Food & perspective
Before meat had a label, it had a life.
Meat comes from sentient animals: beings who can feel, form bonds and have a life of their own to lose.
Meat begins with a living animal.
Beef comes from cattle, pork from pigs, lamb from young sheep, and chicken from birds. Before an animal becomes a cut in a supermarket, that animal is killed.
A label can tell us the weight of a piece of meat and how much it costs. It rarely tells us about the being whose body it was: what she could feel, the relationships she had, or the life that ended before the product reached the shelf.
Animals who experience their own lives
Cows, pigs and sheep are mammals; chickens are birds. There is strong scientific support for conscious experience in both groups. They are sentient: they can have experiences that feel good or bad to them, including pleasure, pain and fear. [3]
Sentience means there is someone experiencing what happens to the body. A wound is more than damaged tissue when it hurts the animal who bears it. Her welfare concerns how life feels to her, as well as whether her body is healthy.
We do not need an animal to speak our language for her experiences to matter. The scientific case for sentience does not depend on human-like language or reasoning. [3]
Mothers, young and bonds that matter
Family relationships are part of this picture. A cow and her calf can develop a strong bond when allowed to remain together. Their relationship is more than the transfer of milk: researchers have studied the emotional effects of losing contact with the mother. [4]
In a study of dairy calves reared with their mothers, calves responded more negatively to ambiguous cues after separation. The researchers interpreted this change as evidence of a negative emotional state following social loss. [4]
Calling them a mother and her young describes a real relationship. We should not need them to experience family exactly as humans do before taking that relationship seriously.
A life of their own to lose
Animals can resist what frightens or hurts them. In its assessment of cattle at slaughter, the European Food Safety Authority identifies escape attempts and vocalisations among the observable signs used to assess fear and pain. [5]
Avoiding harm does not tell us exactly how an animal understands death. But it gives us a reason to take her resistance seriously. Our ethical view is that a sentient animal has an interest in continuing to live: there are experiences and relationships she can continue to have. That is the sense in which we speak of a desire to live.
Killing an animal ends that future. Even when pain is reduced, the loss of her life remains a separate ethical question.
The scale behind an ordinary purchase
374 million tonnes
Global meat production reached 374 million tonnes in 2024, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). That was 7 million tonnes more than in 2023. [1]
At that scale, it is easy to think entirely in terms of output: tonnes produced, products shipped, meals served.
But production by weight does not tell us how many individual animals were involved, what they felt, or which relationships mattered to them. It measures the weight of their bodies after lives have ended.
A tonne is a useful unit for understanding an industry. It cannot express what it means for an individual animal to lose her life.
The environmental footprint behind the product
Animal agriculture also has a substantial climate footprint. FAO estimates that livestock agrifood systems accounted for around 12% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions in 2015, its assessment’s reference year. [2]
That estimate includes meat, milk and eggs, along with specified supply-chain activities. It should not be described as meat alone producing 12% of global emissions. [2]
Where livestock emissions come from
Share of livestock agrifood system emissions · World, 2015
| Cattle | 62% |
|---|---|
| Pigs | 14% |
| Chickens | 9% |
| Buffaloes | 8% |
| Sheep & goats | 7% |
Includes meat, milk and eggs; cattle includes meat and milk. Shares are rounded as reported by FAO. These are shares of livestock emissions, not all global emissions or emissions per serving. [2]
Cattle account for the largest share in this assessment. Emissions also vary across production systems, so these totals should not be read as a comparison of individual farms or meals. [2]
The chart describes an environmental footprint. An animal’s capacity to feel does not depend on her share of emissions. A lower-carbon product can still come from a sentient being whose life was ended.
Meet Lili: one cow, from the field to a plate
What Is Meat? is an interactive story you can explore in your browser. It follows Lili, a cow introduced living in a field with her two calves. You meet her while she is alive, before following the journey that ends with her body becoming meat.
Lili leaves the farm in a truck.
She is killed, and her body is processed, packed and sold as meat.
Along the way, the words change.
- An animal
- A carcass
- A cut
- A product
- A meal
The animal in the field and the meat on the plate are connected by her death.
Lili is an illustrative character, not a documented individual cow. Her journey is a simplified narrative, and practices vary by farm and facility. The research cited here concerns real animals; the story offers a way to keep an individual in view while thinking about those findings.
Follow Lili’s journey at whatismeat.com.
Seeing the animal behind the meal
When we shop or cook, it is easy to focus on taste, price and familiar recipes. Thinking about the animal adds another question: what happened to her before this food reached our plate?
Before she became food, she had a life of her own. Remembering that can change how we approach our next meal. We might choose to eat less meat, try a plant-based dish, or start by paying more attention to where our food comes from.
Lili’s story offers a place to start. Meet her in the field, while she is alive, and follow what happens next.
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Sources & notes
Sources checked
- FAO · 2025Agricultural production statistics 2010–2024
Production figures refer to 2024 and measure weight, not individual animals or food consumed.
- FAO · 2023New FAO report maps pathways towards lower livestock emissions
Reports the Pathways towards lower emissions assessment. Reference year: 2015. Includes meat, milk and eggs; excludes retail and household stages.
- Andrews, Birch, Sebo & Sims · 2024Background to the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness
Explains sentience as subjective experience and the strong scientific support for conscious experience in mammals and birds. It does not claim certainty about every aspect of animal experience.
- Daros and colleagues · PLOS ONE · 2014Separation from the Dam Causes Negative Judgement Bias in Dairy Calves
A study of mother-reared dairy calves found a negative judgement bias after maternal separation, interpreted as evidence of a negative emotional state. It does not document Lili or every farming system.
- EFSA Panel on Animal Health and Welfare · 2020Welfare of cattle at slaughter
Identifies fear and pain risks and their observable indicators, including escape attempts. These observations do not establish a human-like concept of death in cattle.
Written by the team behind What Is Meat? Scientific findings about sentience, social loss and responses to harm are distinguished from our ethical view about the value of continuing to live. Production figures refer to 2024; the emissions assessment uses 2015 data. Lili is an illustrative character.