Which Animal Product Is Least Efficient At Converting Feed Consumed Into The Final Product
Animals Are Inefficient Converters of FoodFeed Conversion RatiosFeed:Meat RatiosMainstream Feed Conversion RatiosFCR Mainstream ExamplesMore Comprehensive FCRsEnergy Flows in the Broader Food SystemConclusion: Feed vs. Food
Animals Are Inefficient Converters of Food
That farmed animals consume more than food than they produce is undisputed.
The question is not "IF" animals are inefficient nutrient converters, but "HOW" inefficient are they?
How much food (calories, poly peptide, and nutrients) is lost past cycling crops through animals for meat versus eating a constitute-based diet straight? And what are the consequences to food security, personal health, and the planet?
What Are Feed Conversion Ratios?
Feed Conversion Ratios (FCRs) measure out the amount of feed/crops needed to produce a unit of measurement of meat.
FCRs and related bug are generally discussed in terms of "efficiency."
For example, chickens are more efficient converters crops that cows. They have a lower FCR, meaning that it takes less feed to create a pound of craven than a pound of beef.
However, given the inherent loss of crops and natural resource involved in producing meat and other animal sourced foods (ASF), "inefficiency" is a far more authentic term.
For instance, cows are far more inefficient than chickens in terms of feed ratios. Unfortunately, (spoiler alert) chickens are withal very inefficient in that they consume more twice as many calories and poly peptide than they produce.
This is an case of the importance of language. Producing meat is inherently inefficient, just since the livestock industry creates much of the language (and math), they are able skew public perception.
Feed:Meat Ratios –> Calculating FCRs
For practical reasons, feed ratios are generally assigned based on animal species (see below).
Broad estimates are sometimes even used to represent the entire category of meat (ex: meat requires 10x more crops than feeding people directly).
Nosotros also use these shortcuts for illustrative purposes, while acknowledging that that there is wide variation in the actual FCRs of particular animals based on age, breed, internal and external environs, type of feed, and a multitude of other factors.
As interdisciplinary scientist Valcav Smil explains, "definite rate is valid just for a detail animal, herd, or flock." (p.146)
The section below explains some of the factors that produce vastly different published numbers and makes recommendations based on the nearly useful measures.
The calculations represent FCRs for crop-fed farmed animals. In other words, how much more than food each animal consumes than they produce. Typical feed crops are grains and legumes: corn, soy, and wheat.
These numbers are of import as ingather-fed, factory/conventionally-farmed animals are the norm in industrialized countries and the global growth-charge per unit of meat is alarmingly high. Intensive (manufacturing plant) farming represents the overwhelming majority (>98%) of meat produced in the United States.
SIDE NOTE: Factory farm opponents sometimes promote grass-fed cattle equally an eco-friendly alternative. Unfortunately, grass-fed ruminants (cows, goats, sheep, etc) are really more destructive in terms of climate change. Grass-fed cattle emit 3x more than methane than crop-fed cattle and are the crusade of massive deforestation to create grazing pastures.
Mainstream Feed Conversion Ratios
-
- Chickens – 2x-5x
- Pigs – 4x-9x
- Cows – 6x-25x
*These are mainstream/center-range estimates.
Alive weight FCRs – volition accept lower ratios because they represent the number of pounds in crop that animals swallow to gain i pound while they are live.
Edible weight FCRs – will have higher ratios considering they more accurately represent the corporeality ready-to-eat of meat produced after slaughter and processing.
Even with edible weight, in that location will be variations such as carcass/hanging weight and concluding/have-home (which is roughly half of live weight for pigs and one-third for cows — thus doubling and tripling the inefficiency ratios — more when boneless). See detailed chart.
Near of the caloric energy animals consume is used to fuel their metabolism and to form bones, cartilage, feathers, fluids, and other not-edible parts. Thus, the inefficiencies more double when liquid weight is removed – the weight of the water, blood, and other bodily fluids. Further weight loss occurs with the removal of basic and other non-consumable body parts.
