According to a new study, if meat prices reflected the environmental impact of production, the days of McDonald’s dollar menu would be over. A study conducted by scientists at Augsburg University in Germany and published in
Nature Communications found that if the toll of animal agriculture on the environment was calculated, meat prices would increase by a whopping 146 percent and dairy products by 91 percent. Once environmental costs like carbon, nitrous, and methane emissions are accounted for, suddenly, instead of costing you two dollars, a McDonald’s hamburger would run you back 292 dollars.
The High Environmental Cost of Meat
Conversely, the study also looked at organic plants and produce and found that if the same environmental fees were applied to organic food, prices would only rise by 6 percent. One of the authors of the study, Amelie Michalke, explains this discrepancy, saying, “If these market mispricing errors were to cease to exist or at least be red