Chapter V: Meat in France, I.—: Total Meat Consumption.

I. Total meat consumption—41 per cent. of the standard ration—Substitutes—Deficit of 50 per cent.—II. Increased consumption—Increase in the town population—Falling off in consumption of meat.

Taking the figures of the Agricultural Year Book for 1892—

in round numbers 850,000 tons.

Now we want to supply 101/2 oz. of meat (including bones) for 360 days to 30 million people 101/2 × 360 × 30 million = 113,400 million oz. = 3,240,000 metric tons.

Adding pork, 461,000 tons, there still remains a deficit of 1,930,000 tons, or 59 per cent.; where 100 lbs. of meat are needed, the supply is 41.

Lagrange estimated the total consumption of meat in France at about 80 lbs. per head; at the end of the century we find 86 lbs. per head. Is this increase in the consumption of meat in proportion to a century’s progress in civilisation? The total consumption of other sorts of meat—goats, horseflesh, fowls, geese, ducks, turkeys, and rabbits—is only some 2 or 3 per cent. at the highest estimate. From the 300,000 tons of fish about 40,000 tons must be subtracted for export, leaving only some 250,000 tons, and even estimating the consumption at 300,000 tons, and allowing that the nutritive value of fish is equal to that of meat—which is exaggerating its value by one-third—the total is only 1,608,000 tons, leaving a deficit, compared with the standard, of 1,632,000 tons—i.e., 53 per cent. Our animal food is only 47 per cent. of what it ought to be. Even taking into account all possible substitutes, such as eggs, cheese, and butter, there remains a deficiency of some 50 per cent. Animal food in France is only half what it ought to be.