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Real-time estimates of animals consumed by humans worldwide

48 points by speckx 10mo ago

CurrentB 10mo ago
I went vegan six months ago after being exposed to numbers like this and thinking about it a bit. In particular, imagining extending the empathy I felt for my pets to all these other unseen animals that really aren't much different. I thought I'd try it for a week to see how hard it was. It was so easy that I never looked back. These numbers all could be pretty close to zero and we humans would still thrive just as much as we are now, but causing much less suffering to other beings.
- 7777332215 10mo ago
  Would you raise your own animals to kill and eat? Animals eat other animals, it's nature.
  - xnx 10mo ago
    Murder and rape are also part of nature, but humans can reflect and consider the effects of their actions in ways other animals can't.
  - CurrentB 10mo ago
    Personally that would be even worse for me, though I understand maybe "better" on a societal scale by some metrics. To feed a being every day and care for it, to gain its trust, to appreciate their individuality, then to have them killed when they reach some fraction of its potential lifespan, I just don't want to do that. I'm perfectly happy eating legumes.
    - 7777332215 10mo ago
      I'm not sure if it would be better on a societal scale in terms of pollution and efficiency, but instead in ethical concerns with how the animals were treated. What about raising cows or chickens, then consuming their milk and eggs?
      - CurrentB 10mo ago
        Presumably you only would acquire female chickens to lay eggs. What happened to the male ones? (I don't recommend googling this). What do you do with the cow when its milk yield drops after several pregnancies? what do you do with the male calves? Just keep them all as pets? I think there are situations I could contrive where I'd say yeah its fine ethically to eat these things, but the general case still has victims. And again, since maybe the first week without them, I truly haven't missed milk or eggs or anything else after eliminating them from my diet. Plant options are pretty good too and there are plenty of plants.
        7777332215 10mo ago
        Use the whole of it. Kill them, eat them, use their bones and hide. Why is okay to kill a tree to build a home, kill a plant to eat, but not okay to kill an animal to eat? Is it okay to kill a cockroach or a rat in your home? Does the biological complexity of the organism make it more or less okay to kill it?
        CurrentB 10mo ago
        > Why is okay to kill a tree to build a home, kill a plant to eat, but not okay to kill an animal to eat? > Does the biological complexity of the organism make it more or less okay to kill it? The ability to suffer is the distinguishing/relevant factor. We all know what suffering feels like and we know that animals have the capacity to suffer. We don't really know that trees do. I want to reduce the suffering I am responsible for. > Is it okay to kill a cockroach or a rat in your home? I probably would get rid of infestations in my home and feel bad about it. It's not about having a 100% perfect record with not killing animals. It's about striving to minimize animal suffering as much as practicable. You're never going to reduce this to 0 animals. But you can get to 95% better than the average human pretty easily if you want.
        seec 10mo ago
        [flagged]
  - hshdhdhj4444 10mo ago
    Animals do a whole bunch of things to other animals we wouldn’t consider acceptable. Cannibalism, eating your young, rape, etc. I’m not sure why killing for food is the one place we should choose to define our values and ethics based on what animals in the wild do.
    - robcohen 10mo ago
      The problem I have with being vegetarian is that you can't prove that it's actually healthier, because the current state of dietary science is pretty poor. Even if you could, you would also need to explain all of the evolutionary problems that could come from some humans going vegetarian while others don't. What if being vegetarian makes you smaller and weaker physically (perhaps the case in some vegetarian countries now). If you had the answer, and it was clear a diet consisting of vegetables causes reduction in physical size, then I have to ask: Would you want your kids to be shorter and physically weaker than you are?
      - gruez 10mo ago
        >Would you want your kids to be shorter and physically weaker than you are? As someone who eats meat, that's probably one of the worse arguments against vegetarianism/veganism I've heard. If eating animals is immoral, sure why not? If pillaging your neighbors makes your society better off, do you think a good objection to "maybe we shouldn't pillage our neighbors" is "Would you want your kids to be shorter and physically weaker than you are"?
        robcohen 9mo ago
        The logical entailment is eventually your lineage will be wiped out on some timescale if they cannot compete. I guess this argument in null and void if you believe violence is obsolete.
      - CurrentB 10mo ago
