Meat price
History
After the industrialisation of livestock farming (about 50 years ago), production of meat as well as consumption (and thus demand) increased greatly. We now eat about twice the amount of meat we did in the early 1960s and well before the 1960s, it was considered a treat.[1]
Factors influencing the price of meat
Factors influencing the price of meat include supply and demand, subsidies,[3] hidden costs,[4], taxes, quotas or non-material costs ("moral cost") of meat production. Non-material costs can be related to issues such as animal welfare (e.g. treatment of animals, over-breeding).[5][6][7] Hidden costs of meat production can be related to the environmental impact of meat production and to the effect on human health (such as resistant antibiotics).[8] Critics of the meat industry often point to these aspects as a problem.[9]
See also
- Livestock price
- Intensive animal farming
- Organic agriculture
- Local food
- Factory farming divestment
- Food vs. feed
- Fodder
- Wagyu
- Slow food
- Draft animal: multi-role animals
- Meat analogue
- Meat-free days
Bibliography
- Lymbery, Philip. Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. ISBN 1408846446[10]
Further reading
References
- Meat the past, present and future?
- Deborah Gewertz, Frederick Errington, Cheap Meat: Flap Food Nations in the Pacific Islands, University of California Press, 2010. ISBN 0520260937
- Deutsche Welle, Agriculture – The high cost of cheap meat, January, 11 2013
- Meat Atlas 2014 – Facts and figures about the animals we eat, chapter: The hidden cost of steak, page 20, download Meat Atlas as pdf
- The Guardian, Why cheap meat costs the Earth, 4 September 2013
- Huffington Post / RollingStone, Animal Cruelty Is The Price We Pay For Cheap Meat, 12/10/2013
- ABC Australia, How much is cheap meat really costing us?, 21 Jun 2013
- The New York Times, The High Cost of Cheap Meat, June 2 2011
- Chicago tribune, The costs of cheap meat – Critics of factory farms say we pay a high price for low-cost food, September 24, 2010
- The Guardian, Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat by Philip Lymbery – review, 31 January 2014