Published 07/09/2012

On average, Americans eat three times more meat than people in other countries.¹ But what would happen if the rest of the world caught up? Could our planet cope?

This short animation takes a look at the "all-American" hamburger and highlights the hidden costs.

Quick take-away facts:¹

• From the end of WWII to the mid-1970s, beef consumption per person doubled in the US.
• Livestock farming uses 30% of the Earth’s entire land area (that’s counting pastures and land used to grow grain for feed).
• Livestock production is a major contributor to greenhouse-gas pollution – right up there with cars, planes and trains.
• The way hamburgers are manufactured means that E. coli contamination from a single carcass can potentially be spread to thousands to burgers.
• If all Americans avoided meat or cheese for one day every week, it would have the same climate-change prevention effect as taking 7.6 million cars off the road for one year.

Our sources

1. The Center for Investigative Reporting have provided a referenced transcript for the video