Great article and research! My only gripe is that ive been thoughly indoctrinated by betteridge law of headlines, so I truly expected it to be no at this point haha
Agreed. I think the article should be called: "Now Serving One Billion... Dead Monarch Butterflies," and we should attempt to represent the relative impact of carbon emissions in tons of collapsed Arctic ice shelves, dead bees, or tornados.... for example.
As usual with these types of articles, the "beef" contribution is misleading. Yes, CAFO/factory-farmed beef is a climate and ethical disaster. However (although studies are mixed) local grass-fed beef likely reduces the carbon footprint and is clearly beneficial for animal welfare.
But, as I showed in the article, meat substitutes appear to be much lower carbon than even the lowest-carbon beef. i.e. even the 'best beef' still has much higher emissions.
It's also not the case that local grass-fed beef automatically equals lower-carbon. Paradoxically, especially when we factor in the carbon opportunity costs of using land, grass-fed beef can often have higher emissions than grain-fed.
That's a common claim among feedlot operators and their supporters -- "grass-fed beef is actually worse than CAFOs." This strikes me as a convenient rationalization for their horrifically inhumane practices (not as bad as pork and poultry CAFOs but close). When it comes to animal welfare, there is no comparison: grass-fed is obviously superior. When it comes to carbon footprint, I'll concede that the research is mixed thus far. Compare the complex and carbon-intensive infrastructure to support corn growing and harvesting, including pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizer, as well as the GMO technology that is standard and the antibiotics necessary to treat the poor health of cattle who eat unnatural quantities of corn.... to a pasture of grass. Plus, there are hundreds/thousands of grass-fed cattle operations in the US, so it's much easier to buy locally, decreasing the carbon cost of transport. Yes, eating even grass-fed beef may be higher carbon than some meat alternatives, but when it comes to grass vs grain-fed, the choice is clear.
You seem to be be considering fertiliser use only for meat production when it's more critical in plant production. You also seem to be ignoring that pasture is a carbon sink where as any tilled ground is a C02 emitter.
Thank you for compiling all of this research and explaining it so clearly! It certainly supports my decision to eat less meat.
I know this wasn’t in the scope of this post, but I wonder about the health implications of eating processed meat substitutes. I wish peas and nuts had a large marketing team behind them!
Thank you for all of these suggestions! I'm excited to read your WIRED piece and have bookmarked it for later! I'm so happy to have found your Substack :)
Have you had any discussion son this with Sarah Bridle (a MacKay protege) who wrote Food And Climate Change Without The Hot Air (published, like SEWTHA, by UIT)?
I've spoke with Sarah a bit in the past, yes! We spoke quite a bit about her (great) book and I think she used some of our work at Our World in Data for it.
This carbon footprint noise is simply that, noise. Our atmosphere contains approximately 400 parts per million of CO2, less than 0.1 %.
We should simply stop worrying about CO2, it is NOT a threat to the planet or to life. In fact, CO2 "feeds" the plants and the plants respond by giving us Oxygen.
I encourage all of you to review our atmosphere and the risk of CO2 before you criticize my view.....
This is exactly the type of article that "feeds" (excuse the pun) into the globalist narrative. There is no climate catastrophe. But there is world wide hunger. Why all of the money spent on researching and developing fake food isn't used to feed those in need today should raise questions about the intents, morals and motives of those involved in such enterprises. Humans eat for the sustainability of their bodies not the reduction of a carbon footprint. What good is an awesome environment without humans to flourish in it.
Thank you very much for the article. I know that this is far from the focus of the question, but how is it possible that the carbon footprint of beef and pork are twice as much in the US as in Europe? Is the way of production so different?
Thanks for the work here. I still believe it will be easier in the near term to accelerate chicken substitution for beef culturally speaking. Selling imperfect sensory substitutes has limited population appeal in most countries. It’s an issue of which is more practical to subsidize as policy? Chicken consumption or fake meat consumption given the huge price premium and fails operating model of either fake meat or lab meat.
I really like your work with Our World in Data but for the life of me I can’t understand why you continue to equate biogenic and anthropogenic carbon emissions. The former are part of the carbon cycle and get reabsorbed, the latter do not, and therefore cause climate change. You are comparing apples with oranges and I don’t want to be uncharitable, but it really appears as if you’re masquerading ideology as legitimate science.
Cattle can in fact become an even more significant carbon sink with better practices.
Hannah, did you find numbers for pea protein? This seems a more relevant metric than peas themselves for your analysis, as isolated pea protein is what is used as a plant based ingredient, primarily.
Is the short term gain to the environment going to undone due to the long term affects of the consumption of process foods. We already have the data to show that processed and laboratory made food products are detrimental to human health and those animals that live around us.
When will data be produced to show the impact of marketing on the environment?
The fact that meat consumption is only falling slightly as laboratory optioned are marketed shows that deep down he populace have an underlying conscience of what is good for them.
Scientists are currently able to study one of the worms released when marketing opens the whole can. We really need to understand that our species is part of the problem and not the answer. The natural world will solve our problems.
Great article and research! My only gripe is that ive been thoughly indoctrinated by betteridge law of headlines, so I truly expected it to be no at this point haha
Agreed. I think the article should be called: "Now Serving One Billion... Dead Monarch Butterflies," and we should attempt to represent the relative impact of carbon emissions in tons of collapsed Arctic ice shelves, dead bees, or tornados.... for example.
Also doesn't mean killing things..... All for the environment, but I'm sick of people acting like it's the only reason to stop eating meat
As usual with these types of articles, the "beef" contribution is misleading. Yes, CAFO/factory-farmed beef is a climate and ethical disaster. However (although studies are mixed) local grass-fed beef likely reduces the carbon footprint and is clearly beneficial for animal welfare.
