BEEFBAKES: A study by the Environmental Working Group assessed the climate impacts of 20 popular types of meat, fish, dairy and vegetable proteins. It concluded that beef has more than twice the emissions of pork, nearly four times more than chicken and more than 13 times as much as vegetable proteins such as beans, lentils and tofu.
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Dear EarthTalk: We’ve been hearing for years how producing red meat is bad for the environment while consuming it is bad for our health. How do other types of meat, fish, dairy and vegetable proteins stack up in terms of environmental and health impacts?—Julia Saperstein, via e-mail
Not all forms of protein are created equal as to the environmental and health implications of raising and consuming them. A 2011 assessment by the non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that “different meats and different production systems have varying health, climate and other environmental impacts.”
The quantity of chemical fertilizers, fuel and other “production inputs” used, the differences in soil conditions and production systems and the extent to which best practices such as cover cropping, intensive grazing or manure management are implemented all affect the amount of greenhouse gas emissions a meat product is responsible for generating. To wit, lamb, beef, cheese, pork and farmed salmon raised “conventionally” (e.g. with inputs including hormones and antibiotics and feed derived from crops grown with chemical pesticides and fertilizers) were determined by EWG to generate the most greenhouse gases.
EWG partnered with the environmental analysis firm CleanMetrics to assess the climate impacts via lifecycle assessments of 20 popular types of meat, fish, dairy and vegetable proteins. EWG’s assessment calculated the full “cradle-to-grave” carbon footprint of each food item based on the greenhouse gas emissions generated before and after it left the farm—from the pesticides and fertilizer used to grow animal feed all the way through the grazing, animal raising, processing, transportation, cooking and even disposal of unused food (since some 20 percent of edible meat gets thrown away by Americans).
According to EWG, conventionally raised lamb, beef, cheese and pork also generate more polluting waste, pound for pound. Of these, lamb has the greatest impact, followed by beef and then by cheese—so vegetarians who eat dairy aren’t off the hook. “Beef has more than twice the emissions of pork, nearly four times more than chicken and more than 13 times as much as vegetable proteins such as beans, lentils and tofu,” summarizes EWG.
On the health front, EWG reports that “eating too much of these greenhouse gas-intensive meats boosts exposure to toxins and increases the risk of a wide variety of serious health problems, including heart disease, certain cancers, obesity and, in some studies, diabetes.”
Besides cutting out animal-derived proteins altogether, the best thing we can do for our health and the environment is to cut down on our meat consumption and choose only organic, humane and/or grass-fed meat, eggs and dairy. “Overall, these products are the least harmful, most ethical choices,” says EWG, adding that grass-fed and pasture-raised products are typically more nutritious and carry less risk of bacterial contamination. “While best management practices can demonstrably reduce overall emissions and environmental harm, the most effective and efficient way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts from livestock is simply to eat, waste and produce less meat and dairy.” For more information, check out EWG’s free online “Meat Eater’s Guide.”
CONTACTS: EWG Meat Eater’s Guide, www.ewg.org/meateatersguide.
EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe. Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.
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30 Comments
Add CommentNo mention of insects? I've been told that insect protein, gram per gram, is the least harmful on the environment, but I'm not actually sure about the source for those claims.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am pretty sure it was the UAEM. (united association of edible mammals)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“Beef has more than twice the emissions of pork, nearly four times more than chicken and more than 13 times as much as vegetable proteins such as beans, lentils and tofu,”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut once they factor in the emissions of humans after consuming beans, lentil and tofu, it all evens out.
“eating too much of these greenhouse gas-intensive meats boosts exposure to toxins and increases the risk of a wide variety of serious health problems, including heart disease, certain cancers, obesity and, in some studies, diabetes.”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we Americans cared as much about food quality as other products we would be doing much better. I see plenty of people fusing over how much memory a smart phone has or how fast a car can go from 0-60 mph, but when is comes to eating: Just feed us the lowest priced, fast food slop you can find!
Environmental sustainability equals a smarter better and more efficient/cost effective way of doing things; which also equals better health, and a better economy.
We need a cultural shift of attitudes and behaviors beginning with a more value based approach to our own bodies.
