Chickens are taking over the planet

[gsbslut]

Chickens are taking over the planet​

The global meat forecast, explained by 85 billion chickens.

By Kenny Torrella@KennyTorrella

In the century since the modern chicken industry was born, chicken has overtaken beef and pork as the most popular meat in the world. According to a report published last month by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), that trend is expected to rapidly accelerate in the decade ahead — and it’s one that will have enormous implications for climate change, animal welfare, and economic development.
Humanity currently raises and slaughters a staggering 74 billion chickens each year, which will jump to around 85 billion annually by 2032, a 15 percent increase, the report predicts. By comparison, the number of beef cattle and pigs raised for meat will rise to around 365 million and 1.5 billion, respectively, by 2032.

High-income countries account for just 16 percent of the world’s population and 33 percent of its meat intake. But that’s quickly changing: while meat consumption is stagnating in high-income countries and expected to decline in Europe over the next decade, it’s growing rapidly in middle-income regions like much of Asia and Latin America.
Chalk it up to what economists call Bennett’s Law, which predicts that as people climb out of poverty, they tend to shift away from largely plant-based, low-emissions diets heavy in grains and starches, to a more diverse, high-emissions diet heavy in meat and dairy, as well as fruits and vegetables. As hundreds of millions more people enter the global middle class, the world’s population of chickens is expected to surge to unfathomable levels.

Why the world is hooked on chicken​

The global shift from red to white meat can be explained, in part, by simple economics: Chickens convert feed to meat more efficiently than pigs and cattle, and are thus much cheaper to raise. Inflation, combined with global wage stagnation, has people reaching for cheaper meats.
Consumers and governments are thinking about health and the environment, too. Poultry and fish are generally perceived as healthier than pork and beef, and while chicken and fish production are both terrible for the environment, they have a much smaller carbon footprint than red meat.

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It adds up to a world that is dominated by chickens; more than nine are slaughtered each year for every human on Earth. Because chickens are small, it takes about 100 of them to get the equivalent amount of meat from one cow.
We eat so much chicken that some archaeologists believe their bones will define our modern age. (To try to grasp the astonishing scale of chicken farming, take a look at this clever visualization of US production levels.)
The trillions of chicken bones we’ll leave behind for future civilizations will speak to our ingenuity in dominating nature to produce more and more meat, our inability to consume it within planetary boundaries, and our cold indifference to animal welfare.

What we’ve done to the chicken​

In its pursuit to put more meat on the table, the US poultry industry has turned chickens into Frankenchickens.
Today’s chickens have been bred to grow incredibly large and at breakneck speeds, reaching market weight in just six to seven weeks and weighing in at five times the size of previous breeds. It’s all caused a range of health and welfare issues, leading animal activists to call chickens “prisoners in their own bodies.”

Many chickens struggle to walk and end up spending much of their short lives sitting in their own waste, in massive, dimly lit warehouses with tens of thousands of other chickens. In recent years, animal welfare groups have successfully campaigned to get major food corporations to pledge to treat chickens better, but a recent report found that many companies either withdrew their pledges or have failed to report progress.

We might start to eat less meat ... in 2075​

Last year, I wrote about how human prosperity and animal suffering exist in a kind of twisted symbiosis:

Economic growth leads to more food production and consumption, which in turn results in faster population growth and longer life expectancy, which then requires more intensive, factory-farmed meat to satiate growing populations.
The cycle has been miraculous for humans…far fewer people are undernourished today than they were in the 1970s, and the specter of famine has largely diminished. But the cycle has been disastrous for the environment and animals.

But the OECD-FAO report speculates that this cycle might begin to reverse itself around 2075. Upper-middle-income countries will drive an increase in meat consumption until 2040, the report predicts, and then low-income countries will drive demand until 2075. After that, global meat demand could start to decline.

The decline could come even sooner due to resource and environmental constraints, the report notes, and the livestock sector faces a host of uncertainties that will affect growth: public health and animal welfare concerns, trade policies, and climate impacts, like extreme weather events that destroy crops and livestock, which are expected to increase in the years ahead.
There’s also zoonotic disease. In recent years, African swine fever has decimated China’s pig industry, while bird flu outbreaks have devastated poultry markets.
The decline has more or less already begun in Europe, where meat production is falling and consumption is expected to fall over the next decade.

What we’ve learned from a meat-centric food system​

It’s understandable that, after seeing high-income countries consume so much meat over the last half-century, governments of low- and middle-income countries aspire to reach Western levels of animal product consumption. But we’ve learned what comes with abundant cheap meat and dairy: air and water pollution, mass deforestation, biodiversity collapse, chronic diseases of affluence, acceleration of climate change, increased pandemic risk, and animal cruelty on an immense scale.
If the OECD and FAO are right, the industrial meat machine will continue churning out ever-increasing supplies at precisely the moment when climate authorities say we have to rapidly scale back livestock production to keep the planet habitable.
Environmental, Indigenous, and animal protection groups in the Global South are pushing back against factory farming expansionism. That fight is perhaps most heated in Latin America, including in Brazil, where Indigenous land is illegally grabbed for cattle grazing and planting livestock feed, and in Ecuador, where international institutions like the World Bank have financed large pig and poultry farms.
Only the people in low- and middle-income countries can determine the right level of meat production and intensification to balance their food supply needs against public health, environmental, and animal welfare concerns. But the 100-year experiment in American-style factory farming has proven to be an environmental and moral disaster we’re just now waking up to. Hopefully, it’s one that other parts of the world can learn to avoid.

