Skillful Means — the Challenges of China's Encounter
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Skillful Means The Challenges of China’s Encounter with Factory Farming ntil relatively recently in human history, regular con- products, more than nine times the human population: 4.3 billion sumption of meat was limited to the wealthy elite. The mammals (cows, domestic buffalo, sheep, goats, and pigs) and 58.4 Upoor ate it only on special occasions, since their ani- billion poultry (primarily chickens). That represents a 24 percent mals—pigs, sheep, goats, cows, chickens, and other birds—were growth in mammals used for food production and a 40 percent more valuable alive than dead. But over the past sixty years, vast increase in poultry since 1995. If current trends persist, by 2050 changes in agricultural production in industrialized countries, in- the global livestock population could exceed 100 billion—more cluding use of chemical-based fertilizers and adoption of large, than ten times the anticipated human population (9.2 billion). confined, factory-like facilities that house thousands of animals, Food prices rose sharply around the world, up 23 percent have made meat widely available and affordable. In recent de- overall in 2007 compared to 2006. Grain prices have risen even cades, this “livestock revolution” has spread to Latin America, more, by an average of 42 percent. While this phenomenon has Asia, and to a lesser extent, Africa. many causes, one is the steady growth in demand for grain to feed Urbanization and increasing affluence have made meat, farmed animals. Global demand for meat is expected to expand milk, eggs, and cheese part of millions of people’s daily meals. by 35 percent by 2015 and animal agriculture has become part Meat and dairy production are rising by more than two percent and parcel of the process of globalization. each year. Since 1980, global production of meat has more than Meat and dairy production already uses 30 percent of doubled and in the developing world (also known as the global Earth’s land surface, 70 percent of agricultural land, and accounts South) it has tripled. Still, consumption levels are far from equal for eight percent of the water humans use, mostly to irrigate between the industrialized and developing worlds. People in the feed crops. The global livestock industry is, according to the UN global North (industrialized regions) eat, on average, three or Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), “probably the largest four times as much meat as those in the global South. But the sectoral source of water pollution,” and one of the key agents of gap is narrowing. More than half the world’s meat is now both deforestation. In the Amazon, for example, 70 percent of cleared produced and consumed in developing regions. forest is now pasture; feed crops including industrial soy, grown As the world’s population grows, and with it demand for for livestock, cover much of the rest. animal protein, enormous and unprecedented increases in the Meat and dairy production also have a direct relationship number of farmed animals have resulted. In 2006, more than 60 with global climate change: fully 18 percent of global green- billion animals were used globally to produce meat and dairy house gas (GHG) emissions stem from the livestock industry, Brighter Green 1 The questions this paper seeks to explore are: Will China be able to match the meat and dairy consumption of the U.S., given the ecological, economic, public health, and animal welfare realities of the industrial production model? And, when all the facts are on the table, will it want to? outstripping emissions from all the world’s transportation sys- person each year, and is continuing to rise. That’s about half the tems combined. In addition, as much as one-third of GHGs can annual meat consumption per capita in the U.S., which hovers be traced to agriculture and changes in land use attributed to around 220 pounds. livestock and crop production. Given its role in climate change, In yuan terms, meat is the second largest segment of deforestation, land degradation, and water pollution, among China’s retail food market. Western-style meat culture has gone other ecological ills, the FAO concluded that the livestock in- mainstream. On warm evenings in Beijing, when couples foxtrot dustry “may well be the leading player in the reduction of bio- in a public square, they do so beneath an enormous billboard diversity” in the world. for an American steakhouse chain; U.S. fast food outlets are now Nonetheless, in 2008, world meat output is expected commonplace in China’s cities; and fast food is a $28-billion-a- to grow to 281 million tons. About two-thirds of this rise in year business in China. By 2008, McDonald’s, a major sponsor of output stems from Asia, particularly China, where perhaps the Olympics, had more than 800 restaurants in China, with at nowhere else is the shift from diets based on plant foods to least a hundred more set to open by the time the games began. those much heavier on meat more striking or more visible. An China is the world’s second largest advertising market, after the emerging economic and political giant, China is now the world’s U.S. and, like many retailers, success in China is essential to fast largest producer—and consumer—of agricultural products. food corporations’ bottom lines. The tagline on McDonald’s- As its rapid economic expansion has allowed more and more China’s Olympic-themed ads practically declares this fact: “I’m Chinese to enter the new middle class, meat has moved from lovin’ it when China wins” it reads. McDonald’s will operate the side of the dinner plate to the center. Urbanization is also four outlets in the Olympic venues: one in the Olympic Village, a factor. Nearly half (46 to 47 percent) of China’s people live in another in the Main Press Center, and two more open to urban areas for more than six months a year, and urban Chinese Olympics spectators. consume more meat and dairy products than do those in rural parts of China. STRAINS SHOWING The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing will showcase a China has also opened its doors to investments by major country that, only two generations after a devastating national multinational meat and dairy producers, as well as animal feed famine, is eating increasingly high on the food chain. In 2002, the corporations, including Tyson Foods, Smithfield, and Novus number of calories the average Chinese took in from animal International. Keen to increase output, these corporations and products daily was 618, a nearly fourfold increase from the 174 the Chinese government are championing the intensive systems daily calories from animal products documented in 1980. of raising farmed animals that have become commonplace in industrialized countries: small, battery cages for egg-laying hens; MEAT EVERY DAY: LOvin’ IT metal stalls for pigs; sheds holding thousands of meat or broiler For many modern, particularly urban Chinese, meat and dairy chickens; and feedlots for dairy and meat cattle. While this products have come to signify wealth, status, modernity, free- industrial model of animal agriculture is promoted as an efficient, dom, and a welcome escape from the hardscrabble lives their modern means of production, such operations bring with them parents and grandparents—or they themselves—led in the significant environmental and social costs—costs that have become countryside. In the past, “children looked forward to the spring increasingly evident in recent years, particularly in the U.S. festival, partly because it was fun, but also because it was a A multi-year, multi-disciplinary commission established by chance to eat meat,” Zhang Xiuwen, a farmer turned Beijing the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Johns Hopkins University’s tennis coach, told a UK newspaper. “But,” he continued, “now Bloomberg School of Public Health recently concluded that the we can eat meat every day if we want. It has become part of negative effects of U.S. industrial farm animal production are “too our lives.” great” and the scientific evidence “too strong to ignore.” In a In the past ten years, consumption of China’s most popular preface to the Commission’s final report, its executive director, meat, pork, has doubled. In 2007, China raised well over half a Robert P. Martin, wrote: “The present system of producing food billion pigs. Since 1980, overall meat consumption in China has animals in the United States is not sustainable and presents quadrupled to its current level, 54 kilograms or 119 pounds a an unacceptable level of risk to public health and damage to 2 Brighter Green the environment, as well as unnecessary harm to the animals raised for food.” China, Livestock, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Even though China is not yet a fully fledged “factory farm nation,” the strains from its fast-growing livestock sector, hina, home to about 20 percent of the world’s population, is responsible for and burgeoning appetite for animal-based Cabout 17.3 percent of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases. In 2008, China protein, are showing—in massive water surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s leading emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2), ac- pollution, soil degradation, rising rates of cording to a study by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. Per capita obesity and chronic disease, risks to food emissions of CO2 in China have more than doubled, from 2.1 tons of CO2 equivalent security and food safety, pressure on small in 1990 to 5.1 tons today. In examining China’s contribution to climate change, an farmers, and declining farm animal welfare. exploration of its rapidly growing livestock sector is important.