Consumption of Animal Products is Growing
Script
I’ve been running a pro-livestock blog for a while now, and I get a lot of responses from vegans that go something like this: “You’re just an outdated figure of the animal agriculture industry trying to save your dying profession. Veganism is the future. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
To this, I usually respond that strictly plant-based lifestyles constitute a whopping 2% of the developed world… while 10% of the population has tried a diet without animal products and ended up reverting back to eating meat. Surveys show that 84% of vegetarians and vegans return to eating meat. 53% don’t make it a year and over 30% don’t even make it three months (8). Anyone who listens to their bodies will bring back in meat, milk, and eggs after experiencing the very real health risks of going without.
However, in the back of my mind, I was always concerned that they were right. Was the demand for livestock products declining? Were they convincing more and more people to take up their lifestyle of lies and somehow making it stick? I did a little research, and was not surprised that they are absolutely wrong about this, as well! As always, all of those sources are in the description, so go fact check me.
The livestock industry is actually growing at impressive rates, and I’m here with 10 statistics to prove it.
One more thing before we get into it: For this post, I am focusing on America and Australia, because those are the two nations where veganism has grown the most, and also Canada, because that’s where many of my followers are from. If you would like to see statistics for a different country, please let me know and I can do a follow-up video about it.
Now, let’s get right into it:
I’ve been running a pro-livestock blog for a while now, and I get a lot of responses from vegans that go something like this: “You’re just an outdated figure of the animal agriculture industry trying to save your dying profession. Veganism is the future. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
To this, I usually respond that strictly plant-based lifestyles constitute a whopping 2% of the developed world… while 10% of the population has tried a diet without animal products and ended up reverting back to eating meat. Surveys show that 84% of vegetarians and vegans return to eating meat. 53% don’t make it a year and over 30% don’t even make it three months (8). Anyone who listens to their bodies will bring back in meat, milk, and eggs after experiencing the very real health risks of going without.
However, in the back of my mind, I was always concerned that they were right. Was the demand for livestock products declining? Were they convincing more and more people to take up their lifestyle of lies and somehow making it stick? I did a little research, and was not surprised that they are absolutely wrong about this, as well! As always, all of those sources are in the description, so go fact check me.
The livestock industry is actually growing at impressive rates, and I’m here with 10 statistics to prove it.
One more thing before we get into it: For this post, I am focusing on America and Australia, because those are the two nations where veganism has grown the most, and also Canada, because that’s where many of my followers are from. If you would like to see statistics for a different country, please let me know and I can do a follow-up video about it.
Now, let’s get right into it:
- Cheese consumption per capita in Canada grew 16.9% from 2009 to 2018. This number was 18.9% for butter and 22.7% for yogurt (2).
- American per capita consumption of yogurt increased by 2.2% from 2010 to 2017. This number was 16.3% for butter, 11.7% for cheese, and 6.2% for all dairy products combined (5).
- Per capita consumption of beef and veal in the United States grew 1.32% from 2017 to 2018. This number was 2.35% for pork, 1.31% for chicken meat, and 1.12% for turkey. The only meat commodity that decreased in consumption was lamb or mutton (3).
- From 2017 to 2018, American beef production rose by 5% in terms of pounds yielded, and exports rose by 10 million pounds from 2016 to 2017 and by 35 million pounds from 2017 to 2018 (3).
- Although, in Australia, beef, veal, and sheep meat consumption has declined because of their negative health perceptions, from 2010 to 2019, chicken consumption per capita grew by 31.4% and consumption of all types of meat remained very stable, increasing by 0.4% in those same nine years (4).
- The Canadian poultry industry grew in dollar value by 5.3% from 2017 to 2018 (1).
- From 2016 to 2017, Australian chicken production grew by 11 million birds and 8,000 tonnes (4).
- Even with the added demand, Australian chicken exports increased from 2010 to 2018 by 48% in terms of dollars generated and by 44.7% in terms of tonnes of meat (4).
- From 2016 to 2017, seafood consumption per capita in America grew by 7.4% (6).
- Australian seafood consumption has grown, on average, 1% per year since 2004 (7).
- https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3210011701
- https://aimis-simia-cdic-ccil.agr.gc.ca/rp/index-eng.cfm?action=pR&r=263&pdctc=
- https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/84377/ldpm-277.pdf?v=42934
- http://www.chicken.org.au/facts-and-figures/#Production
- https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/dairy-data/
- https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-trade/americans-eating-a-lot-more-seafood-according-to-nfi-s-new-top-10-list
- http://www.fao.org/in-action/globefish/market-assets/countries/aus/australia-trade/en/
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/most-vegetarians-lapse-after-only-year-180953565/
Thank you Purple Planet Music for the royalty free song! The song I used was Love Life.