It turns out that one country has famously carnivorous America beat: the small European nation of Luxembourg (which hosts a lot of transients and expatriate workers from around the world, thus possibly driving consumption higher).
The following graph,courtesy of The Economist, lists the countries where meat is most popular.
It is interesting to see how some types of meat prevail in certain countries: Argentina, perhaps unsurprisingly, leads the way in beef consumption; people in Kuwait, Israel, and the Caribbean nation of St. Lucia love poultry; and Austrians, Danes, and Spaniards favor pork. While developing countries like China, India, and Brazil are driving the overall demand for meat, people in the developed world eat far more per person.
Here is how meat consumption has changed over the years, according to The Economist:
Cow (beef and veal) was top of the menu in the early 1960s, accounting for 40% of meat consumption, but by 2007 its share had fallen to 23%. Pig is now the animal of choice, with around 99m tonnes consumed. Meanwhile advances in battery farming and health-related changes in Western diets have helped propel poultry from 12% to 31% of the global total.
One wonders how much longer we can sustain such increasingly meat-dominated diets. Raising livestock is a drain on finite resources like land, water, and grain (which could all be put to better, human-centered use). It also produces a lot of pollution, including the kind that contributes to climate change. While China and other rising countries are routinely blamed for driving up demand — which is indeed the case — it is still the richer world that consumes far more resources per person.