Rising demand for meat bad for environment

 

A meat vendor on Nairobi’s Outer Ring Road, prepares meat for customers. In East Africa, Kenyans are more meat consumers than their counterparts in the region. Photo/Denish Ochieng 

By JEFF OTIENO The EastAfrican

In Summary

• In East Africa, Kenyans are more carnivorous than their counterparts in the region. In Africa, the top tier meat consumers are Sudan, South Sudan, Mauritania, Kenya and Botswana.
• The increase in meat consumption is bad news for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has been at the forefront of advocating a reduction in meat consumption, citing its adverse effects on the environment.
• More meat isn’t just clogging our circulations, it is also heating up the earth.

John ole Lankas says he rarely misses his favourite meal of boiled beef and milk. The 30-year-old tour guide was brought up on meat and milk, the main staple foods in the Maasai culture.

Back in Nairobi, men and women throng the popular Kenyatta Market at lunchtime for its nyama choma (roast meat) and ugali. George Gitau, a civil servant, is one of the many customers who frequent the smoke-filled cubicles to feast on roast meat. “I like roast beef, especially with ugali and kachumbari (tomato and onion salad),” said Mr Gitau.

It is people like Mr Lankas and Mr Gitau who are raising the global demand for meat every year. The livestock industry is considered one of the major causes of greenhouse gases and its expansion will definitely slow efforts to combat climate change.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), dairy and meat prices hit a record high due to increased demand last year.

The Meat Price Index, for example, averaged 188.1 points in December, slightly above its November level. Prices for bovine and pig meat moved higher, fuelled mainly by demand from China and Japan.

The situation is the same in East Africa, and there are no signs of the demand declining any time soon, as projections show the middle-class population increasing in the region.

The latest study published in the science journal Nature shows that people are becoming more carnivorous as their diets become more animal-based.

In fact, according to the study, the demand is increasing at a faster rate in developing economies as modernisation and a sedentary lifestyle take root.

China and India currently top the list of drivers of the global demand for meat. In East Africa, Kenyans are more carnivorous than their counterparts in the region.

The scientists from Europe who conducted the study, identified the world’s top meat consumers by calculating humanity’s trophic level, a metric used in ecology to position species in the food chain — rising from primary producers — green plants —through herbivores and omnivores to primary carnivores and large carnivores. The trophic level thus reflects the proportion of flesh and vegetation in the creature’s diet. Level one is green plants, whose diet is sunlight.

They managed to come up with the human trophic level for 176 countries using consumption patterns for each year from 1961 to 2009.

The scientists used data compiled by FAO from 102 types of food — from animal fat to root tubers. Using the metric, the researchers, led by Sylvain Bonhommeau, a French scientist, estimated that humanity’s global median trophic level was 2.21 in 2009, which put human beings at par with other omnivores, such as pigs and anchovies, in the global food web.

However, the scientists found an increase in fat and meat consumption, in post 2009, pushing up the global median human trophic by three per cent or about 0.6 points.

On a global scale, the leading meat consumers, according to the study, are Mongolia and the Scandinavian quartet of Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden.

France, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom and Germany are also leading meat consumers. United States and Brazil in the Americas and Australia are also big consumers.