A. Vegetarian, vegan, plant-based, etc. diets seem much more mainstream in the media these days, and meat substitutes are no longer just a bad joke. Yet, the typical American eater is the greatest carnivore in all the world, with Americans consuming more meat and other animal products (per capita) than any other country. And meat consumption continues to climb, reaching record highs every year for the last five years, and averaging about 220 lbs of retail meat per person per year. 

First, let’s look at the big picture. How many animals does it take to give us, as a nation, over 70 billion pounds of retail meat each year? The USDA’s “Livestock Slaughter” and “Poultry Slaughter” reports provide the following slaughter counts for 2019: 34.14 million cattle and calves, 129.91 million hogs, 9.33 BILLION chickens, 227.68 million turkeys, 27.55 million ducks, and 3.05 million sheep, goats, and bison. Thus, nearly 10 billion farm animals meet their end each year to feed American appetites, with the unfortunate chicken representing just over 95% of this total. If we divide these numbers by the US population, we arrive at about 30 farm animals per American per year, with 28 of these chickens.

But now let’s add up all the animals eaten over an average American lifetime of 78.5 years. Using 2019 numbers, we arrive at these sums, rounded to the nearest animal: 2,232 chickens, 54 turkeys, 7 ducks, 8 cows, and 31 pigs [Image 1].

Okay, this is all very grim, but suppose one avoided meat on one single day of the week, a la “Meatless Mondays,” or essentially equivalently, left meat out of just three meals each week. Over a lifetime, one would spare roughly 319 chickens, 8 turkeys, 1 duck, 1 cow, and at least 4 pigs [Image 2]. 

Of course, fully vegetarian and vegan diets are much better, but I’d also like to champion the lazy, imperfect vegetarian who slips here or there, or even makes it their practice to indulge, say, once a week. Flipping the numbers above, and having a “Meaty Monday” while abstaining the rest of the week demonstrates the enormous potential of a harm reduction approach that does not demand purity. It may always be better (in almost every sense) to consume less meat, but the gulf between a typical American diet and that of a true vegan is vast, and the great good that could come of narrowing this divide should not be dismissed.Universal adoption of the “six-days-a-week’’ vegetarian diet would push total US meat consumption below 1909 levels, and the lifetime body counts would change dramatically [Image 3].

For full article, see link in bio or go to https://medium.com/the-innovation/just-how-many-animals-do-americans-eat-409699db229c