        Do you want your kids to have colon cancer or heart disease because there is pretty strong evidence to suggest red meat contributes to these. And there's much stronger evidence for that than there is that suggests that vegetarian kids will be shorter and physically weaker (in fact I don't think there is much good evidence at all suggesting that). Do you also have a problem with red meat?
  - paprikanotfound 10mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
  - mmooss 10mo ago
    There are many good arguments I think, but not this one. Nature is eating your neighbor's children; it's starvation, epidemics, and massive forest fires; it's unrestrained homicide and rape; it's leaving your physically weakened child to die; it's eating the head of your spouse; it's survival of the fittest; ... (you get my point). The other animals in nature are not my standard of behavior. In a sense, the point of any culture is to exceed nature and by as much as possible.
  - midtake 10mo ago
    Yes. That is far more harmonious with nature than using machines of industry to enslave animal species and slaughter them on profit-driven schedules. Don't get me wrong, I eat meat, but I also understand that the grand majority of fellow meat-eaters have never hunted or reared livestock. Instead they are complete soyboys (ironic isn't it) who merely consume the output from the machine. These same beta cucks will open their mouths to screech "but animals eat animals in the wild!" Completely missing how unnatural an industrialized slaughter machine is. The only reason they are enslaved is that they lack organization and understanding. Had they those two, they could kill us all.
- barbazoo 10mo ago
  Even just being aware of one’s privilege to eat animals or even animal products and the impact on other living beings for our “pleasure”. A little more humility would go a long way in terms of animal welfare.
  - MisterTea 10mo ago
    > one’s privilege to eat animals What privileges us vs a crow, catfish or lion?
    - barbazoo 10mo ago
      We don't have to anything for it. Someone artificially inseminates the animal, raises the animal, keeps it in mostly in terrible conditions we would cry about if we saw them, drives them somewhere for slaughter, processes the remains until it looks appetizing for you to just heat up and eat. All for couple of dollars per pound. Unbelievable privilege of not seeing the suffering involved. Animals go out and kill other animals for food, have to deal with the family and friends of the animal it just killed, compete with other animals for the meat, etc. Much more vulnerable and involved.
      - doodlebugging 10mo ago
        But what about raising a crop right up to the point where it's helicoptered its genitals enough to have found a gullible pollinator or sprayed it's pollen widely enough to produce the seed for the next generation and then killing it, thus cutting it down in the prime of its life with no opportunity for that plant's descendants to sprout and grow (especially if they are Monsanto seeds) and reach the point where they too can wag their privates while looking for PILFs (plants ...)? Everything has to eat something. Humans are omnivorous. We have a choice and some choose to base their diets on plant consumption while others eat a little meat and still others eat mostly meat. It's all okay. The universe is working as intended. Villifying those who choose a different diet than yours seems like a petty exercise by people who need to invent a reason to feel better about themselves. If you enjoy and love the foods that you eat then you are doing it right. There is no requirement and no need to proselytize about your choices. We have enough other religions who have forgotten the main message to deal with. It will be just as easy for people to tune yours out.
- rmah 10mo ago
  I disagree.
  - CurrentB 10mo ago
    With what exactly?
    - rmah 10mo ago
      All of it.
blell 10mo ago
I understand this kind of people is allergic to “per capita”, but really, showing a list of consumption by region when the regions are of such different sizes is next to worthless.
- barbazoo 10mo ago
  Per capita would be great. The absolute numbers are still mind boggling.
- welferkj 10mo ago
  I'm "allergic to per capita" specifically in cases where it doesn't matter but keeps getting brought up as a bad faith retort. As an example, it doesn't matter who emits CO2 or where from, since we're all emitting it into the same air, and the only thing that matters is the absolute amount. Similarly, I imagine it's cold comfort for domestic animals in subsaharan Africa that their torturers, rapists, and murderers are marginally less prolific than those in other regions.
xnx 10mo ago
I don't consume animal products, but -while well intentioned- I'm not sure a dashboard with these types of huge numbers does much as an advocacy tool. People are ill equipped to put such large numbers in context, let alone ~40 of them. Like a slide deck, better to limit to one number and one message per page(/screen). Otherwise, it's just a data dump.
- graemep 10mo ago
  I do not see the point of large numbers. If its not OK to eat meat, then its not OK to eat one. If is OK, why does scale make it not OK? I did not expect Asia to be quite so dominant. I did expect, but interesting to see confirmation, that the Americas grow so much grain for animal feed.
  - jampekka 10mo ago
    The scale is highly relevant for environmental issues. https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture Edit: replaced scattered numbers with a proper source.
