meat consumption is a good idea.
The only exception to meat that is more environmentally friendly to avoid is mussels. Mussels have the ability to clean coastal seas by absorbing carbon and filtering water, and are similar to moss in that they have no central nervous system and do not feel pain. Therefore, Kurzgesagt recommended that people 'eat more mussels.'
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