Ofttimes times, the food manufacture will publish the low end FCRs, which minimizes the perceived waste. Those without a vested involvement in fauna agriculture and/or industry critics are more likely to publish the higher (more than accurate) post-processing carcass or boneless numbers.
Even if method is held abiding, in that location will be a variation in FCRs. Other factors that impact FCRs include: type/quality/moisture of feed, animal historic period, breed, activity level, number of offspring, and a host of other variables.
There is a not bad deal of focus on improving these factors in reduce inefficiencies, simply the inherent waste of cycling crops through animals remains. Adjusting these factors just shaves down some of the numbers without addressing the core issue that feeding animals to produce nutrient is a massive net loss of available global calories and poly peptide.
Consider how telling it is that a ii:i loss of food crops is considered very efficient and cause to celebrate. When we talk nutrient waste, would we consider losing one-half of all crops "good?"
FCR Mainstream Examples
Live Weight
- half dozen:1 – beef cows – Beef Magazine (industry)
- 6:1 – beef cows, 3.4:1 – pigs, 2:1 – poultry – Noble Foundation (industry)
- vii:i – beef cows, four:1 – pigs, 2-1 – chickens – Brown (abet)
- 8-12:one – beef cows, 5-6.v:1 – pigs, ii-two.5:one – chickens – Smil (p.157) via Cassidy (p.6)
Edible Weight (more accurate)
- 16:one – beef cows – Lappe (Diet for a Small-scale Planet, 1991, p.69) – (frequently-cited advocate)
- 25:1 – beef cows, 9.four:1 – pigs, iv.v:i – chickens – Smil (EM/2008 via UKY) (researcher)
More Comprehensive FCRs
Percent/Units of Edible Output per 100 Units of Feed
- Poultry – Calories – eleven% – Protein 20%
- Pigs – Calories – x% – Protein 15%
- Cows/Beefiness – Calories – 1% – Protein – 4%
Source: Globe Resources Found (w/Un & WB): Creating a Sustainable Nutrient Futurity, p.37
New, more comprehensive methods show that even the high-end of normally cited FCRs are highly conservative.
Perhaps the most accurate way to guess the inefficiencies of animal sourced food product is to calculate the sector-broad phytomass (establish biomass) energy that goes into brute production versus how much energy comes out in the form of brute sourced foods.
In other words, what portion of establish energy dedicated to raising animals becomes edible calories in the course of meat, dairy, and eggs. This method looks across costs associated with a single animal and instead at the the energy flows in the broader food system.
By calculating the fates and flows of phytomass energy on a macro calibration, it is possible to track how and where nutrient energy is being wasted in the production of various nutrient products.
Energy Flows in the Broader Food Organization
The inefficiencies expressed as "units of edible output per 100 units of feed input," are lower than the previous feed conversion calculations considering they are based on energy flows from plant phytomass to edible animal parts. For example, they factor in feed that gets wasted before it reaches livestock animals, the plant mass that goes to not-feed purposes such as bedding, the energy grass and other forage that goes into feeding livestock, and the energy needed to support animal production beyond just producing animals.
Many animals involved in livestock production practise non directly produce food, such as animals that are inevitably culled, that die earlier reaching maturity, and that are used in breeding. (Stefan Wirsenius, Man Use of Land and Organic Materials, 2000)
Wirsenius'due south work takes a macro await at the nutrient system, calculating how much phytomass is appropriated for food production in the form of pasture and cropland, related to how much food is produced. This method is helpful because it gets at the total food free energy that into animate being agriculture as a system.
Co-ordinate to previous estimates, over two-thirds of phytomass energy cribbing is dedicated to farmed animal production, despite that the sector only produces about xiii% of full nutrient calories.