    - margalabargala 10mo ago
      The scale is only relevant when adjusted for animal size. Raising and eating 10000 shrimp is a lot less impactful than raising and eating 10000 tuna. Counting them both as "one animal" means environmental issues is not something the page cares to illustrate.
  - rmah 10mo ago
    Most people live in asia. thus most foods are both produced and consumed in... you guessed it asia.
    - graemep 10mo ago
      That does not follow because there are cultural and economic variations. You will notice big variations in what animals are eaten.
big-chungus4 10mo ago
[flagged]
seanwilson 10mo ago
There's also the significant cost to climate change because growing crops to feed to animals instead of eating crops directly loses the majority of calories, but it gets ignored because doing something about it is going to be unpopular: https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture > More than three-quarters of global agricultural land is used for livestock, despite meat and dairy making up a much smaller share of the world's protein and calories. > Despite the vast land used for livestock animals, they contribute quite a small share of the global calorie and protein supply. Meat, dairy, and farmed fish provide just 17% of the world’s calories and 38% of its protein. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets > Livestock are fed from two sources – lands on which the animals graze and land on which feeding crops, such as soy and cereals, are grown. How much would our agricultural land use decline if the world adopted a plant-based diet? > Research suggests that if everyone shifted to a plant-based diet, we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%.
- zahlman 10mo ago
  > but it gets ignored because doing something about it is going to be unpopular It gets talked about all the time.
  - CurrentB 10mo ago
    Do you think it widely leads to behavior changes among people that support environmental causes?
    - zahlman 10mo ago
      Not really; but talking about it more also seems like it will have approximately zero marginal benefit, and trying to insinuate that other people are immoral is probably net counterproductive.
    - renewiltord 10mo ago
      In the US 8 out of the top 10 environmental organizations with most membership oppose nuclear power broadly and the majority oppose wind and solar locally so I think we can safely conclude that climate change is not important to US environmental causes. The primary work by US environmentalists (or at least the popular ones) is in ensuring rich people’s homes abut publicly-maintained parks.
davidmurdoch 10mo ago
Something interesting to see is a version of if this that displayed a % of total animals instead of absolutes.
- nickkell 9mo ago
  What would make it interesting? Most of the animal mass on earth is livestock for human consumption. More animals are reared to replace the ones that are slaughtered. It might be interesting for wild fish, but I'm not sure if there are accurate numbers for the wild populations remaining.
schlap 10mo ago
Hell yeah, live leaderboard of humans. Add a K/D Ratio next plz
Cu3PO42 10mo ago
I personally find the "animals killed since you opened this page" number to be the most unsettling. YTD numbers are so large, I find them hard to process. If you choose to eat meat, please be aware of the conditions most of these animals exist in and how they die. I'll spare you more numbers, because they don't do the cruel reality justice anyway. Instead, I'll leave you with some video material: https://animalequality.org/blog/factory-farming-facts/ https://animalequality.org/blog/factory-farming-facts/
- margalabargala 10mo ago
  The quantity of animals killed scales inversely with size. Most of the "animals killed since opening this page" are shrimp. I am open to hearing evidence that shrimp have the capacity to care about the conditions in which they live and die but as of now I don't believe they do.
slifin 10mo ago
I am going to continue eating meat and plants but that's because the choice between eating plants or meat misses the point The issue here is the industrialisation of the land and the shortcuts that farmers are doing that essentially kill the land, animals and plants in a way that is unmaintainable The way this should work is animals should be herded on to land to eat and poo, once the grasses are nearly eaten the animals should be rotated on to other fields, the new grass regrows in this fresh environment because it has no competitor and plenty of fertiliser this process kills weeds and rejuvenates soil ready for planting This mimics the nomadic lives that early humans would have led, following their herds of animals to fresh new pastures Then the farmers worked out they didn't need animals to do this process they could just plow their fields and then that gets rid of the weeds, not quite as good as animals doing it in terms of soil health but effective and quick Then the farmers were sold weed killers which meant they didn't need to plow their field, they just needed to buy GMO glyphosate resistant seeds and flood their fields with glyphosate, some types of crops are even killed close to harvest with glyphosate so it'll be in your food at