What Your Hamburger Really Costs (VIDEO) | Civil Eats

What Your Hamburger Really Costs (VIDEO)

The Hidden Cost of Hamburgers, the latest animated short from the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR)—the folks who brought you last summer’s The Price of Gas—takes a big-picture look at the web of problems associated with industrial beef production. The video hits all the most important points, but what’s most noteworthy is the actual number the reporters arrived at when calculating the hidden—or externalized—costs of the average burger: $1.51 (or $72 billion for the 48 billion burgers Americans eat every year).

On the CIR website the video’s co-reporter Sarah Terry-Cobo explains how she and co-reporter/producer Carrie Ching arrived at this number with an environmental consulting firm called Route2 Sustainability. The annotation reads:

We looked at a range of ways beef is produced and came up with an average that is close to how a cow would be raised in Fresno, Calif.: about 1 pound of greenhouse gases per ounce of beef, or about 6½ pounds of greenhouse gases per quarter-pounder. We looked at studies that showed the health costs of treating overweight people and associated illnesses, such as high blood pressure, stroke and diabetes—that’s about 75 cents per burger. Then we looked at how much water it takes to produce a pound of beef—that’s about 50 cents per burger. We also looked at the price of a ton of carbon—that’s remarkably small for the U.S., less than one-hundredth of a penny. But in the European Union, because it has a functioning carbon market, the price would be about a nickel per burger. Daniel Lopez Dias, the lead economist on the calculations, notes that these figures are conservative and don’t include effects from air and water pollution, effects of low wages that slaughterhouse workers receive and the high risk of injury they face, or general effects of urban sprawl.

We’ll bring the news to you.

Get the weekly Civil Eats newsletter, delivered to your inbox.

Today’s food system is complex.

Invest in nonprofit journalism that tells the whole story.

Twilight Greenaway is the executive editor of Civil Eats. Her articles about food and farming have appeared in The New York Times, NPR.org, The Guardian, Food and Wine, Gastronomica, and Grist, among other. See more at TwilightGreenaway.com. Follow her on Twitter. Read more >

Like the story?
Join the conversation.

More from

General

Featured

a trio of illustrations showing a black farmer, corn growing in front of the US Capitol Building, and a white woman with a baby paying for groceries with a SNAP-enabled card

This Farm Bill Really Matters. We Explain Why.

As communities struggle with food insecurity and farmers face a range of climate-fueled disasters, lawmakers have a chance to build a farm bill that tackles both in 2023. Will they?

Popular

How the Long Shadow of Racism at USDA Impacts Black Farmers in Arkansas—and Beyond

Arkansas farmer Clem Edmonds sits on his riding mower in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. (Photo by Wesley Brown)

After Centuries of Exploitation, Will Indigenous Communities in Biodiversity Hotspots Finally Get Their Due?

Sailing in a wooden boat on the Amazon river in Peru. An indigenous girl sitting on the front of the boat whilst sailing down the river.

School Food Chefs Learn to Plot Healthier Menus With a New Fellowship

A trio of school chefs working in the kitchen as part of the Healthy School Food Pathways program. (Photos courtesy of the Chef Ann Foundation)

Forging Pathways to Land Access for BIPOC Farmers in Georgia

Johanna Willingham (left), who manages Georgia FarmLink on behalf of ALT, and Jean Young (right), the first incubator farmer at ALT’s Williams Farm Incubator Program, walk the greenhouse at Williams Farm. (Photo credit: Oisakhose Aghomo)