To keep up with high meat demand, over 85.4 billion animals are raised and slaughtered for meat each year worldwide. These animals often live in factory farms and are cruelly transported over long distances. They are forced to spend their life in crowded, dirty places, without sunlight, where they suffer from injuries, diseases and death.  Meat Exhaustion Day  alarms us of the day when the invisible costs of the current food system and especially the price animals pay for our eating habits. 

 Factory farming, which sustains this high meat consumption, is harmful to animals that are commodified, traded, mistreated, and slaughtered throughout a food production chain that causes immense suffering. 

• 94.9 billion land animals are globally exploited for the food production of meat, milk, and eggs every year. 
• About 74% of all farmed animals are estimated to be kept in factory farming conditions – which add up to the total of 70.2 billion land animals. 

Meat consumption levels are globally too high, especially in high-income countries knows as the Global North. Such overconsumption of meat is not only harmful for farmed animals across the world, it also drives the ecological and human public health crisis. 

• 1/6th of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions are caused directly by  animal agriculture 
• 77% of the world’s agricultural land is used to produce animal feed, driving massive worldwide deforestation. 
• 40% of the world’s freshwater is used to irrigate farm animal feed. 

Human health is threatened by high level of meat intake. The World Health Organization says that processed meat, like sausages and ham, are known to cause cancer. And red meat, like beef and pork, are ‘probable carcinogens’ . In addition, high meat intake is associated with diabetes, high cholesterol, and cardiovascular diseases. 

Public health is perpetually threatened by our current intensive and cruel meat production system. Factory farming puts animals in conditions that cause the onset and transmission of zoonotic diseases and that increases antimicrobial resistance. 

Demand an end to animal suffering in the food system. Be aware of factory farms near you and join actions against their local environmental and climate impacts. Join protests for climate and animal welfare and against new farms, like our FOUR PAWS office in the UK does.

Personally choose alternatives to meat. Reduce meat intake, adopt and encourage diets that fit within planetary and health boundaries. Replace meat with protein-rich legumes, and try out plant-based alternatives to meat.