high rates for certain crops The problem with this approach is glyphosate is assumed safe because its mechanism for killing weeds is based on a system we don't directly have as humans, but our gut bacteria do, it also competes with glycine in our bodies used to create proteins, I wouldn't want to drink glyphosate from the bottle but it's being added to my food so effectively I do that It also degrades the soil quality into dust, instead of being full of earth worms which would normally feed the birds, the local wildlife etc So these mono culture fields are just turning huge swathe of land into sterile dust bowls that exacerbate climate change Then these crops are either sold directly to me as a plant eater or given to the animals to make them bulk up and sick As someone who eats a lot of meat I want my animals to be grass fed (or their natural diet) I don't want them to have to take antibiotics because the farmer needed to bulk them up with cheap glyphosate laced mono culture grains and cereals to get more profit out of the animal So if you are vegan you cannot just wipe your hands of this problem because you're still contributing by eating these mono crops - What we really need from consumers is for them to care how their plants and animals are raised and not accept glyphosate or other weed killers in their supply chains Animals should be pasture raised from a moral point of view but also a health and climate point of view
- CWIZO 10mo ago
doodlebugging 10mo ago
I thought it was a page about recipes for cannibals or tuberculosis tracking from the name. Luckily the title helped clarify the misleading website name. Y'all some hungry mofos. That counter zipped thru 13 million poor tasty, little critters while I was on that page. The cattle numbers seemed low relative to others. Maybe because they are larger and each feeds more individuals. What about normal game animals like deer, squirrel, wild turkey, rabbit, dove, quail, pigeon, etc? I think this site only gives a glimpse of the true scope of animal deliciousness. I also disagree with the numbers since most look they are wild-ass guesses intended to inflate or mislead so as to cause those of us who consume all this delicious meat to switch to more sensitive plants, insects, or algae, or fungi. Imagine the numbers you'd have to report if you were accurately reporting seed consumption of typical grains, legumes, leafy vegetables, herbs (which are delicious with meats), and spices and all the other things that vegetarians or vegans profess such deep attractions to that they can ignore all the destruction wrought by the agricultural practices relevant to their foodstocks. Some of the agricultural lands being tallied are used for growing crops like soybeans for consumption as pseudo-meat by vegans who couldn't be morally outraged enough about habitat loss for their beany things to worry about their own destructive impact on mother earth. What happens to the collective consciousness of a fungal colony when someone comes along and rips off a few warty things for their supper? Do you think that the fungus stores a memory of the event and the participants so that once they finally hit the dirt that memory can pass along the subterranean chain so that the fungus can move in return the favor?
- zahlman 10mo ago
  > I thought it was a page about recipes for cannibals or tuberculosis tracking from the name. Luckily the title helped clarify the misleading website name. Agreed. It's called "human consumption", but it neither relates to the consumption of humans, nor the phenomenon in humans called "consumption", nor does it cover all consumption by humans, or even all food consumption. > Y'all some hungry mofos. Less than one animal per person per day, and the overwhelming majority of them are fish and invertebrate sea life (two thirds of that in the Asia-Pacific region).
  - doodlebugging 10mo ago
lastwalz 10mo ago
[flagged]
fooker 10mo ago
If these numbers seem extraordinarily high to you, try and estimate the scale of deforestation it would take to replace all this food with grains and vegetables. (Hint: about 5-10x the available fertile land on earth)
- lucyjojo 10mo ago
  water lentils https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMEMC74OxAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMEMC74OxAQ
  - fooker 10mo ago
    Neat, didn't know about this.
- Uriopass 10mo ago
  What do you think those animals eat?
- CurrentB 10mo ago
  Someone else linked these in the replies, but that's simply not true. Most land taken up to grow plants is used to inefficiently feed livestock. Feeding humans plants only would be much much more efficient in terms of land use. https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
  - fooker 10mo ago
    > Most land taken up to grow plants is used to inefficiently feed livestock. Because it is just not suitable for growing crops that humans can realistically consume. If you can figure out a way to change this at scale, it'll be a discovery on par with Haber's process w.r.t. impact on human civilization. I think we can eventually get there, as evidenced by billionaires and real estate companies buying up bad farmland over the last decade or so.
    - 9mo ago
pseudohadamard 10mo ago
Dammit, misread the title and was looking forward to a count of humans consumed by animals.

