How many pounds of meat does an average grocery store throw away each month?

I am asking because I am a vegetarian and wonder if it is worth it because if they waste a lot of meat it isn't.

It depends on the grocery store, but the stores in my county (Cook county in Illinois) freeze meat that's pretty much on the sell by date, and then they donate it to food kitchens and pantries. They give people the frozen meat and it's still good when it's defrosted since it's been frozen before it expired.

Also, if they end up with an overstock and the sell by date nears, stores either have sales or clearances because it's wasteful.

There is a store policy in many places to throw meat out if someone returns meat, though, or if someone decides at the checkout line not to buy it, or even if someone just places it in the wrong area in the store. The reason for that is because they can't guarantee whether the meat was handled properly by the customer or how long it had gone without refrigeration, which is a food safety issue.

If a store does have a lot of meat they can't sell, they'll just buy less of it next time because there's less demand. Only a fiscally irresponsible store would keep buying huge amounts of food and then dumping it since customers didn't want to buy it, you know? The duty of good purchasing order clerks and stock managers is to adjust their orders regularly to meet demand levels. My local Trader Joe's used to have a huge meat section but I was talking to the manager yesterday and she said people are purchasing more vegetarian things lately, so their meat section is about half the size now and they're expanding their stock of grains and ethnic food.

I am pretty sure that stores throw away very little meat. They always put it on special or reduce it for quick sale when its getting near the expiration date.

By eating meat you are supporting all of those industries that you don't support by being a veg.

I hate to be rude, but if you were a real vegetarian you wouldn't ask something like that.

well if they see that meat is being thrown out, then that means people are buying it( vegetarians, health issues, etc.) and then there next order on meat is lower, because they don't need to fill a higher quantity anymore, expecially if the pattern occures over like 2 months. So less cows would need to be killed!

First of all expired meat doesn't end up in food banks( it's illegal to give away anything expired).
Stores that know how to run there business cook the meat and sell hot dishes before the meat goes bad.
Stores that don't recycle their meat before they go bad end up going out of business.( Fast).

a lot of meat that has expired is frozen and sold or given away to food kitchens. Unless you demand we only feed the homeless V/V diets.