 

[ginfreely]

Abuse of me endorsed and supported by @chicken grandfather in spirit woh. So proud Cantonese dog!

The history of high heels -- from Venice prostitutes to stilettos
nypost.com

“Shoes: An Illustrated History” by Rebecca Shawcross

“I don’t know who invented the high heel,” said Marilyn Monroe, “but women owe him a lot.”

Well, Marilyn, there are a lot of people to thank. The high heel wasn’t really invented, it evolved over time thanks to Venetian prostitutes, British queens and French designers.
The new book “Shoes: An Illustrated History” by Rebecca Shawcross (Bloomsbury), charts the many ways we’ve clad our feet, from the oldest known shoes (mocassin-like footwear dating from 3500 BC, and discovered in a cave in Armenia) to the wild styles of today.

Along the way, Shawcross explains how high heels became synonymous with feminine sexuality.

Here’s a quick look of who’s on Marilyn’s “thank you” list:

1. Chopines c. 1400s

1. 
   
   Chopines Northampton Museums and Art Gallery
   Women’s platform shoes, or chopines, are thought to have originated with prostitutes in Venice. The shoes, which reached heights up to 18 inches, raised a woman above her rivals and gave her a sensuous gait for prospective clients.
   Eventually they became popular among the aristocracy, both in Italy and the Ottoman Empire. They indicated that you were so wealthy you didn’t need to work, or really walk.

2. 2. The first heels c. 1590​

   
   
   Early shoes, which used straps called "latchets" Northampton Museums and Art Gallery
   The origin of high heels is debated. Some think they evolved from chopines. Others say they arrived from the Near East, from male equestrian footwear meant to straddle the stirrup.
   Either way, the first documented wearer of European high heels is Queen Elizabeth I. She was painted wearing a pair, and in “Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d,” clothing historian Janet Arnold includes a list of the queen’s clothes from 1595, with “a payre of spanyshe lether shoes with highe heels and arches.”
   Early shoes, like the ones pictured here, often used straps called “latchets” with lace or ribbon ties — an early form of shoelaces.

3. 3. Viva la difference! c. 1660​

   
   
   Latchet-tie shoes Northampton Museums and Art Gallery
   Men’s and women’s shoe styles were roughly the same until about 1660. After that point, men’s shoes tended to be more practical, while women’s shoes became more ornate, with silks, brocades, braids and velvet.
   These blue-velvet, latchet-tie shoes are lined with white kid leather and are embroidered with padded floral motifs.
4. 
   

5. 4. The red heel 1670​

   
   
   Velvet mules Elephant Book Company
   The first Louboutins! King Louis XIV of France started many fashion trends, including red heels and soles.
   From his early 20s until he was at least 63 years old, Louis XIV had his heels covered in red Morocco leather or painted that color. His subjects couldn’t get enough of the knockoffs, like these women’s green velvet mules.

6. 5. Pompadour heel c. 1750​

   
   
   Pompadour heels Elephant Book Company
   The French, or Pompadour heel, was named after Madame de Pompadour, mistress to King Louis XV. The narrow, curved heels were notoriously difficult to walk in, but nevertheless made for a fantastic boudoir shoe.
   This style spread from Paris across Europe. An 18th century satirical poem noted, “Mount on French heels, When you go to the ball — ’Tis the fashion to totter and show you can fall.”

7. 6. Going flat c. 1840s​

   
   
   Square-toed slippers Elephant Book Company
   Perhaps spurred by revolutions in America and France and the rejection of royalty, the heel on women’s footwear became lower and lower at the beginning of the 19th century, until it disappeared altogether.
   Popular styles were wore square-toed slippers with ribbon ties, forerunners of the ballet slipper. Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon, was said to have owned more than 300 pairs.
8. 
   

9. 7. Return of the heel c. 1850​

   
   
   Brass heel Northampton Museums and Art Gallery
   After the slipper fad died out, heels started to creep back up, to 1/2 inch in 1851 and 21/2 inches by 1860. Brass heel pieces began to appear in the later half of the 19th century, which supported even higher heels.
   It was during this period that the “classic women’s court shoe” — what Americans would call the “pump” — emerged. The versatile style, like this suede leather court shoe from 1900, was widely worn and advertised.

10. 8. The stiletto 1953​

    
    
    Stiletto heel Northampton Museums and Art Gallery
    Christian Dior brought back French shoe style after WWII, lifting the heels on court shoes and making them more ornate.
    Shoe designer Roger Vivier, who worked for Dior, took credit for inventing the stiletto heel, using plastic innovations to create a slender heel of incredible strength — which he called “the needle.”
    The shoes helped create the modern sex symbol, as Marilyn Monroe was said to shave a quarter inch off one of her stilettos so that she walked with a wiggle.
    Shoe photos courtesy of Northampton Museums and Art Gallery and Elephant Book Company. Excerpted with permission from “Shoes: An Illustrated History” by Rebecca Shawcross. Out now from Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

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[ginfreely]

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