48 points by speckx 10mo ago

I went vegan six months ago after being exposed to numbers like this and thinking about it a bit. In particular, imagining extending the empathy I felt for my pets to all these other unseen animals that really aren't much different. I thought I'd try it for a week to see how hard it was. It was so easy that I never looked back. These numbers all could be pretty close to zero and we humans would still thrive just as much as we are now, but causing much less suffering to other beings.

7777332215 10mo ago
Would you raise your own animals to kill and eat? Animals eat other animals, it's nature.
- xnx 10mo ago
  Murder and rape are also part of nature, but humans can reflect and consider the effects of their actions in ways other animals can't.
- CurrentB 10mo ago
  Personally that would be even worse for me, though I understand maybe "better" on a societal scale by some metrics. To feed a being every day and care for it, to gain its trust, to appreciate their individuality, then to have them killed when they reach some fraction of its potential lifespan, I just don't want to do that. I'm perfectly happy eating legumes.
  - 7777332215 10mo ago
    I'm not sure if it would be better on a societal scale in terms of pollution and efficiency, but instead in ethical concerns with how the animals were treated. What about raising cows or chickens, then consuming their milk and eggs?
    - CurrentB 10mo ago
      Presumably you only would acquire female chickens to lay eggs. What happened to the male ones? (I don't recommend googling this). What do you do with the cow when its milk yield drops after several pregnancies? what do you do with the male calves? Just keep them all as pets? I think there are situations I could contrive where I'd say yeah its fine ethically to eat these things, but the general case still has victims. And again, since maybe the first week without them, I truly haven't missed milk or eggs or anything else after eliminating them from my diet. Plant options are pretty good too and there are plenty of plants.
      - 7777332215 10mo ago
        Use the whole of it. Kill them, eat them, use their bones and hide. Why is okay to kill a tree to build a home, kill a plant to eat, but not okay to kill an animal to eat? Is it okay to kill a cockroach or a rat in your home? Does the biological complexity of the organism make it more or less okay to kill it?
        CurrentB 10mo ago
        > Why is okay to kill a tree to build a home, kill a plant to eat, but not okay to kill an animal to eat? > Does the biological complexity of the organism make it more or less okay to kill it? The ability to suffer is the distinguishing/relevant factor. We all know what suffering feels like and we know that animals have the capacity to suffer. We don't really know that trees do. I want to reduce the suffering I am responsible for. > Is it okay to kill a cockroach or a rat in your home? I probably would get rid of infestations in my home and feel bad about it. It's not about having a 100% perfect record with not killing animals. It's about striving to minimize animal suffering as much as practicable. You're never going to reduce this to 0 animals. But you can get to 95% better than the average human pretty easily if you want.
        seec 10mo ago
        [flagged]
- hshdhdhj4444 10mo ago
  Animals do a whole bunch of things to other animals we wouldn’t consider acceptable. Cannibalism, eating your young, rape, etc. I’m not sure why killing for food is the one place we should choose to define our values and ethics based on what animals in the wild do.
  - robcohen 10mo ago
    The problem I have with being vegetarian is that you can't prove that it's actually healthier, because the current state of dietary science is pretty poor. Even if you could, you would also need to explain all of the evolutionary problems that could come from some humans going vegetarian while others don't. What if being vegetarian makes you smaller and weaker physically (perhaps the case in some vegetarian countries now). If you had the answer, and it was clear a diet consisting of vegetables causes reduction in physical size, then I have to ask: Would you want your kids to be shorter and physically weaker than you are?
    - gruez 10mo ago
