Dhe fast-food chain Burger King recently launched a new advertising campaign in Austria. Their slogan: “Normal or with meat?” A video published on YouTube shows how customers in a Viennese branch react to it. Salesperson: “Normal or with meat?” Guest: “Norma… What?!” In the clip, Burger King asks: “What is still normal anyway?” Is normal, you will be able to answer here what sells, because it should Company not concerned with animal welfare or customer health. Incidentally, the star of the campaign, the “Plant-based Whopper”, was called “Rebel Whopper” until recently, which means nothing other than: Attention, non-conformity. The question addressed to the guest at the time should have been: “Normal or without meat?”
Philosophers and physicians, chefs and activists have long pondered whether eating meat is normal, not normal, or something in between. You argue, you report research results, you snort with anger and accuse each other of ideological delusion. It should be clear that meat is the norm in our diet. The cultural historian Thomas Macho has written a book worth reading entitled “Why we eat animals” (Molden Verlag, 128 pages, €22), in which he quotes from the “Meat Atlas 2021”: “Global meat consumption” will increase by 2029 “another increase by 40 million tons to then more than 360 million tons” per year. In the industrialized countries, the annual per capita consumption is around 68.6 kilograms, in all other countries it is 26.6 kilograms. Pork consumption is forecast to increase in Europe, China and India. For your orientation: In 2021, more than 51 million pigs were slaughtered commercially in Germany. While the world’s population has roughly doubled in the past fifty years, global production of meat has more than tripled.