When food writer Lisë Stern needs fresh vegetables to roast with a chicken, she bicycles to the green market near her Cambridge, Mass., home where local farmers sell organically grown produce. Once back in her kitchen, she prepares the meal using knives, bowls, utensils, a cutting board and a roasting pan dedicated solely to cooking with meat, and serves it to her two teenage sons (her 11-year-old daughter is a vegetarian) on glass plates never touched by milk, cheese or other dairy foods.

Stern, the author of How to Keep Kosher: A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding Jewish Dietary Laws, is one of a million or so American Jews (out of around six million total) who keeps her kitchen year-round according to the laws of kashruth, or kosher. She's also interested in the environment. So how does keeping kosher contribute to—or undermine—her efforts to go a little lighter on the planet?

In 2007 kosher foods were worth $12.5 billion of the $500-billion retail food market, according to market research firm Mintel. It isn't only Jews: According to marketing company Lubicom, the 10.2 million Americans who eat kosher foods include around three million Muslims, whose halal dietary rules overlap with kosher ones.

Kosher rules state: those who keep kosher eat traditionally domestic fowl like chicken and turkey; most fish with fins and scales—that means no shrimp, crab or lobster; and mammals that both chew their cuds and have split hooves, which includes cows and sheep, but not pigs.

What would the environment look like if everyone kept kosher? Per capita, Americans consume about 63.5 pounds (29 kilograms) of beef, 48.2 pounds (22 kilograms) of pork and 59 pounds (27 kilograms) of chicken per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They also down 54 pounds (25 kilograms) of fish and shellfish, including about four pounds (two kilograms) of shrimp (the U.S.'s most popular seafood), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Fisheries Service.

So how does a kosher diet fare as one that is ecofriendly? Time for some calculations: first, let's assume that kosher vegetarians would still steer clear of meat in any quantity, even if they did not keep kosher, meaning that observing the rules would have no impact. Let's also assume that kosher omnivores consume the same average weight of meat per capita as other Americans, but replace pork with either beef or chicken. That would have an impact. Solely in terms of how much grain livestock consume, producing a pound (0.45 kilogram) of beef releases 13.67 pounds (6.2 kilograms) of greenhouse gases, compared with around 6.75 pounds (3.1 kilograms) to produce a pound of pork, and 3.37 pounds (1.5 kilograms) for every pound of chicken—and this does not even take into account the other factors in meat's carbon footprint, from deforestation for pasturage to shipping it to market. Globally, meat production generates 18 percent of the world's man-made greenhouse gases, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

That means replacing nonkosher pork with an equivalent 48 pounds (22 kilograms) of beef releases about 1,504 pounds (682 kilograms) of greenhouse gases annually, compared with 1,378 pounds (625 kilograms) of carbon a year for the pork-friendly eater.

8 Comments

1. 1. pschnob 01:00 AM 9/26/08

   Is this correct?
   Meat Pounds of Greenhouse Gases released per Raised or Caught Pound
   Beef 13.67
   Pork 6.75
   Tuna 4.63
   Chicken 3.37
   Shrimp 2.45
   Wild Salmon 0.06
   Wild Herring 0.05
   

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2. 2. Neil_Polymathes 12:54 PM 9/27/08

   Poorly titled story. There are better titles, "Is a Kosher diet any better for the Environment?" The current title leads to the answer, "No, a kosher diet is less environmentally friendly than a pork diet." The article is curious and informative, but the tone could have used some work. Also the Dairy & Meat law is a slight mis-interpretation many Jews observe. The bible verse quoted actually means you shall not eat veal. Or a Calf, or any animal that is still nursing. Many people back then boiled meats, just as they still do in Haiti and many parts of the world. Very few people can or could have afforded to boil food in milk. That is just a waste of milk.

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3. 3. chandrakant 08:52 PM 9/27/08

   If it really meant saving of all those mounds of greenhouse gases, going vegetarian is a much faster and safer way around it. Could not the article have used the entire data in a comparative fashion?

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4. 4. jaim01 10:15 AM 9/28/08

   Interesting article. Although we keep a kosher kitchen, I am not sure it is better for one's health or environment. Kosher meat requires salt to draw out the blood, which is forbidden to eat. This salt finds its way to the wastewater and then, to recycled irrigation water. Most crops suffer if irrigated with water with high salt content and also contributes to the salination of soils. As an Israeli water engineer, the excess salt is quite a headache, as we recycle nearly all the water in this country.

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5. 5. stobo 09:19 PM 9/28/08

   Like many theoretical articles this one doesn't capture reality. For example, in reality, a lot of observant Jews stick to a highly vegetarian diet...so the conversion of pork to beef to support your theory is ...well....bull.

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6. 6. Billy 04:28 PM 9/30/08

   Your article say, meat production generates 18 percent of the world's man-made greenhouse gases. So, wither you take your views from the supernatural or the natural, being a vegetarian seems to be a pretty good way of reducing your carbon foot print.

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7. 7. davidj in reply to Neil_Polymathes 12:49 PM 10/26/08

   Unforutnately, the article and much of the discussion fails to understand the significance of the separation of meat and dairy products observed by traditional Jews. "Keeping Kosher" involves more than refraining from eating animals proscribed by the Torah (Or more correctly eating only those limited number of creatures permitted). For example, most Orthodox and many Conservative Jews do not eat any dairy products until 6 hours after eating meat. That means that having any form of meat for breakfast would basically preclude a traditional Jew from having a dairy lunch or milk in his/her morning coffee (similarly a meat lunch would be problematic, delaying a dairy dinner to 7 or 8pm at the earliest). As a result the vast majority of observant Jews usually eat meat only once a day. That is the environmental significant of keeping kosher, not the beef for pork calculations offered by Emily Gertz .

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8. 8. dcmiller 02:43 PM 3/7/12

   I thought that this article was very interesting. I had no idea there were so many Americans trying to live a kosher lifestyle. It must be hard to try and stay kosher is a country that doesn't exactly follow kashrut. Good article!
   
   Danielle
   http://madefromacai.com/acai/kosher

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