      >Would you want your kids to be shorter and physically weaker than you are? As someone who eats meat, that's probably one of the worse arguments against vegetarianism/veganism I've heard. If eating animals is immoral, sure why not? If pillaging your neighbors makes your society better off, do you think a good objection to "maybe we shouldn't pillage our neighbors" is "Would you want your kids to be shorter and physically weaker than you are"?
      - robcohen 9mo ago
        The logical entailment is eventually your lineage will be wiped out on some timescale if they cannot compete. I guess this argument in null and void if you believe violence is obsolete.
    - CurrentB 10mo ago
      Do you want your kids to have colon cancer or heart disease because there is pretty strong evidence to suggest red meat contributes to these. And there's much stronger evidence for that than there is that suggests that vegetarian kids will be shorter and physically weaker (in fact I don't think there is much good evidence at all suggesting that). Do you also have a problem with red meat?
- paprikanotfound 10mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
- mmooss 10mo ago
  There are many good arguments I think, but not this one. Nature is eating your neighbor's children; it's starvation, epidemics, and massive forest fires; it's unrestrained homicide and rape; it's leaving your physically weakened child to die; it's eating the head of your spouse; it's survival of the fittest; ... (you get my point). The other animals in nature are not my standard of behavior. In a sense, the point of any culture is to exceed nature and by as much as possible.
- midtake 10mo ago
  Yes. That is far more harmonious with nature than using machines of industry to enslave animal species and slaughter them on profit-driven schedules. Don't get me wrong, I eat meat, but I also understand that the grand majority of fellow meat-eaters have never hunted or reared livestock. Instead they are complete soyboys (ironic isn't it) who merely consume the output from the machine. These same beta cucks will open their mouths to screech "but animals eat animals in the wild!" Completely missing how unnatural an industrialized slaughter machine is. The only reason they are enslaved is that they lack organization and understanding. Had they those two, they could kill us all.
barbazoo 10mo ago
Even just being aware of one’s privilege to eat animals or even animal products and the impact on other living beings for our “pleasure”. A little more humility would go a long way in terms of animal welfare.
- MisterTea 10mo ago
  > one’s privilege to eat animals What privileges us vs a crow, catfish or lion?
  - barbazoo 10mo ago
    We don't have to anything for it. Someone artificially inseminates the animal, raises the animal, keeps it in mostly in terrible conditions we would cry about if we saw them, drives them somewhere for slaughter, processes the remains until it looks appetizing for you to just heat up and eat. All for couple of dollars per pound. Unbelievable privilege of not seeing the suffering involved. Animals go out and kill other animals for food, have to deal with the family and friends of the animal it just killed, compete with other animals for the meat, etc. Much more vulnerable and involved.
    - doodlebugging 10mo ago
      But what about raising a crop right up to the point where it's helicoptered its genitals enough to have found a gullible pollinator or sprayed it's pollen widely enough to produce the seed for the next generation and then killing it, thus cutting it down in the prime of its life with no opportunity for that plant's descendants to sprout and grow (especially if they are Monsanto seeds) and reach the point where they too can wag their privates while looking for PILFs (plants ...)? Everything has to eat something. Humans are omnivorous. We have a choice and some choose to base their diets on plant consumption while others eat a little meat and still others eat mostly meat. It's all okay. The universe is working as intended. Villifying those who choose a different diet than yours seems like a petty exercise by people who need to invent a reason to feel better about themselves. If you enjoy and love the foods that you eat then you are doing it right. There is no requirement and no need to proselytize about your choices. We have enough other religions who have forgotten the main message to deal with. It will be just as easy for people to tune yours out.
rmah 10mo ago
I disagree.
- CurrentB 10mo ago
  With what exactly?
  - rmah 10mo ago
    All of it.

