• Animal agriculture is a big source of air pollution

Study on the externalities attributed to current value chains of EU production and consumption of animal sourced food – and opportunities for change.

The external cost of EU animal sourced production (animal sourced food produced in the EU, including exports) in 2022 is €1,568 billion, or approximately 7.6 times higher than the economic costs of producing animal sourced food.

The main drivers of quantified external cost of EU animal sourced food production are:

• low animal welfare (45%)
• diet-related disease (28%)
• air pollution (12%)
• land use (7%).

The external cost attributed to EU animal sourced food consumption (animal sourced food produced in the EU, minus exports but including imports) is €1,455 billion, or approximately 7.8 times higher than the economic costs of EU animal sourced food consumption. The main drivers of these quantified external costs are

• low animal welfare (44%)
• diet-related disease (31%)
• air pollution (11%)
• land use (7%).

The ‘less’ animal sourced food scenario sees a reduction of external costs in all impact areas, reducing total impact by €1,146 billion (79% of baseline impact) – even when accounting for increased impact from plant-based food.

In terms of environmental impact, the causes of externalities associated with white meat are air pollution resulting from ammonia emitted during broiler breeding, and air pollution (mostly from ammonia, particulate matter and nitrogen oxide emissions) and land use associated with producing agro-inputs such as animal feed.

• The production and consumption of red meat are the largest drivers of environmental impact (€6.73/kg), presenting 2.5x the environmental impact of eggs (€2.67/kg) and poultry (€2.65/kg).
• The impact of red meat is particularly associated with air pollution (€80 billion), land use (€67 billion) and contribution to climate change (€43 billion).
• The impact for poultry and eggs is predominantly related to air pollution (€34 billion).

Scribble

If chickens cost 34B Europe in air pollution, and UK chicken is 9.58% of European chicken, then it cost the UK 3.2B euros

34,000,000,000*0.0958

(1,043,000+1,952,032)/4220000
(34.14+25.32)/82.26
25.32/82.26
34.14/82.26