Cheap meat

Cheap meat is a term used to describe relatively inexpensive meat (e.g. fatty cuts of lamb or mutton)[1] or to indicate that the consumer price of meat does not include the overall costs of industrial meat production. The term cheap meat is then either related to subsidies,[2] to hidden costs[3] or to non-material costs ("moral cost") of meat production. Non-material costs can be related to issues such as animal welfare (e.g. treatment of animals, over-breeding).[4][5][6] The term is used by critics of the meat industry.[7]

The meat industry is subsidized with billions of dollars by governments who support their meat industries. The OECD estimates the total "producer support" in OECD countries for 2012 as follows: 18bn USD for beef and veal, 7.3bn USD for pigmeat, 6.5bn USD for poultry and 1bn USD for sheepmeat (provisional numbers).[8] Hidden costs of meat production can be related to the environmental impact of meat production and to the effect on human health (such as resistant antibiotics).[9]

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ Deborah Gewertz, Frederick Errington, Cheap Meat: Flap Food Nations in the Pacific Islands, University of California Press, 2010. ISBN 0520260937
  2. ↑ Deutsche Welle, Agriculture – The high cost of cheap meat, January, 11 2013
  3. ↑ Meat Atlas 2014 – Facts and figures about the animals we eat, chapter: The hidden cost of steak, page 20, download Meat Atlas as pdf
  4. ↑ The Guardian, Why cheap meat costs the Earth, 4 September 2013
  5. ↑ Huffington Post / RollingStone, Animal Cruelty Is The Price We Pay For Cheap Meat, 12/10/2013
  6. ↑ ABC Australia, How much is cheap meat really costing us?, 21 Jun 2013
  7. ↑ Chicago tribune, The costs of cheap meat – Critics of factory farms say we pay a high price for low-cost food, September 24, 2010
  8. ↑ OECD, Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2013, 2013, p. 317, table: "OECD: Producer Single Commodity Transfers (USD)"
  9. ↑ The New York Times, The High Cost of Cheap Meat, June 2 2011
  10. ↑ The Guardian, Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat by Philip Lymbery – review, 31 January 2014
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