blell 10mo ago

I understand this kind of people is allergic to “per capita”, but really, showing a list of consumption by region when the regions are of such different sizes is next to worthless.

barbazoo 10mo ago
Per capita would be great. The absolute numbers are still mind boggling.
welferkj 10mo ago
I'm "allergic to per capita" specifically in cases where it doesn't matter but keeps getting brought up as a bad faith retort. As an example, it doesn't matter who emits CO2 or where from, since we're all emitting it into the same air, and the only thing that matters is the absolute amount. Similarly, I imagine it's cold comfort for domestic animals in subsaharan Africa that their torturers, rapists, and murderers are marginally less prolific than those in other regions.

xnx 10mo ago

I don't consume animal products, but -while well intentioned- I'm not sure a dashboard with these types of huge numbers does much as an advocacy tool. People are ill equipped to put such large numbers in context, let alone ~40 of them. Like a slide deck, better to limit to one number and one message per page(/screen). Otherwise, it's just a data dump.

graemep 10mo ago
I do not see the point of large numbers. If its not OK to eat meat, then its not OK to eat one. If is OK, why does scale make it not OK? I did not expect Asia to be quite so dominant. I did expect, but interesting to see confirmation, that the Americas grow so much grain for animal feed.
- jampekka 10mo ago
  The scale is highly relevant for environmental issues. https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture Edit: replaced scattered numbers with a proper source.
  - margalabargala 10mo ago
    The scale is only relevant when adjusted for animal size. Raising and eating 10000 shrimp is a lot less impactful than raising and eating 10000 tuna. Counting them both as "one animal" means environmental issues is not something the page cares to illustrate.
- rmah 10mo ago
  Most people live in asia. thus most foods are both produced and consumed in... you guessed it asia.
  - graemep 10mo ago
    That does not follow because there are cultural and economic variations. You will notice big variations in what animals are eaten.

big-chungus4 10mo ago

[flagged]

seanwilson 10mo ago

There's also the significant cost to climate change because growing crops to feed to animals instead of eating crops directly loses the majority of calories, but it gets ignored because doing something about it is going to be unpopular: https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture > More than three-quarters of global agricultural land is used for livestock, despite meat and dairy making up a much smaller share of the world's protein and calories. > Despite the vast land used for livestock animals, they contribute quite a small share of the global calorie and protein supply. Meat, dairy, and farmed fish provide just 17% of the world’s calories and 38% of its protein. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets > Livestock are fed from two sources – lands on which the animals graze and land on which feeding crops, such as soy and cereals, are grown. How much would our agricultural land use decline if the world adopted a plant-based diet? > Research suggests that if everyone shifted to a plant-based diet, we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%.

zahlman 10mo ago
> but it gets ignored because doing something about it is going to be unpopular It gets talked about all the time.
- CurrentB 10mo ago
  Do you think it widely leads to behavior changes among people that support environmental causes?
  - zahlman 10mo ago
    Not really; but talking about it more also seems like it will have approximately zero marginal benefit, and trying to insinuate that other people are immoral is probably net counterproductive.
  - renewiltord 10mo ago
    In the US 8 out of the top 10 environmental organizations with most membership oppose nuclear power broadly and the majority oppose wind and solar locally so I think we can safely conclude that climate change is not important to US environmental causes. The primary work by US environmentalists (or at least the popular ones) is in ensuring rich people’s homes abut publicly-maintained parks.

davidmurdoch 10mo ago

Something interesting to see is a version of if this that displayed a % of total animals instead of absolutes.

nickkell 9mo ago
What would make it interesting? Most of the animal mass on earth is livestock for human consumption. More animals are reared to replace the ones that are slaughtered. It might be interesting for wild fish, but I'm not sure if there are accurate numbers for the wild populations remaining.

schlap 10mo ago

Hell yeah, live leaderboard of humans. Add a K/D Ratio next plz

Cu3PO42 10mo ago

I personally find the "animals killed since you opened this page" number to be the most unsettling. YTD numbers are so large, I find them hard to process. If you choose to eat meat, please be aware of the conditions most of these animals exist in and how they die. I'll spare you more numbers, because they don't do the cruel reality justice anyway. Instead, I'll leave you with some video material: https://animalequality.org/blog/factory-farming-facts/ https://animalequality.org/blog/factory-farming-facts/

margalabargala 10mo ago
The quantity of animals killed scales inversely with size. Most of the "animals killed since opening this page" are shrimp. I am open to hearing evidence that shrimp have the capacity to care about the conditions in which they live and die but as of now I don't believe they do.

