How Meat Contributes to Global Warming
Producing beef for the table has a surprising environmental cost: it releases prodigious amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases
How Meat Contributes to Global Warming
- A Growing Appetite World beef production is increasing at a rate of about 1 percent a year, in part because of population growth but also because of greater per capita demand in many countries. Economic analysis shows that if all beef were produced under the economically efficient feedlot, or CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation), system—which generates fewer greenhouse emissions than many other common husbandry systems do—beef production by 2030 would still release 1.3 billion tons of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases... U.N. FAO; U.S. Census Bureau
- The High (Greenhouse Gas) Cost of Meat Worldwide meat production (beef, chicken and pork) emits more atmospheric greenhouse gases than do all forms of global transportation or industrial processes. On the basis of data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research, the author estimates that current levels of meat production add nearly 6.5 billion tons of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases every year to the atmosphere: some 18 percent of the worldwide annual production of 36 billion tons... U.N. FAO, 2006
- Eating and Driving: An Atmospheric Comparison The greenhouse gas emissions from producing various foods can be appreciated by comparing them with the emissions from a gasoline-powered passenger car that gets 27 miles per gallon. The estimated emissions from food production incorporate the assumption that 1,000 kilograms of carbon per hectare per year (about 2,700 pounds of carbon dioxide per acre per year) would have been absorbed by forests or other vegetation if the land had not been cleared for annual food crops or fodder... U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Transportation Energy Data Book, U.S. Department of Energy, 2008; Seattle Food System Enhancement Project: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Study; Subak and Fiala references in "More to Explore"
