Our insatiable appetite for meat | Michael Vinson | TEDxNanjingNo1HighSchool

Meat is delicious! From the dawn of civilization up until the 20th century, however, meat was a rare treat prized for its protein and valued for its scarcity, eaten infrequently by the majority of the population. Modern agricultural technology has changed this. We now have the power to eat meat, and McDonald's, as often and as extra-large as we would like. But should we?

Human beings are beginning to leave a permanent and not-so-nice mark on planet Earth. What responsibility does each of us have to limit our consumption of meat and minimize our environmental footprint? And what kind of power?

Michael Vinson graduated from Princeton University in 2011 with a degree in
Psychology.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Hello, everyone.

(Applause)

Let's see. OK.

Today, I want to talk
to you all about meat, OK?

Delicious, tasty, succulent meat.

(Laughter)

Now, I've loved meat my whole life.

My very first favorite food was hot dogs.

I loved hot dogs.

And then, when I turned about, like, six,

I decided, actually, pepperoni pizza
is the best food in the world.

And I still think so. It really is.

My favorite Chinese food? Hong shao rou.

(Laughter)

Amazing! So delicious!

But despite this love of meat,
about two and a half months ago,

I decided to begin eating a lot less meat,

and that was partly, you know,
for health reasons,

and partly because I'd always wanted
to care more about the animals

that get killed and turned
into bacon, right?

But it was also because I learned a lot
more about the environmental impact

that my food choices had
on the world around me.

Now, there is possibly nothing more manly

than cutting into a big,
juicy steak, right?

And I think there's nothing more human.

Meat has been central
to our identity as human beings,

and central to the development
of our human characteristics.

Meat is what gave us bigger brains.

It's what gave us smaller guts,

although I'm still working
on mine, I suppose.

(Laughter)

It's what allowed us
to begin walking on two legs,

instead of all four limbs.

Meat is what made us intelligent.

Cooperative hunting
is what helped us develop language,

our social skills,
and again, our intelligence,

and we have used this intelligence

to create a world
where we can eat a lot of meat.

In 1900,

the total mass or weight of all
of the domesticated animals in the world,

meaning cows, horses, pigs, goats, sheep,

everything you could put in a fence
and keep right next to you,

was four times the weight
of all of the wild animals in the world.

Fast-forward 100 years,

and the total weight
of all domesticated animals in the world

is 25 times the amount
of wild animal mass.

Our love of meat has transformed the world
and will keep transforming it.

This is because, ever since
the end of World War II,

global incomes have been rising.

Starting in 1950,

meat consumption worldwide
was equal to 50 million tons.

Twenty-five years later, that had doubled
to more than 110 million tons.

Another 25 years, it doubled again
to 220 million tons of meat

eaten by everyone.

Ten years later, another 55 million tons,
to 275 million tons,

totaling an average of about 40 kilos
per person around the world.

Now, that level of meat consumption
is not the same everywhere.

Obviously, the more income a country has
the more meat they will eat.

That's why even before World War II,
and especially afterwards,

America has been the largest consumer
of meat for a long time,

followed by Brazil and Spain.

Also, developing countries

that have not yet sort of risen up
into developed-country status

still eat very low quantities of meat.

African countries like Nigeria and Egypt,

since the 1940s, have only seen
their consumption of meat levels double,

whereas a country like South Korea,
which has become much, much wealthier

in the decades since World War II,

has seen its level of meat consumption
multiply by 20 times.

In the next 40 or so years,

scientists estimate that worldwide
consumption of meat will jump up 55%.

That rise in meat consumption
is coming from developing countries

beginning to eat a lot more meat,

and hopefully, developed countries
slowly tapering off their intake,

maybe by doing things
like what I'm doing right now.

Every year, we kill 55 billion chickens,

3 billion ducks and turkeys,
1 billion sheep and goats,

300 million cattle.

In America alone,

we kill 24 million chickens
every single day.

Now, this is a lot of meat,

and we are going to keep creating
more and more of it to kill.

Take China, for instance.

China, in 1961,
had the average per capita rate

of less than four kilos per person.

Fifty years later, it had risen
to 57.5 kilograms per person

of meat intake in one year.