slifin 10mo ago

I am going to continue eating meat and plants but that's because the choice between eating plants or meat misses the point The issue here is the industrialisation of the land and the shortcuts that farmers are doing that essentially kill the land, animals and plants in a way that is unmaintainable The way this should work is animals should be herded on to land to eat and poo, once the grasses are nearly eaten the animals should be rotated on to other fields, the new grass regrows in this fresh environment because it has no competitor and plenty of fertiliser this process kills weeds and rejuvenates soil ready for planting This mimics the nomadic lives that early humans would have led, following their herds of animals to fresh new pastures Then the farmers worked out they didn't need animals to do this process they could just plow their fields and then that gets rid of the weeds, not quite as good as animals doing it in terms of soil health but effective and quick Then the farmers were sold weed killers which meant they didn't need to plow their field, they just needed to buy GMO glyphosate resistant seeds and flood their fields with glyphosate, some types of crops are even killed close to harvest with glyphosate so it'll be in your food at high rates for certain crops The problem with this approach is glyphosate is assumed safe because its mechanism for killing weeds is based on a system we don't directly have as humans, but our gut bacteria do, it also competes with glycine in our bodies used to create proteins, I wouldn't want to drink glyphosate from the bottle but it's being added to my food so effectively I do that It also degrades the soil quality into dust, instead of being full of earth worms which would normally feed the birds, the local wildlife etc So these mono culture fields are just turning huge swathe of land into sterile dust bowls that exacerbate climate change Then these crops are either sold directly to me as a plant eater or given to the animals to make them bulk up and sick As someone who eats a lot of meat I want my animals to be grass fed (or their natural diet) I don't want them to have to take antibiotics because the farmer needed to bulk them up with cheap glyphosate laced mono culture grains and cereals to get more profit out of the animal So if you are vegan you cannot just wipe your hands of this problem because you're still contributing by eating these mono crops - What we really need from consumers is for them to care how their plants and animals are raised and not accept glyphosate or other weed killers in their supply chains Animals should be pasture raised from a moral point of view but also a health and climate point of view

CWIZO 10mo ago

doodlebugging 10mo ago

I thought it was a page about recipes for cannibals or tuberculosis tracking from the name. Luckily the title helped clarify the misleading website name. Y'all some hungry mofos. That counter zipped thru 13 million poor tasty, little critters while I was on that page. The cattle numbers seemed low relative to others. Maybe because they are larger and each feeds more individuals. What about normal game animals like deer, squirrel, wild turkey, rabbit, dove, quail, pigeon, etc? I think this site only gives a glimpse of the true scope of animal deliciousness. I also disagree with the numbers since most look they are wild-ass guesses intended to inflate or mislead so as to cause those of us who consume all this delicious meat to switch to more sensitive plants, insects, or algae, or fungi. Imagine the numbers you'd have to report if you were accurately reporting seed consumption of typical grains, legumes, leafy vegetables, herbs (which are delicious with meats), and spices and all the other things that vegetarians or vegans profess such deep attractions to that they can ignore all the destruction wrought by the agricultural practices relevant to their foodstocks. Some of the agricultural lands being tallied are used for growing crops like soybeans for consumption as pseudo-meat by vegans who couldn't be morally outraged enough about habitat loss for their beany things to worry about their own destructive impact on mother earth. What happens to the collective consciousness of a fungal colony when someone comes along and rips off a few warty things for their supper? Do you think that the fungus stores a memory of the event and the participants so that once they finally hit the dirt that memory can pass along the subterranean chain so that the fungus can move in return the favor?

zahlman 10mo ago
> I thought it was a page about recipes for cannibals or tuberculosis tracking from the name. Luckily the title helped clarify the misleading website name. Agreed. It's called "human consumption", but it neither relates to the consumption of humans, nor the phenomenon in humans called "consumption", nor does it cover all consumption by humans, or even all food consumption. > Y'all some hungry mofos. Less than one animal per person per day, and the overwhelming majority of them are fish and invertebrate sea life (two thirds of that in the Asia-Pacific region).
- doodlebugging 10mo ago

lastwalz 10mo ago

[flagged]

fooker 10mo ago

If these numbers seem extraordinarily high to you, try and estimate the scale of deforestation it would take to replace all this food with grains and vegetables. (Hint: about 5-10x the available fertile land on earth)

lucyjojo 10mo ago
water lentils https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMEMC74OxAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMEMC74OxAQ
- fooker 10mo ago
  Neat, didn't know about this.
Uriopass 10mo ago
What do you think those animals eat?
CurrentB 10mo ago
Someone else linked these in the replies, but that's simply not true. Most land taken up to grow plants is used to inefficiently feed livestock. Feeding humans plants only would be much much more efficient in terms of land use. https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
- fooker 10mo ago
  > Most land taken up to grow plants is used to inefficiently feed livestock. Because it is just not suitable for growing crops that humans can realistically consume. If you can figure out a way to change this at scale, it'll be a discovery on par with Haber's process w.r.t. impact on human civilization. I think we can eventually get there, as evidenced by billionaires and real estate companies buying up bad farmland over the last decade or so.
  - 9mo ago

pseudohadamard 10mo ago

Dammit, misread the title and was looking forward to a count of humans consumed by animals.