crime fighters are back africa's most successful radio drama series continues this season the stories focus on hate speech prevention and sustainable local production. are available online and of course you can share and discuss on africa's facebook page and other social media platforms. crime fighters to now. pigs in tight airless cages cows that don't know the taste of fresh grass chickens that never go outdoors that's the sad reality of factory farming the production of

ever cheaper meat comes at the expense of the animals well being cheap meat from poorly treated animals come to the consumers expense to after all how can we ensure that the quality of animal products is good if the industry is all about reducing costs the cost of meat that's our topic today on made in germany the business magazine fella it's good to have you with us consumers have long viewed meat as a mere commodity without connecting it to the lives of the animals it comes from certainly applies to industrial poor production which favors scale over animal welfare and that means that pig farms to cram the animals into tight enclosures with no room to move around naturally researchers are getting a better understanding of pigs just how smart sensitive even sociable they are these discoveries in turn are helping drive consumer preferences and driving demand for better or humane production methods let's take a look at a farm that tries to raise happy picks. these pigs need an

unusually large amount of straw that's because of the enlightened approach taken by farmer got the element of x. money. instead of viewing your animals purely as future food she treats them as living beings and places value on how they feel. she posts daily to social media with stories from her free range enclosure she believes that the set up appeals to consumers her pigs are not crammed into a single pan as is the case with conventional pig farming but are free to roam as a result the animals don't gain weight as quickly so rearing them takes longer and costs more money but the farmers determined to give the animals a decent life and her 2000 or so pigs seem to appreciate it. basically created an activity area for the pigs with twice the amount of space and that costs more money the animals can choose whether to go outside go to the straw

area or to the shower which has a slated for this or maybe go to the resting area or they can choose where they'd like to go the whole day long. the farmer fences off her enclosure to protect her pigs from the african swine fever virus which is often transmitted by wild boar a few kilometers away and this farm run by you're on a of us also has around 2000 pigs he uses a system of containment doors and foot baths for protection. as on most pig farms in germany his animals are housed in a conventional pen that means their cage din 247 a set up that animal welfare campaigners criticize. but ala's has other concerns right now since the outbreak of the african swine fever his livestock are worth around 20 euro cents less per kilo. the something you know it's pretty easy to

calculate if an average farmer in this region has 7 or 800 pigs that quickly adds up to a loss of 15 or 20000 euros i'm from one day to the next on the run from their prices falling because countries in asia are currently no longer importing german pork because of the african swine fever and alarming development for young ala's and marketing expert about hawkman chosen germans tend to eat only certain parts of the pig which is why farmers here benefited from preferences that asian consumers have. the. different markets complemented each other wonderfully. germans primarily econ fry parts like pork couplets meat from the neck of the law any more pork chops. and a cutlet. and asians tend to eat more of the fatty parts fit as well as parts with cartilage like the ears feet and tail fins john so much in demand here. and he

gets in when this bit that's going to become extremely difficult to find buyers for those parts in europe and other countries as the food is the taj. so giving it also she's. got the money had already designed an alternative marketing strategy for the pigs in her animal friendly enclosure and now during the coronavirus crisis that's paid off. again runs of meat cutting plant that processes 80 pigs a week from the mill it's money farm it's a more complicated operation than at conventional large scale meat factories. in this case it's not just the prime cuts that are being sold there's also demand for a wide variety of sausage concoctions. the resulting meat products are then sold throughout the country by south again cutting out the dip. tendency on overseas export products. still some parts are hard to sell even in traditionally

poor congress germany. a backup file of all things yes not so with heads and pork belly we're doing ok there's bacon and jelly loves us. but only to a certain capacity. pigs trotters tails and ears that's where we just don't have enough buyers we can't get rid of them 1980 that is in the schools. but that's only a minor setback while conventional pig farms are absolutely dependent on asian markets gabriella miller is still doing ok sales wise plus the price for her pigs has remained stable. as a visit from the if it's in terms of the fish and see where somewhere between conventional and organic and there's a big interest in this among farmers not just with this system here all animal

friendly concepts in germany are seeing a major run among farmers and. and those concepts are also in demand among retailers low price meat products are now off the menu at the supermarket the only pork on offer at the meat counter comes from farms like gabriella miller which months. it's 30 percent more expensive than conventional pork for supermarkets it's a risk but they too see something beyond the immediate profits. we now have a different approach to selling meat our stuff feels that way too because it's something you can better identify with. this all these. requirements may well have lost some customers who prefer budget meat from conventional farming. to the cold but we've also seen an increase in new customers coming from further afield and sometimes. around $55000000.00 pigs are slaughtered every year in germany