Researchers estimate that, by 2030,

China's intake of meat will rise
to 90 kilos per person,

two-thirds of that being pork.

And with all of this meat
being eaten in the world,

it takes up a lot of resources.

One kilo of meat requires
a whole lot of land and crops

to support that meat.

One kilo of beef requires
up to 50 square meters of land,

to produce the crops necessary
to feed that cow.

One kilo of pork requires
up to 12 square meters of land.

One kilo of chicken requires
up to ten square meters of land.

Now, we are rapidly running out of land
to feed all of these animals

that we so ravenously want to eat.

One quarter of all of the continental
surface that doesn't have ice

is already taken up by livestock raising,
meaning cows and other animals,

eating grass and wandering
around pastures and meadows.

It's the same amount of land
that is devoted to forests,

or at least, hopefully, will still be
remaining forests in the future.

One-third of all arable -
made suitable for farming -

one-third of all arable lands right now
is devoted to feed crops,

meaning crops that we grow specifically
to feed the meat that we want to eat.

In total, humans devote
eight times more land

to feeding the animals
that we want to eat

than we do to feeding ourselves.

Now, this brings us to South America.

China is running out of land

to feed its insatiable appetite for meat.

As I already mentioned,
China's meat consumption

is about 60 kilos per person
per year right now,

and two-thrids of that is devoted to pork.

Now, Chinese pigs do not have
enough land available in China

to grow the soybeans
or the corn that feed those pigs,

which means that China
has to import all of this food

to feed the pigs that it wants to eat.

And a lot of that food
comes from South America.

China buys one half
of the global market for soybean,

and it buys one-fifth
of all the corn made in the world.

It buys that soybean from countries
like Argentina, Chile, Brazil.

And one of the rapidly rising problems
that the world is facing

is that a lot of that land,

which is slowly being
turned into crop land

to produce soy to feed the pigs
that are in China,

is right now rain forest.

And so, deforestation is when rain forests
and other forests are cleared

in order to turn it into crop land
that can feed these animals.

And rain forests deforestation,
in particular, is very dangerous

because the rain forests are a sponge

for the greenhouse gases
that create global warming.

Right now,

the meat that we eat

creates more soybean,
which creates less rain forests,

which creates more greenhouse gases,

which create hotter temperatures
and weirder weather for all of us.

Now, let's talk about
the other feed crop, right?

Remember, there are two feed crops:
soybeans and corn.

Soybeans are grown
for the protein to feed these pigs.

Corn is grown for carbohydrates,

and almost all of the world's corn
is grown in America.

Now, American-made corn

is tremendously productive,

and the reason it's so productive
is because we pour lots and lots of oil,

and gasoline, and fertilizer
into that land

to create these amazing amounts of corn.

It takes about 50 gallons of oil
to create one acre of corn,

and all of that oil is used
to build fertilizer.

Fertilizer's magic ingredient is nitrogen.

Now, nitrogen is not very good
for the environment

in really large quantities,

and those are the quantities
that we are feeding our lands.

When nitrogen seeps into the soil,

it can enter our drinking water supply,

and that can be harmful for our health,
especially the health of little children.

However, the real problem
with nitrogen and water pollution

is when nitrogen leaks into the soil
and travels down into a river,

and travels down that river
and enters the ocean,

and enters shallow coastal waters,

like the Gulf of Mexico.

A huge portion of the nitrogen in America

has leaked into the Gulf of Mexico,

creating what's called eutrophication,

and eutrophication is what happens
when nitrogen enters water

and creates a massive growth of algae,
these big algae blooms.

And when all of that algae
enters a huge space in water,

it sucks up all of the oxygen,

leaving what are called hypoxic dead zones
where fish cannot breathe

and where all of the fish
and the sea life in that region dies.

And what America's amazing and incredible
sort of industrial factory farming

has done to the water
in the Gulf of Mexico

has created a hypoxic dead zone
that is as big as the state of New Jersey.

Now, that's not the only
sort of euthophication

that's happening in the globe.

Eutrophication is happening all over,
and it is a rising problem.

Next, I want to talk about meat
production's effects on the atmosphere,

on greenhouse gases and global warming.