In the aforementioned manner that one can get an accurate approximate of how much a higher pedagogy will cost by including the cost of housing, supplies, and other living expenses with the price of tuition, so too can one go a more accurate estimate of the inefficiency with which farmed animals catechumen plants to animal sourced foods by considering the feed needs (including pasture and grain) of the fauna agriculture sub-sectors.
Another force in Wirsenius's method is that, unlike the previous feed conversion methods that only calculate conversions in terms of feed such as soy or corn, information technology too factors grass and forage into its calculations.
Grain weight is easier to quantify since producers tend to purchase and feed information technology to animals in given weights, whereas the amount of grass and forage animals consume on pasture tin only be roughly estimated.
In this gross energy calculation that looks at all phytomass appropriation involved in food production, pasture land is the largest source of phytomass energy. This, combined with the inherent feed conversion inefficiencies of cattle, are one of the reasons why beef production is one of the least efficient forms of food production.
While phytomass that is not in not edible to humans is often discounted in determining the crop costs and opportunity costs of using animals for food, much of the state cleared for pasture could also exist used for crop production, then it should be idea of equally forgone constitute-based food production. At that place are also significant environmental impacts related to clearing wilderness areas for pasture land/
But even if we were to adapt these calculations to remove the phytomass energy derived from non-edible fabric, such every bit grass on open up pasture or the harbinger that is used as bedding in some animal operations, there would all the same be a dramatic difference in the quantity of nutrient that tin can be yielded as edible calories for human consumption from livestock food and from institute-based protein alternatives.
Conclusion: Feed vs. Food
Regardless of the verbal numbers, producing crops (soy, corn, wheat, etc.) for animate being feed is many times more resources-intensive than using crops for direct human consumption. While there are perilous trade-offs related to fuel vs. food, a more serious concern for a multifariousness of reasons is feed vs. nutrient.
With 75% of all agricultural land used for animal production—and more than a third of global calories and one-half of global protein inefficiently used equally animal feed —the impact of increasing global meat consumption is monumental. (ERL p.2-3)
For more on the opportunity costs of animal agronomics, please see: Cassidy's "Redefining Agricultural Yields: From Tonnes to People Nourished Per Hectare."
Boosted Notes
From the Vegetarian Resources Grouping
"[F]eed is NOT synonymous with "concentrates" such as grains and legumes. Some USDA tables may utilise "as-fed" feed values which means the moisture content of the feed (which may vary between 7 and 70% of the feed weight itself) is included. Similar tables institute in other sources may be based on 'dry matter weight' which excludes all weight of the feedstuff due to water."
"A big portion of the diets of ruminant livestock, including cattle, sheep and goats, consists of feedstuffs that are not edible by humans such equally pasture, hay and crop residues (i.e., corn stalks). In some regions of the world, ruminants subsist entirely on these. Yet, most ruminant livestock produced under intensive weather, (i.eastward., feedlots), do spend a significant part of their life eating grains and soybean byproducts, such as soybean repast and soybean oil, that are human-edible."
"The state of affairs is different with monogastric livestock, (i.e., animals with one tum), such as hogs and poultry. Under intensive rearing conditions that are mutual in the United States, their nutrition consists almost exclusively of human-edible grains and legumes. So for these species, their feed is virtually all grain and legume."
Recommended Sources
Cassidy, Emily et al, "Redefining Agricultural Yields: From Tonnes to People Nourished Per Hectare." Environmental Inquiry Letters, V. 8(iii). IOPScience, September 2013, p. ii-3. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/three/034015
Smil, Vaclav, Feeding the World: A Challenge for the 21st Century, MIT Press, 2000, p. 145-157.
Yacoubou, Jeanne, "Factors Involved in Calculating Grain:Meat Conversion Ratios." Vegetarian Resource Group, terminal accessed October 2015. world wide web.vrg.org/environment/grain_meat_conversion_ratios.php
Last updated Oct 26, 2015
Source: https://awellfedworld.org/feed-ratios/
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