Shocking Amounts of Meat wasted Every Year

Friends of the Earth have researched and found that the amount of food we waste a year is staggeringly high, particularly in the meat sector where animals are fed, raised and slaughtered, only to be thrown away and not used.
The meat industry has a huge draining effect on the planet’s resources. Apparently, a third of all crops produced annually are used to feed cattle and other domesticated animals that are raised to eat. These crops often come from land that has been cleared of trees, especially in South America, and it is not unheard of for people and villages to be displaced so crops can be grown. Furthermore, what with travel and production, cattle contribute to approximately 15% of global greenhouse gasses.
And what for? Well for us to eat meat and dairy. But the sheer amount that gets wasted, mostly by the Western World, makes these shocking figures look even more criminal because of how much is used for nothing.
570,000 tonnes of fresh meat are supposedly wasted each year, most of which could be used, costing £1.3 billion. The inventively named book, Farmageddon, says the wasted meat is the equivalent to 50 million chickens, 1.5 million pigs, and 100,000 beef cattle, slaughtered just to be thrown in your bin.
Many organisations protest this, saying that food shortage isn’t as big an issue in the world, but food wastage is. The issue comes from the distribution of food to the countries where there is already plentiful. The food wasted in the richer countries would go a long, long way to alleviating poverty all over the globe.
Over-buying by both the consumer and the retailers that sell the meat is the cause of all this excess waste, so next time you go shopping, consider the impacts and try to buy only what you are going to use.

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