Every kilo of meat, as we've seen,

has a particular price that we pay
to the environment.

Beef, in particular,
is the most expensive.

Now, meat production is responsible
for three primary greenhouse gases:

carbon dioxide, which, hopefully,
you are all aware of;

methane, which is produced
when cows burp and fart out,

(Laughter)

after eating lots and lots of grass
or, nowadays, corn -

Methane is 21 times more poisonous
than carbon dioxide.

Nitrous oxide is created
from animal manure

and from these nitrogen fertilizers
leaking into the soil and the atmosphere.

Nitrous oxide is even more
poisonous than methane.

Nitrous oxide is 310 times
more dangerous for the environment

than carbon dioxide.

Now, altogether,
meat production produces 10%

of all carbon dioxide
emissions worldwide.

It creates 40% of all of the released
methane into the environment,

nearly two-thirds of all human-caused
emissions of nitrous oxide.

Altogether, this means
that meat production

is the second highest leading cause
of greenhouse gases,

accounting for one-fifth of all
greenhouse gases produced in 2004,

and it's rising every year.

This is more than the greenhouse gases
produced by all of transportation,

meaning planes, trains, automobiles,
trucks, ships combined.

Let's look at American cows in particular.

Now, American cows produce
more greenhouse gases

than 22 million cars on the road per year.

And American cows produce
that many greenhouse gases

because Americans eat a lot of beef.

The average American eats
about three hamburgers per week,

which equals 156 hamburgers per year,

which, if you multiply
by the population of America,

means that Americans going
to McDonald's, and Wendy's,

and Burger King, and all the other
delicious restaurants that we have

are eating 40 billion hamburgers per year,

and those 40 billion hamburgers are
exacting a huge toll on our environment.

Every single quarter-pounder that we eat
needs 100 gallons of water,

1.2 pounds of grain, 1 cup of gasoline,

and creates 1.5 pounds of topsoil,

meaning the best kind of soil
for the most fertile crops,

that is lost due to erosion.

All of these sort of economic ingredients

pay a big price when it comes
to the environment.

Every quarter-pounder hamburger

accounts for about 6.5 pounds
of carbon dioxide equivalents.

That means that Americans'
massive hamburger habit -

we've got to have it! -

three hamburgers per week,
again, multiplied every American,

means that American hamburger habit

is the cause of about 158 million tons
of greenhouse gases

released into the atmosphere every year,

which is equal to 34 coal-fired
power plants running year-round.

Now, that is a big figure,
and that's all because of what we eat.

So now, I want to talk to you a little bit
about what you can do about this.

So, the reason I'm giving this talk

is because, a couple of months ago,
I started reading a book.

You know, I'm not a scientist,
I'm not an expert.

I'm just someone who's very hungry
and wanted to read about it.

(Laughter)

Alright?

It turns out that if you reduce -

let's say you eat two hamburgers a week.

If you start switching to a diet
of only one hamburger per week,

you are saving the equivalent of about
350 miles of one car taken off the road,

for a whole [year].

If all of us make the decision
to reduce our meat intake,

we can all make a difference.

I have decided to drop
my sort of meat intake

from 12 meals every week
to about four meals every week.

I can't give up meat
because it's way too good, right?

However, every small little choice
that we make matters.

I want to leave you with a quote,

by an American writer, poet,
and environmental activist

named Wendell Berry.

He says that "eating
is an agricultural act."

What he means by that

is that every decision we make
about what we are eating

affects what the farmers grow and produce.

It affects what
the restaurants serve to us.

It affects what our mom
will cook us for dinner, right?

Eating is a political act.

We can vote with our mouth
and with our stomachs,

and by choosing to eat less meat,
we can make the world a better place.

So, please, I would love it
if all of you guys left today thinking,

"OK, when I go to McDonald's,
I'm not going to choose the hamburger.

Instead, I'll choose the apple pies."

(Laughter)

Those are delicious.

Or, when you're out
at a restaurant with friends,

and you're all sharing a couple
of meat dishes and some veggie dishes,

switch out one of the pork dishes
for another vegetable dish.

Every little decision that we make
has an effect on the world.

So, together, let's eat better
and let's make the world a better place.

Alright. Thank you.

(Applause)