Meat Is Water - The World Cannot Have Both

You can live without pork. But, you cannot live without water. The time has come for you to make a choice, says Maneka Sanjay Gandhi.

- Maneka Sanjay Gandhi

The world is getting hotter. The gap between the need and availability of freshwater is widening every day. Despite finding ourselves in such a situation, we continue to propagate practices that waste trillions of litres of water every day. One of these, which I have been focussing on, is the humungous wastage of water in the meat industry. Pigs need vast amounts of water to drink and wallow in. The average water footprint of pig meat globally is 5,988 L/ kg, meaning that much water is used to produce 1 kg of pork on our plates. The production of pork uses five to twenty times more water than the production of grains and cereals (1,500–2,000 L/kg), potatoes (387 L/kg), and tomatoes (214 L/kg).

Despite this, pork production is being increased in India. As per statistics of the Indian Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fishing, the production of pork in India has increased by 21 per cent (81,250 tonnes) between 2015/16 and 2016/17. In 2017, an estimated 1.2 crore pigs were slaughtered in India. The import of pork has also been increasing annually by about 11 per cent since 2010.

More Indian producers have adopted the western industrial method of animal production. This is the format of more animals, faster growth, and shorter meatto-market time. Large numbers of animals are bred in one facility where they are fed grains and pumped with growth promoters before being slaughtered for their meat. These industrial systems use more water than traditional grazing systems, thus increasing the stress on local water resources. An increasing number of live pigs are being imported into India as they are larger than local pigs and produce more meat. These pigs can weigh up to 300 kg and yield about 180 kg of pork per animal. If the average global water footprint of pork is 5,988 L/kg, it takes about 10–11 lakh litres of water to raise a single such pig for its meat.