Meat The Future Exhibition

About Meat The Future at the Museum of Natural History

From a bacon sandwich to lamb curry, our diet in the UK is loaded with meat. Across the world, 90% of people are meat-eaters, and global consumption continues to rise. New research has revealed the cost of keeping so much meat on the menu.

The ‘Meat The Future’ exhibition at Oxford University Museum of Natural History presents cutting edge research on the environmental and health impacts of eating meat and serves up serious food for thought about how the consumption of meat affects our health and the planet.

Pull up a chair at the dinner table and explore different meat-eating habits around the world. What’s on the menu, how is it changing, and why? Find out how meat consumption is different around the world and how and why meat consumption has changed over time.

40% of the total land area is currently dedicated to agriculture, providing livelihoods to millions. But how did farming develop from a traditional local enterprise to the global industry it is today? And how has science enabled farmers to satisfy an appetite for meat that grows year by year?

Farmers across the world now raise more animals than ever to slaughter for meat. Vast areas of forest are cleared for grazing, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and leading to widespread biodiversity loss and extinctions, changing ecosystems forever.

Crops grown for animal feed also require more land, and have to be fertilised and irrigated, competing for water and other resources needed for human food. And as cows and other ruminants digest their food, they burp methane into the environment, a powerful greenhouse gas that is changing the climate.

Our hunger for meat is turning up the heat on the entire planet.