Global per capita meat supply per year, kg<\/a><\/p>\n These findings, from an alliance of campaigning organisations called Stop Financing Factory Farming, come 20 years after the publication of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization\u2019s seminal report on animal farming, Livestock\u2019s Long Shadow<\/a>. The researchers have updated key aspects of the report, and found that most trends are moving in a negative direction.<\/p>\n Peter Stevenson, the chief policy adviser at the Compassion in World Farming campaign group, told the Guardian that even where progress had been made, for instance by reducing the amount of greenhouse gas produced per unit of meat<\/a>, it was often outweighed by the sheer increase in the livestock population. Emissions from livestock grew by more than a fifth between 2001 and 2023, according to the FAO. \u201cThere\u2019s been a huge increase, and it\u2019s simply because there are so many more livestock now,\u201d he said. About 33 billion livestock mammals and poultry have been added globally in 20 years: there were 94.9 billion farmed animals \u2013 the number slaughtered or used for milk or eggs \u2013 in 2023, up from 61.8 billion in 2006.<\/p>\n Increasing quantities of fertiliser are being used to produce animal feed, which along with the dumping of slurry is leading to dead zones in seas, with the biggest in the Gulf of Mexico<\/a>, where marine life is being wiped out across an area the size of Connecticut.<\/p>\n Merel van der Mark, the head of animal welfare and finance at the campaign group Sinergia Animal, said only a widespread shift away<\/a> from the meat-heavy diets<\/a> that have become the norm in many parts world would reverse the trend towards greater planetary damage.<\/p>\n
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