10s of thousands of years of evolution to eat meats and yet somehow chemically created tofu is supposed to be better. Animals that are in effect "red" meat are unnatural and bad for the environment? What a joke.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only thing bad for the environment here would be all of the chemicals and other nonsense put in the meat or in the animal as it grows. What I find amusing is in comparison veggies or something, the chemicals and other alterations to those plants, well somehow magically that is all ok. No problem filling a field up with pesticides and genetically modified plants, but lets damn the fools who do the same with meat.
The fact is when you take the chemistry out of the picture, "red" meat is no worse for the environment than anything else humans eat. If anything these animals are good for the environment if they are put in fields to eat grasses and other plant material we humans CAN'T consume. Not to mention the fact the animals while living are effectively natural storage of meat, until needed and no refrigeration required.
Now if the article was about how humans today use massive amounts of chemicals and other garbage to grow, process and preserve ALL types of food and that stuff is bad for people as well as the environment, then we may have something.
As far as this actual article, I also enjoy how the leave out the density of meat. If meat were banned, which this author wants to do it seems, Besides the havoc it would cause in humans who evolved eating the product, plowing under in effect every acre of flat land on the planet and the extra tractors, processing facilities, the 100s of times more fertilizers and pesticides thrown on the ground all to grow edible plant material, would be far more damaging to the environment than letting cows and sheep roam some empty grassland to graze in, until needed.
Organic and grass fed are somewhat 'red herrings', especially when it comes to chickens. I think that this sort of assessment of the EWG is useful, and needs more work. One obvious thing as that chicken at this time is likely about as green as any meat. How did lamb fare so poorly? Locally it is largely grass fed, and I thought New Zealand lamb was too. My suspicion is that improvements in beef will be longer grass fed, and shorter grain fed, but this could be wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishow on Earth could an article titled thusly could fail to mention how hard on the planet commercial fishing has turned out to be? That is more a little than odd. The editor probably had tuna for lunch.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks priddseren. I love how all of these articles leave out the total picture. Yes, if you feed industrially produced grains and legumes to the animals you eat it's going to be inefficient. BUT, look at the whole picture: Grains, etc. require: 1) Massive amounts of fossil fuels to run the machinery to produce, ship and process; 2) more fossil fuels to provide the raw materials for pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizer (eww!); 3) vast swaths of land to produce (flown over the country recently?); 4) kill vast numbers of birds and rodents in the harvesting and production. The last matters to ethical vegetarians, unless you believe a horse has more soul than your cat (i.e., size doesn't matter, a being is a being.) Eating a couple cows in the course of a year is more ethical than eating grains/soy that have caused the death of hundreds of animals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe crux of the problem is that we just have too many damn people on the planet. We averted disaster in the 70's thanks to pretro-chemical fertilizers and genetically modified grains (like the dwarf Franken-wheat that's causing so much disease), but it didn't *solve* anything, it just pushed the problem off to another generation. And now we have an even *larger* population problem (as any biologist would have been able to tell you; a species will multiply to take advantage of it's available food resources... until it runs out and crashes.) And on top of that, the environmental disaster caused by the production of GRAINS and LEGUMES, and yes conventionally raised meat. BUT *traditional* farming methods utilize everything, in a sustainable harmony that mimics that found in nature (ruminants cut down grass, and their poop fertilizes the grass, and can even be used to fertilize a bit of veggies or even grains.) Grass feeding actually *replenishes* the land, which is why the plains were so rich; all those centuries of buffalo poop.
The answer's not easy - I certainly don't know what it is - but it's not throwing more petro-chemically produced tofu at it. Bugs probably are a good answer, at least partially, as is really local agriculture like growing your own veggies - and raising a few chickens! - in your own backyard.
priddseren, I think you are a little out of your element.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst there is the energy that goes into things like production corn: Fossil fuels to plant and harvest it, natural gas to produce the fertilizers, production of pesticides from petroleum, harvesting and transportation etc. Now after all of that, then you feed it to your live stock, which is another magnitude of energy since it required the plant production first. Meat in general is by a magnitude more energy inefficient than plants. This is a scientific fact that is not really a controversial one by any stretch. This is true and has always been true for millions of years. Plants create energy from photosynthesis. Animals that eat the plants do not create energy at all, they just consume it. Also the fact that the consumption of red meat is not healthy in large quantities, has been demonstrable true for many decades now. This fact also is not controversial at all. Sorry that is just reality.