It's definitely true that there is a large range in the footprints of beef depending on location and production system. I covered this here: https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
But, as I showed in the article, meat substitutes appear to be much lower carbon than even the lowest-carbon beef. i.e. even the 'best beef' still has much higher emissions.
It's also not the case that local grass-fed beef automatically equals lower-carbon. Paradoxically, especially when we factor in the carbon opportunity costs of using land, grass-fed beef can often have higher emissions than grain-fed.
That's a common claim among feedlot operators and their supporters -- "grass-fed beef is actually worse than CAFOs." This strikes me as a convenient rationalization for their horrifically inhumane practices (not as bad as pork and poultry CAFOs but close). When it comes to animal welfare, there is no comparison: grass-fed is obviously superior. When it comes to carbon footprint, I'll concede that the research is mixed thus far. Compare the complex and carbon-intensive infrastructure to support corn growing and harvesting, including pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizer, as well as the GMO technology that is standard and the antibiotics necessary to treat the poor health of cattle who eat unnatural quantities of corn.... to a pasture of grass. Plus, there are hundreds/thousands of grass-fed cattle operations in the US, so it's much easier to buy locally, decreasing the carbon cost of transport. Yes, eating even grass-fed beef may be higher carbon than some meat alternatives, but when it comes to grass vs grain-fed, the choice is clear.
You seem to be be considering fertiliser use only for meat production when it's more critical in plant production. You also seem to be ignoring that pasture is a carbon sink where as any tilled ground is a C02 emitter.
This is so incredibly well timed. Thank you for putting it all together in one place
Would be very interested to see stats for "Juicy Marbles", an interesting plant based product that has made headlines recently.
Thanks! I will have a look to see if these products have appropriate environmental analyses :)
Thanks for this!
What GWP did you use for methane here? 20 year? 100 year? Just curious, and couldn't access the original articles to see the methodologies.
Thanks Anna.
The underlying papers and reports that these comparisons are based on use GWP100 (over a 100-year timescale).
Thank you for compiling all of this research and explaining it so clearly! It certainly supports my decision to eat less meat.
I know this wasn’t in the scope of this post, but I wonder about the health implications of eating processed meat substitutes. I wish peas and nuts had a large marketing team behind them!
Thanks Jillian. It's a good question! Maybe I should cover it in a later post.
If you're interested, I did some comparisons of meat substitutes to meat and dairy (linked them below):
https://twitter.com/_HannahRitchie/status/1588912550313590784?s=20&t=pzHi7_HCmV4J49Xh3ZLW5g
https://twitter.com/_HannahRitchie/status/1588866902944002048?s=20&t=pzHi7_HCmV4J49Xh3ZLW5g
You might also be interested in a recent article I wrote in WIRED on processed food: https://www.wired.com/story/processed-food-health-meat-substitute-environment/
Thank you for all of these suggestions! I'm excited to read your WIRED piece and have bookmarked it for later! I'm so happy to have found your Substack :)
Have you had any discussion son this with Sarah Bridle (a MacKay protege) who wrote Food And Climate Change Without The Hot Air (published, like SEWTHA, by UIT)?
I've spoke with Sarah a bit in the past, yes! We spoke quite a bit about her (great) book and I think she used some of our work at Our World in Data for it.
It's a very good book. Highly recommend!
This carbon footprint noise is simply that, noise. Our atmosphere contains approximately 400 parts per million of CO2, less than 0.1 %.
We should simply stop worrying about CO2, it is NOT a threat to the planet or to life. In fact, CO2 "feeds" the plants and the plants respond by giving us Oxygen.
I encourage all of you to review our atmosphere and the risk of CO2 before you criticize my view.....
This is exactly the type of article that "feeds" (excuse the pun) into the globalist narrative. There is no climate catastrophe. But there is world wide hunger. Why all of the money spent on researching and developing fake food isn't used to feed those in need today should raise questions about the intents, morals and motives of those involved in such enterprises. Humans eat for the sustainability of their bodies not the reduction of a carbon footprint. What good is an awesome environment without humans to flourish in it.
No thanks
Thank you very much for the article. I know that this is far from the focus of the question, but how is it possible that the carbon footprint of beef and pork are twice as much in the US as in Europe? Is the way of production so different?
Thanks for the work here. I still believe it will be easier in the near term to accelerate chicken substitution for beef culturally speaking. Selling imperfect sensory substitutes has limited population appeal in most countries. It’s an issue of which is more practical to subsidize as policy? Chicken consumption or fake meat consumption given the huge price premium and fails operating model of either fake meat or lab meat.
I really like your work with Our World in Data but for the life of me I can’t understand why you continue to equate biogenic and anthropogenic carbon emissions. The former are part of the carbon cycle and get reabsorbed, the latter do not, and therefore cause climate change. You are comparing apples with oranges and I don’t want to be uncharitable, but it really appears as if you’re masquerading ideology as legitimate science.
Cattle can in fact become an even more significant carbon sink with better practices.
https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/biogenic-carbon-cycle-and-cattle
Hannah, did you find numbers for pea protein? This seems a more relevant metric than peas themselves for your analysis, as isolated pea protein is what is used as a plant based ingredient, primarily.
Is the short term gain to the environment going to undone due to the long term affects of the consumption of process foods. We already have the data to show that processed and laboratory made food products are detrimental to human health and those animals that live around us.
When will data be produced to show the impact of marketing on the environment?
The fact that meat consumption is only falling slightly as laboratory optioned are marketed shows that deep down he populace have an underlying conscience of what is good for them.
Scientists are currently able to study one of the worms released when marketing opens the whole can. We really need to understand that our species is part of the problem and not the answer. The natural world will solve our problems.