The Packing & Shipping of Meat & Produce
The average meal today travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles--from the farm to the packaging plant to the table. Most of the largest meat and produce companies are vertically integrated, meaning they control the packing and shipping, as well as other aspects of production like slaughtering and marketing. Small farm produce and meat is packaged and shipped on a far more local scale.
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Meat Packing
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Government agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture enforce strict health and safety requirements for meatpacking facilities. Because of the cost of such operations, the vast majority of meatpacking is done at a select number of large, corporate meatpacking facilities. Beef is often packaged into sub and prime cuts, then shipped to distribution centers or markets and packaged once again into smaller retail cuts. The shift to fewer, larger, more centralized plants has happened in the last century, sidelong with the rise in demand for meat and the existence of CAFOs, or "concentrated animal feeding operations." As of 2010, more local, and even movable, slaughterhouses and packing plants have become popular.
Meat Shipping
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In the vast majority of cases, live animals are transported to the combination slaughterhouse-packaging facility via truck, where the meat is then shipped again via truck to wholesale distributors, or to be further cut and packaged. All meat must be refrigerated of frozen during shipping, and travels primarily by truck, or by plane for long distances--i.e., Argentine beef imported to the United Kingdom.
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Produce Packing
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Much produce is not individually packaged---apples, bananas and squash, to name a few---in your local market. The only packaging for such products is the crates or boxes they are loaded into when harvested. Other produce is individually packaged, like fresh baby lettuce. A Northern California farm, for example, packages its lettuce on-site. Once harvested, the lettuce enters a refrigerated warehouse where it is packaged in specially formulated bags with certain gases, both of which extend the lettuce's shelf life.
Produce Shipping
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Produce is shipped all over the world. The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture estimates that common produce items travel an average of 2,000 miles to reach Midwestern U.S. markets, and such an estimate is accurate for other markets. Fruits and vegetables are picked while unripe, and allowed to ripen during the journey to markets, or often must ripen further once you have purchased them. Produce usually travels by plane or by truck.
Concerns
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The term "food miles" was coined to describe the distance that food travels from its origin to the consumer. Food miles are relevant because they require a significant amount of fossil fuels and produce a significant amount of emissions. Combined with the amount of fossil fuels to grow the food---via fertilizers, pesticides and equipment---and package the food, many believe this is wasteful. On average, we use about 10 "kilo-calories" of energy to grow, ship and package the food for 1 kilo-calorie we get from eating it.
Local Food
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Critics of the current practices of the packaging and shipping of meat and produce recommend eating local meat and produce. This reduces the amount of fossil fuels and emissions from packaging and shipping required, and yields fresher products. For example, a British study reported that a local apple's travel used 3,000 percent less energy than that of an apple imported from New Zealand.
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- Photo Credit apples image by Inhumane Productions from Fotolia.com