Allowing sheep or cows to roam in empty grassland until needed is not necessarily bad, and in fact can be good, for the grasslands under certain assumptions. If it is done in a sustainable manner, like not over grazing in a space that is too small, or not supplementing their diet with corn, then you are right; however this is simply not the way agriculture in our modern age works: not at all.
"10s of thousands of years of evolution to eat meats"
Um What??? - We have evolved millions of years as omnivores however many farm animals, like the cow, have been artificially selected by humans for a few thousand years.
Even with a huge amount of people that we have on this planet we currently have plenty of resources to feed all of them. We are just horribly inefficient at it right now and are working against nature instead of with it. We need to be smarter. Like the biologist, Miguel Medialdea, turned fish farmer in Spain. Now fish farming in general is very bad environmentally because of things like chicken and corn feed to them. However Miguel Medialdea has created a natural preserve that has actually repaired the land, cleans the water, and produces natural fish. He feeds them nothing! They eat what they would in nature. His farm is profitable, filters and cleans the polluted water from the city, has superior fish, and is now one of the largest bird sanctuaries in the world. Smarter, cleaner better: Sustainability at its finest!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe answer is easy: Humans will continue to breed and produce food from fossil fuel until fuel availability and environmental changes will invoke good old evolution to fix it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo the fix to overpopulation is overshoot followed by mass famine, migrations and war.
Hopefully a smarter species will come out of the bottleneck event.
Did you not read the article? It is pro grass fed beef.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere do they come up with these garbage statistics. 20 per cent? Bull pucky.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is NO WAY people throw out 1/5 of the meat they buy. No way at all. I throw out a fraction of a per cent. MAYBE once a year I defrost something then don't get a chance to cook it. And everything that gets cooked is eaten w/o any remainder being thrown out.
So you expect me to believe that the average American buys a five pound pack of hamburger and tosses out 1 full pound?
Your article merits no reading when you make a claim like that right out of the gate.
How is this figure arrived at? I'd really like to know.
It seems like everyone is getting acid reflux. Why?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf bugs don't want to eat a food crop, I'm sure it triggers problems for our stomach.
We need to find out what chemicals are triggers.
Another problem is that most of these chemicals cause swelling and most times the end result is pain... back, muscle, joint, or acidosis.
They are putting pesticides, and other toxic chemicals like diphenylamine, thiabendayole, iprodione on grapes, cherries, bananas and other fresh foods for shipping worldwide.
Most of the pesticides are nerotoxins and should never be added to foods.
The current way agriculture feeds the world IS the most efficient. Big Agra feeds the world because they make a profit at doing it. Were there a less expensive, more carbon neutral, less chemically intensive way of growing enough chickens to feed, say Texas, somebody would have thought of it by now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTake the profit out of Agriculture. vote in a legislture that will force big agra to start farming "sustainably" Bring back the small family farms to do the same. Enough people will die of starvation over the next thirty years so that your idea of homeostasis will become a reality.
Some of you above are salivating at such a scenario. I suggest that you can be the among the vanguard of the armies of gravediggers we will need.
in 1980 while doing research for Greenpeace in Boston i came upon a article that mentioned a Cornell doctoral dessertation, that stated 1lb of beef uses 50 times more fuel, than 1 lb of wild fish protein. Sorry i dont remember the date of publication or the yr.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis would be fine if they didn't burn down millions of rainforest acres to make pasture for cattle.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@timbo555, "Take the profit out of Agriculture. vote in a legislture that will force big agra to start farming "sustainably"" right, because doing things because they are cheap but not sustainable has a great future. Sorry, you are just one of those conservatives that believes the way things are is the only way they could be. These are artificial systems and we can structure them the way we see fit. If you reduced beef production you could feed more people, for less money, with less of an environmental footprint. So, I understand you want the status quo to remain but the times they are a changing so learn to adapt or risk going extinct.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuote: "Would be far more damaging to the environment than letting cows and sheep roam some empty grassland to graze"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnswer: IF ten percent return on our food could feed the world's population.
