Red Meat Gets a Knockout Punch
- Topics:
- Meat Industry
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008, 12:08 PM
Red meat gets another hit this month in a study published in Environmental Science & Technology: Researchers found that knocking red meat off the plate and substituting it with vegetables, fish, or chicken can seriously decrease the climate change impact of your diet.
We here at Bite Central have been singing that tune for a long time and are glad to hear the chorus echoed in impressive science magazines.
According to the study, red meat production is roughly 150 percent more greenhouse gas intensive than producing chicken or fish.
As we note elsewhere on the site, red meat production is so carbon intensive for a number of reasons, among them:
- cattle are ruminants, which means they digest food in multiple stomachs and in multiple steps: first they convert raw material into “cud,” regurgitate it to chew it and eat it again. In the process, unfortunately, in the chambers of their stomach they produce methane, which they emit mainly through their noses. (I hear people mention cow farts a lot more than cow snorts… I guess gas is always good for a laugh);
- most cattle are raised in feedlot confinement, which creates such vast amounts of excrement that it can’t naturally be cycled through an agricultural system and instead is a major pollutant, emitting greenhouse gases;
- since these factory farmed cattle are raised in feedlots (and not on pasture), they must be fed, right? The climate change costs of the production of feed are also serious: from the emissions produced in making the synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to the emissions created when using them to the emissions from powering on-farm machinery and shipping all that feed to its final destination.
While I’m pleased to see these researchers take a stand on red meat critique, I was struck that the authors set up their argument as a face-off with local foods: A dietary shift away from red meat can be a “more effective means of lowering an average household’s food-related climate footprint than ‘buying local,” they wrote.
While they’re right that red meat consumption – and lowering it! – will be a key part of dealing with the climate impacts of our diet, this doesn’t mean we have to forsake our support of local foods.
We know that emissions from food transportation are just a small slice of the food sector’s global warming pie. In this study, for instance, the authors peg the percentage of greenhouse gas emissions from food transport at 10 percent of the sector’s total emissions. This is roughly in line with other figures I’ve seen.
But by saying that food transport isn’t such a significant aspect of greenhouse gas emissions from food is missing a key point the buy local movement makes: there are a multitude of reasons for supporting local food. It isn’t just about calculating the odometer of food items for their own sake.
We know that the choice for local isn’t just about choosing food with the lower mileage, choosing local typically means choosing foods grown sustainably, which is good for the climate. Local foods also tend to be fresh foods, which means less packaging and processing– also good for the environment. And when people choose “local meat” they don’t mean the local Tyson processing plant, they mean meat that has been raised on small-scale farms, not on feedlots, which is also, you guessed it, good for the environment.
So let’s take this study’s message to heart: Eating less red meat is a key part of the climate change solution… but let’s not forget that eating local is, too.
