Worldwide Alternatives to Animal Derived Foods – Overview and Evaluation Models

At the beginning of 2010, an estimated 27 billion animals were being kept as livestock globally, with 66 billions slaughtered each year around the globe (Schlatzer, 2010). This exceeds the number of human inhabitants on the globe almost by an order of magnitude.

Global meat production has doubled between 1980 and 2007 from 136.7 to 285.7 million tons, egg production rose by 150 percent from 27.4 to 67.8 million tons, and milk production has risen from 465 to 671.3 million tons (FAO, 2009b). Pork accounts for 40 percent of the global meat production, poultry for 30 percent and beef for 22 percent, and 55 percent of the global pig production, 61 percent of the global egg production and 72 percent of the global poultry meat production takes place in industrial systems (FAO, 2009b), where feed production often occurs far away from the livestock facilities.