Is Meat Really that Bad?

Food is arguably the best thing about being alive. No other bodily pleasure is enjoyed multiple times every day and never gets old. It's an expression of culture, our parents' love, and a means of celebration or comfort. That's why it hits a special nerve when we're told we should change what and how we eat to fight rapid climate change. One of the most delicious foods, meat, gets the worst press. It doesn't help that the topic is really hard to properly research yourself and that debates get emotional quickly. But clearly, science can give us an answer. The reality is, well, it's complicated.

Let's take a look at three climate arguments against meat that are used a lot and see what happens.

1. Does our diet really play that bigger role in climate change? Feeding billions of people is impossible without causing emissions. Even if someday we have zero carbon tractors, refrigerators, and cookers running on renewable energy, and electric trucks to move our food, there are still unavoidable emissions. Rice emits methane, we cut down forests to make room for pastures and crops, and we emit nitrous oxide when we use fertilizers and manure. Worldwide, food production is responsible for about 26% of all human-made greenhouse gas emissions, which is unfortunate since food is not optional. While 26% doesn't sound that bad, it means that even if we extinguished all other sources of emissions today, the emissions from food alone would still use up our entire carbon budget by 2100. So no matter how we twist and turn it, food is a real driver of climate change.

Still, emissions from different food items vary a lot. How do things look when we compare their footprints separately? Food's climate impact is most often based on life cycle assessments, an analysis that looks at all the emissions of a product throughout its existence, from production to transportation, packaging, use, and waste management. In the most detailed meta-analysis of life cycle assessments to date, beef emissions stand out at the top. On average, a kilogram of beef emits 71 kg of CO2 equivalent. Lamb is also high at 40 kg, pork emits 12 kg, and poultry 10 kg. At the bottom, we have lots of plant-based foods. Potatoes, for example, emit around 150 times less than beef.

The most important aspect of food isn't weight, though; it's nutrient density. A kilogram of beef would keep you alive much longer than a kilogram of potatoes. So how does the ranking change if we compare emissions per calorie or protein? Not much. Animal protein is still the most costly for the environment, and beef and lamb are also outliers in emissions per calorie. But is this fair? After all, not all beef is the same. There are all sorts of ways to rear cattle, from pure grass-fed to factory farming. The worst beef comes in at 105 kg of emissions per 100 g of protein, the best at only 9—a 10-fold difference. In contrast, most other foods, especially plant-based, have a much narrower spectrum. Still, the best beef is worse than the worst plant.

Okay, but this seems promising. Can we buy the right beef and lower our emissions? Maybe by buying locally produced beef to minimize our footprint.

2. Does buying local food actually matter? Let's stick with beef since it's such an outlier. By buying locally, you are trying to avoid emissions from transportation and packaging, but it turns out these only account for 0.5 to 2% of beef's total emissions. Actually, transport and packaging combined are only about 11% of all food emissions. Nearly all food transport emissions are produced over the last few miles, the regional travel on the road supplying the markets and shops in your area. International food transport happens mostly on freight ships, which are insanely efficient. For example, shipping 1 kg of avocados from South America to Europe generates about 0.03 kg of CO2 equivalent in transport emissions and around 2.5 kg overall. Meanwhile, 1 kg of beef from your local butcher will come in at 18 kg in CO2 equivalence at least. So even when shipped great distances, emissions from almost all plant-based foods cause lower emissions than locally produced animal products.

Okay, so if transport doesn't play a big role, what causes the vast amounts of emissions from beef then? By far, the largest share of beef emissions consists of methane released directly by the animals. While CO2 hangs around for centuries, methane only stays in the atmosphere for decades. But in these short periods, it is very powerful. All in all, methane has already caused 23 to 40% of human-made warming so far. There's controversy about how bad this is exactly, and we don't want to dive in too deep here, but the way things stand, any kind of extra emissions are not great. Still, all cows burp and fart to similar degrees. What explains the spectrum of beef emissions?

There are a couple of things. It makes a difference if the beef comes from a dairy herd or one dedicated to beef production. 44% of the world's beef comes from dairy cows sharing its footprint with dairy products. Dairy cows tend to get higher quality feed, which makes them grow faster and emit less methane. Geography also plays a role because it determines which farming methods are possible. The worst factor by far is the destruction of forests for farmland. Not only does this release the CO2 that was bound in the flora, but it also sets free carbon that was stored in the soil and destroys its ability to store it in the future. This aspect accounts for much of the range of emissions in beef. The worst emitters are farms burning down rainforest for farmland, especially in Brazil.

There is a sinister truth hidden here: the more animals suffer, the better they are in terms of climate change because they are way more efficient. They use less land, and their food is brought right to them, causing them to grow faster and not expand energy on things like walking. Cattle in a factory farm that never get to roam pastures can sometimes be less destructive for the climate than cattle grazing peacefully on a formerly lush piece of rainforest.

3. But isn't it a bit out of touch with reality to demonize cows so much? Some of the land these animals are grazing on isn't suitable for crops anyway. By grazing on pastures, they can turn things we can't digest into food. Isn't farming animals just a smart way to make the best use of unused resources?

About half of the world's ice and desert-free land is used for agriculture, an area the size of the entire Americas plus China. Half of all agriculturally used land is dedicated to animals, most of it is grassland—65% of which cannot be converted to cropland. So pasturing animals is actually a very efficient way to use those areas, since we can't grow human food there anyway. There are a couple of catches here, though. While the idea of cows turning useless grass into steak is nice, it is part of a marketing lie. Even though it is so massive, pasture land alone can't support the ruminant living on it. Globally, grazing systems sustain only 133% of beef production, so if we were to switch to 100% grass-fed, we'd simply have to eat much less beef. In the U.S., beef production would crash by some 70% if it were to exclusively rely on grass.

The only way to sustain our high demand for meat is by growing crops and feeding them to our cattle. And we haven't even talked about chicken and pig, which exclusively eat feed crops. Because of this feed demand, less than half of the world's cereals are used directly as human food. 41% is fed to animals. The same is true for soy. There's a lot of talk about Amazon deforestation for soy production, which makes us think of soy milk and tofu, but only 19% of global soy production goes towards products for humans. About 77% is used to feed animals.

Besides, land without food crops isn't automatically ecologically useless. A beef-free diet would free up around 2 billion hectares. A vegan diet would free up around 3 billion hectares of land. We could use this land to grow forests or restore wild grasslands—basically anything that could suck carbon out of the atmosphere. If we spared 3 billion hectares of land, it could remove about 8 billion tons of CO2 from the air per year. By comparison, we emit about 50 billion tons of CO2 equivalent per year at the moment. That means we could save 16% of emissions by eating a vegan diet.

Okay, to summarize: food is a huge driver of emissions. Meat, but especially beef, is the worst food in terms of emissions. Buying locally does not have a big impact on food emissions compared to the type of food you're consuming. When it comes to beef, cattle that are grass-fed can sometimes even be counterproductive because they just need much more land. Even if you find the most environmentally friendly beef in the world, your burger still comes with a significantly higher carbon footprint than a veggie patty. You can decide for yourself what you want to do with this information.