" An average of only 10 percent of the value of plant foods is recovered in the milk, eggs and meat of the animals"
http://www.rawfoodexplained.com/proteins/the-question-of-proteins.html
perhaps the high environmental cost of lamb is due to the distance it is shipped frozen to market ie New Zeeland, the Falklands etc
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood to read in a scientific journal about the real profitability(-or-not-) of the consumption of dead animals!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact is: Millions of human fatalities could be avoided every year if the research news about proven meat & dairy health risks was clearly printed on page ONE of our press releases, rather than being swept under the carpet or shunted away to a wee little column on page fifty-one-! And this just because Freedom of Information is NOT in the interest of our biggest money-making industrial lobbies in the land: 'Big Farmer', and 'Big Pharma'.
The great eye-opener re human nutrition research has been, and still is, the most comprehensive and ground-breaking medical field work ever done on the subject of animal vs. plant nutrition:
Professor Colin Campbell's study - which, unfortunately, cannot easily be accessed because it bears the rather 'Un-American' title: 'The China Study'.
It has emphatically shown how the biggest meat & dairy consuming nations on our planet have the highest cancer& heart fatalities. I think we ignore this health message at our own risk, the personal risk of dying early, and in unnecessary pain.
After all, our own body is the closest environmental 'buddy' we have on this earth, so let's nurture it smartly!
Apart from The China Study, I strongly suggest to all carnivores to view : Meat your meat!
Re Modern Women's Liberation through food choices, there's also
Youthevity.com
Sorry, the above-mentioned website should read:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMeet your meat.com (Please, swap the 'meat' in first place for 'meet'.)
And if that doesn't call for what we Australians call a swap-meet, which is a social get-together,a bit like a potluck, let's turn it into a 'Swap meat Swapmeet'-next time we meet to eat!
What you all are talking about is immense overpopulation.Overconsumption is certainly a factor in ghg emission, and the US correlation of fatman barges (excessively sized pickup truck, suv, and van models)on the streets with the monster-sized humans inhabiting them, is surely a result of being unable to fit in any other transport, including moving of shoes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you are going to run a "stock photo" to illustrate an article about problems with eating beef, a photo of beef cattle (e.g. Angus) instead of the Holstein milk cows shown would add to your street cred.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlants don't "create" energy, they convert solar energy to chemical energy.
You are quite correct, when you say the stock photo is one of milk cows. However, the Holstein, is also bred as a beef cattle beast, in various parts of the world. A pretty darn good one at that. This animal is amazing, in every way. It has served mankind well (no pun intended). GK
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow many times have I said to you city people, "What don't you get about WE GROW YOUR FOOD?". You blame the farmers and ranchers for your perceived environmental disasters. Then your go to the store and buy the food that we grow for you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are 2 factors that have been mentioned that are worthy of repeating. First, eating too much is the health hazard. In moderation, it doesn't matter what you eat. Obesity is the problem. Second, overpopulation is a serious threat to humanity. Poor people and children having children is the biggest problem on the planet.
There hasn't been another food producer comment about this article. I raise Angus and grow apples. I also have a big veggie garden for eating fresh and canning. I'm old, I'm lean, and I'm stronger than any of you tofu eating veggies that like to tell me I'm killing the environment. I eat beef every day that I don't eat game.
I'll outlive you, too.
"I'll outlive you, too"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe just had our "Albertas greatest cowboy" die of cancer , sixty years old. So I wouldn't be counting my chickens so arrogantly.
Just measuring the digestive tract of humans reveal that humans evolved eating vegetables, fruits, roots, and only an occasional bit of meat. And cattle, even if they are raised organically on grass, have to process that grass to make their muscles and bones. The eating of vegetable matter, which we have evolved to do, avoids all that cattle processing. And, when our ancestors ate both pulses and grains, they were able to make all the protein they needed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust the title of the publication - E-The Environmental Magazine - reveals the bias of the author(s). Not worth debunking...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen Gore, Mann, Hansen, Holdren, Gavin, Brifra, Jones, Obama give up meat, let's re-visit the question. Maybe Gore will stop buying seaside property for his mansions, also. You know... to keep catastrophe away. LOL GK
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