Animal product

An animal product is any material derived from the body of a non-human animal or their excretions. Examples are meat, fat, blood, milk, eggs, honey, and lesser known products, such as isinglass, rennet, and cochineal.

The word animals includes all species in the biological kingdom Animalia, except humans. This includes, for example, tetrapods, arthropods, and mollusks. Generally, products made from decomposed animals, such as petroleum, or crops grown in soil fertilized with animal remains or manure are not characterized as animal products. Products sourced from humans (e.g. breast milk) are not typically classified as animal products.

Increased production and consumption over the past 50 years has led to widespread environmental and animal welfare impacts. These range from being linked to 80% of Amazonian deforestation to the welfare implications of using chick culling shredders on live day old-chicks for 7 billion of them each year.

Several popular diet patterns prohibit the inclusion of some categories of animal products and may also limit the conditions of when other animal products may be permitted. This includes but not limited to secular diets; like, vegetarian, pescetarian, and paleolithic diets, as well as religious diets, such as kosher, halal, mahayana, macrobiotic, and sattvic diets. Other diets, such as vegan-vegetarian diets and all its subsets exclude any material of animal origin. Scholarly, the term animal source foods (ASFs) has been used to refer to these animal products and by-products collectively.

In international trade legislation, the terminology products of animal origin (POAO) is used for referring to foods and goods that are derived from animals or have close relation to them.

Animal husbandry has a significant impact on the world environment. Both production and consumption of animal products have increased rapidly. Since 1950, meat production has tripled, whereas the production of dairy products doubled and that of eggs almost increased fourfold. Meanwhile, meat consumption has nearly doubled worldwide. Developing countries had a surge in meat consumption, particularly of monogastric livestock. Animal husbandry drives climate change, ocean acidification, and biodiversity loss, and kills 60 billion animals annually. It uses between 20 and 33% of the world's fresh water, Livestock, and the production of feed for them, occupy about a third of the Earth's ice-free land. Livestock production contributes to species extinction, desertification, and habitat destruction. and is the primary driver of the Holocene extinction. Some 70% of the agricultural land and 30% of Earth's land surface is involved directly or indirectly in animal husbandry. Habitat is destroyed by clearing forests and converting land to grow feed crops and for grazing, while predators and herbivores are frequently targeted because of a perceived threat to livestock profits; for example, animal husbandry causes up to 91% of the deforestation in the Amazon region. In addition, livestock produce greenhouse gases. Cows produce some 570 million cubic metres of methane per day, that accounts for 35 to 40% of the overall methane emissions of the planet. Further, livestock production is responsible for 65% of all human-related emissions of nitrous oxide.

Since the 18th century, people have become increasingly concerned about the welfare of farm animals. Possible measures of welfare include longevity, behavior, physiology, reproduction, freedom from disease, and freedom from immunosuppression. Standards and laws for animal welfare have been created worldwide, broadly in line with the most widely held position in the western world, a form of utilitarianism: that it is morally acceptable for humans to use non-human animals, provided that no unnecessary suffering is caused, and that the benefits to humans outweigh the costs to the livestock. An opposing view is that animals have rights, should not be regarded as property, are not necessary to use, and should never be used by humans. Live export of animals has risen to meet increased global demand for livestock such as in the Middle East. Animal rights activists have objected to long-distance transport of animals; one result was the banning of live exports from New Zealand in 2003.

Farmed animals needs to eat more food than their products can deliver. Net animal losses are the difference between the calories in human-edible crops fed to animals and the calories returned in meat, dairy and fish. These losses are higher than all other conventional food losses combined. This is because on average livestock eat more human-edible food than their products provide. Research estimated that if the US would eat all human-edible plant food instead of feeding it to animals in order to eat their meat, dairy and eggs, it would free up enough food to feed an additional 350 million people. At a global level livestock is fed an average of 1738 kcal/person/day of human-edible food, and just 594 kcal/p/d of animal products return to the human food supply, a net loss of 66%.