Meat centered diets have grown rapidly in the last half century with a 4x increase in meat productio
There has been a 4x increase in world meat production in half century from 71 to 297 m tonnes and in world egg production from 15 to 69 m. tonnes. Global meat production is predicted to be 484 million tonnes by 2050, when there will be 1/3 more people but 2/3 more meat produced (p1).
The "average person eats almost twice as much as did the average person only two generations ago" (p2).
From 1961 to 2010, number of slaughtered animals "leapt from 8 to 64 billion" and is set to double again by 2050 (p. 3).
The "rising consumption of animal protein portrayed as a more or less inevitable aspiration...". "The framing of massive inequalities in consumption through the lens of a universal nutritional transition harkens the development theories about the transition to modernity, in which societies of high mass consumption such as the USA are presented as the summit...". Since all nations are moving to towards an improved condition, inequality is legitimized (p.8)
An "illusion of efficiency" exists while in reality one third of arable land "funneled down a net nutritional drain" (p.147).
Tony Weis, The Ecological Hoofprint:The Global Burden of Industrial Agriculture, London, New York, Zed Books, 2013