so far only a tiny portion of those he's retired on animal friendly farms but. is confident that their number will soon grow. to meet was a crucial element of humankind's early diet a long lasting source of energy there is costing tens of and therefore rarely on the dinner table today it's a staple of our meals and we expected to be as cheap as possible where comes from these days that's anyone's guess so how do we get to this point here's a brief look back at the history of meat. creates markets where does our appetite for animals come from. meat was highly valued by our ancestors the energy rich food even played a role in human evolution. as the human brain grew larger strategies weapons and twenties for obtaining meat improved. at 1st our ancestors

a carcasses then they hunted mammoths bats wild boar the more prey the bigger the groups they could sustain. the formation of large cities ushered in local slaughterhouses different kinds of but just formed guilds and opened markets. then came the industrial revolution in 1965 chicago opened its 1st meat packing plants in which entire herds of cattle were slaughtered and processed on assembly lines. the meat packing industry went global after world war 2 and meat consumption doubled meet once a sign of prosperity became an affordable commodity. in $29000.00 more pork was exported from the e.u. than anywhere else in the world with germany and spain at the top brazil and australia lead m.p. for exports. thanks to subsidies the e.u. and the us have floated wild markets with cheap chicken countries like ghana can't

keep up and have largely stopped producing domestic chicken meat. nowadays it's hard to figure out where the meat and also markets comes from it's bread fed slaughtered and processed in different countries according to where it's cheapest animal welfare is usually disregarded. scandals over rotten meat horse meat and low wages and the damage done to the environment by mass meat production have harmed meats image. although nowadays our brain gets enough nutrients from other foods while white meat consumption isn't going down but maybe the meat of the future will come from the laboratory. well test tube taco meat may not sound especially appealing but there is indeed a growing variety of meat substitutes that are carving their way into the market and with meat hardly a luxury anymore avoiding animal products has actually become a trend in many countries it's not just concerns over animal welfare that are

driving the switch to begin diets but worries about the impact of animal products on our health and the environment. it's no secret the food industry is a climate killer producing more than a quarter of all c o 2 emissions worldwide that's more than the emissions of cars planes and ships combined. farming accounts for 70 percent of all consumption of fresh water and 50 percent of all habitable land is used by the agriculture industry we have to rethink our food system and our food and our products are being produced and soon we figure out. to use more or less. the meat industry is one of the worst for the climate. cattle produce methane it's a greenhouse gas which is $28.00 times more potent than c o 2. but not only the climate is suffering. animal welfare

also falls victim talk craving for meat. that's why the international n.g.o.s provenge has made it one of their goals to reduce the consumption of animal products. so that. it's become more and more clear how much these animals which we call livestock suffer. musically these are animals that are bred under the worst conditions with the sole purpose of becoming meat on our way of bringing. the world's population is forecast to grow to almost 10000000000 by 2050. and more people means more food in fact up to 60 percent more food might be needed that's not good news for our planet but there are environmentally friendly alternatives but this in shaft for example researchers at oxford university have calculated that a plant based diet and specifically the c

o 2 footprint of a plant based diet could be reduced by 73 percent. helping out. and the message seems to be catching on meat consumption in the global north has been declining for years one reason is the development of meat alternatives it's a market that's been growing steadily in western countries the n g o hopes that by 2040 the consumption of animal products will drop by 50 percent. if you look at how fast the market is growing especially for vegan and plant based need alternatives then maybe we're not so far away from this goal anymore if i had to make many consumers are now giving more thought to what they buy they're paying more attention to the ecological and ethical effects that choices have. but many people still crave the taste of meat and have a hard time giving it up that's where meat alternatives come in. the traditional

german meat processing company who picked up on the trend early on the company has been focusing on meat substitutes since 2015 we had success. who did want you will be in the live for the 1st time we sold more alternative products than meat and sausages. and demand seems to be growing all the time. that my studio and you look at studies and predictions about the world market and the german market then you see the german market is about 215000000 euro those oil the prognosis for 2030 years that will be at almost 30000000000 euros by then. by fast. it seems like we may well be in the midst of a food revolution. one of the biggest winners would of course be the climate but

animal welfare and our own health would benefit from a chain. diet to. the world health organization want in 2015 that processed meat and red meat could be linked to certain cancers. but what about these meat substitutes are they really healthy. on the whole these products have a lot of benefits studies have shown that red meat is quite problematic and it appears to be linked to a higher risk of colorectal cancer especially for even a lot of it in general and you need to pay attention to the ingredients used in these alternative products sometimes they use quite a few additives and stabilizers i'm also fires flavorings sometimes even flavor enhancer. so consumers

need to take a close look at the meat alternatives on offer but we know that cutting back on meat would bring many benefits.