Agriculture: Meat production

Leon just got back home. He’s so hungry! He can’t wait to eat chicken nuggets! Or hot chicken wings! Or both!

Mhm, that sounds delicious — but have you ever wondered, Leon, how meat ends up on your plate? All meat starts out as a live animal, usually on a farm. A chicken farmer usually buys chicks from a hatchery, then raises and feeds them, as they grow into chickens. Sometimes, chickens are raised on free-range farms, where they can roam freely. But in most cases, chickens are raised indoors in very large numbers, in thousands!

On such industrial farms, technology usually controls the temperature, light or amount of feed that animals receive. This allows chickens to grow faster, which means higher profits for the farmer. Once the chickens grow big enough, they are killed - slaughtered. Most farmers don’t slaughter animals themselves. They send them to a slaughter house or else to a processing plant.

At both places, live chickens are unloaded from lorries, then stunned, so they fall unconscious and don’t feel pain. Stunning is usually done by electric shock, or by enclosing the chickens in a chamber, from which oxygen is slowly removed. Once the chickens are unconscious, they are killed and de-feathered. The head and internal organs are removed. Chicken heads, feet, maybe heart and liver, can later be sold as delicacies, or made into pet food.

Raw meat might contain parasites or bacteria that cause illness. So chicken meat needs to be tested thoroughly to make sure it is safe to eat. Maintaining meat at low temperatures helps prevent the growth of bacteria. So, before chicken meat moves further down the production line, it is rapidly cooled, and kept at low temperatures throughout the process. Next, chicken meat is cut up and portioned into chicken breast, legs and wings.

The meat is sent down different processing lines, depending what product it will become: raw portioned meat, chicken sausages, ground chicken, chicken nuggets, for instance. Once the final product is ready, it is packaged and marked with a batch number and expiration date. Now, the chicken is ready to be delivered to stores, and to your home. There is a lot of work involved in producing meat. And it’s not just chicken produced this way.

Beef from cows, pork from pigs, and lamb from sheep, are produced on a large scale nowadays. This makes meat cheaper and more available around the world. In the last 50 years, average meat consumption per person has nearly doubled, meat production has more than tripled! This dramatic increase has impact on the environment. Animals, and plants grown as fodder to feed animals, all take up land.

Land which could be used for something else. Forests are often cut down to make farmland or grazing land. This affects the climate. Meat production is also a significant source of pollution. Machines on farms and in processing plants run on fuels.

This contributes to air pollution and global warming. Large quantities of animal waste cause water and soil pollution. Meat is a source of protein and other important nutrients. It’s a big part of many traditions and cultures. As meat production and consumption increase, it’s important to be aware of how meat arrives at your table and its impact on the planet.

This way, you can make well-informed decisions about how much meat you want to eat.