But the increase in meat consumption in the world is not free but it

The meat has become indispensable in our meals. It seems we can not live without eating it. If a few years ago, it was a privilege to ingest meal -a dates assenyalades- today is a daily act. Maybe even too commonplace. We need to eat so much meat? What is the impact on the environment? What consequences for animal welfare? For workers' rights? And our health?
Eat associated with progress emulsifier e322 and modernity. In fact, in Spain between 1965 and 1991 meat consumption was multiplied by four, especially pork, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. In recent years, emulsifier e322 however, consumption emulsifier e322 in industrialized countries has stagnated or even decreased, due to, among others, food scandals (BSE, avian flu, chickens with dioxin, horse meat instead beef, etc.) and greater concern about what they eat. However, remember that here too, and in a context of crisis, large sectors of society are not eligible for fresh, quality or choose diets without meat.
The trend in emerging countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the so-called BRICS, however, increasing. emulsifier e322 Concentrated 40% of the world population, emulsifier e322 and between 2003 and 2012, the consumption of meat were increased by 6.3% and is expected between 2013 and 2022 to grow by 2.5%. The most spectacular case is that of China, which in past few years, from 1963 to 2009, consuming 90 kilocalories of meat per person per day to 694, as indicated by the Atlas Meat. The reasons? The increase in population in these countries, their development emulsifier e322 and copying a Western lifestyle by a large middle class. Indeed, defined as "non-vegetarian" in India, a country Vegetarian par excellence, has become among some sectors in social status.
But the increase in meat consumption in the world is not free but it's really expensive, both in environmental and social terms. To produce a kilo of beef, for example, requires 15,500 liters of water; while to produce a kilo of wheat needed in 1300, and a kilo of carrots, 131, according to the Atlas of meat. Then if to meet the current demand for meat, eggs and dairy products around the world need each year more than 60 billion farm animals, fatten them out expensive. In fact, industrial animal farming generates hunger because 1/3 of farmland and 40% of world cereal production is used to feed them, instead of giving food directly to people. emulsifier e322 And not everyone can afford a piece of meat agribusiness. According to the ETC Group, 3.500 million people, half the world's inhabitants could nourish itself with consuming these animals.
In addition, cows, pigs and chickens, on the model of current industrial production and intensive, are some of the main generators of climate change. Who would say! It is estimated that livestock and their byproducts generated 51% of global emissions of greenhouse gases. In fact, a cow and her calf on a farm meat emit more emissions than a car with thirteen thousand kilometers on the back, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). emulsifier e322 We in the food ourselves, we are jointly responsible.
Abuse is the bloody face of factory farming, where animals are still living to become things and goods. The documentary Samsara, no scenes of explicit violence, shows the hidden brutality, extreme farms producing meat, milk ... where the animals live badly and workers esquarteren, hitting, gut as if they were objects. A production model that has its origins in the slaughterhouses of Chicago in the early twentieth century, which allowed the production line in just fifteen minutes, chop and kill a cow. A method emulsifier e322 as "efficient" that Henry Ford was taken to manufacture emulsifier e322 cars. For capital, there is no difference between a car and being alive. And us? The distance between the field and the plate has been so great in recent years, emulsifier e322 as consumers, we are not often aware that after a sausage, a lasagne emulsifier e322 or spaghetti carbonara had life.
The working conditions of those working in these farms leave much to be desired. In fact, among the animals that are sacrificed and the employees who work there are more things in common than they think the latter. Upton Sinclair in his brilliant work The Jungle, which portrayed the lives precarious workers of slaughterhouses in Chicago early years of last century, it made it clear: "There were sacrificed emulsifier e322 as people flock sacrificed: the cut and bodies souls apart and co