Germany is one of the few countries eating less meat, but it's only pork
- In 2011, Germans ate 138 pounds of meat each year. Today, it’s 121 pounds — a 12.3 percent decline
- One poll found that, from 2016 to 2020, the number of vegans in Germany doubled, hitting 2.6 million people or 3.2 percent of the population. A big jump, to be sure, but not enough to explain the sharp decline in the country’s meat consumption.
- In a 2021 survey of 15- to 29-year-olds that Heinrich Böll Stiftung conducted, 12.7 percent of respondents identified as vegetarian or vegan — about twice the rate of Germany as a whole, according to the organization. A recent survey by the German government found 14- to 29-year-olds report purchasing plant-based products at slightly higher rates than 30- to 44-year-olds and much more than those over 60.
- This enthusiasm could be explained in part by the youth-led Fridays for Future movement, which was born out of teenage activist Greta Thunberg’s school strike in Sweden to demand action on climate change. The movement is popular in Germany, where over 16 percent of respondents in Heinrich Böll Stiftung’s youth poll said they take part in it to some degree.
- Germans are eating about the same amount of beef as they were in 2011, but far less pork.
- The steep decline in pork only resulted in a reduction of about one-sixth of a pig per person. However, the 12.5 percent increase in poultry consumption, which looks modest on the chart below, has resulted in almost one extra chicken farmed for each of Germany’s 83 million residents because chickens are so small.
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