The devil is in the detail when it comes to beef’s carbon footprint
The nuance missing from the great war over animal meat vs. plant-based meat
Plant-based meat crusaders aren’t wrong, 99% of animal agriculture does have a major carbon footprint and is flawed, but the solution isn’t to throw the animals out with the bathwater.
And the meat lovers are right, we don’t have to say goodbye to real, animal-based meat forever, and plant-based meat might not be the panacea some believe it to be.
Perhaps you’ve heard the term “flora and fauna” before. Flora = plant life and fauna = animal life. The reason for the two is that nature, ecology and all that is wonderful and awe inspiring on our planet relies upon the delicate interplay of plants and animals which function best when in harmony with one another. That includes not just the pretty/cute animals (deer, rabbits, foxes, birds), but also the “icky” ones (bugs, flies, spiders, mice). All of these animals play an integral role in creating a balanced ecosystem with healthy soil and air as well as natural water and carbon cycles.
The dirty secret of “plant-based” meat is that it is dependent upon mono-cropping.
Mono-cropping refers to the tens of millions of acres in this country and around the world where we plant only one species, most commonly corn, soy and wheat. Yes, these grains “feed the world”, but that also comes with a massive carbon and ecological footprint. In order to produce these crops we do the following things, all of which destroy much of the natural fauna that is needed to keep nature in balance:
We plant crops where they don’t naturally belong (corn and soy in the great plains)
We poison the soil and kill all the bugs and bees with chemical herbicides in our quest to prevent weed from damaging the yields of the cash crops
We inadvertently kill deer, foxes, mice and other small invertebrates with giant combines that go through the fields to harvest the grain
We produce massive quantities of nitrogen fertilizer in order to provide the nutrients these plants need to grow. Nitrogen has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 245. That means it contributes 245 times more to climate change than carbon. For those of you wondering about the GWP of Methane, it is 28-36.
Now, based on all my research, proponents of plant-based meat would counter this argument with a number of statements, which are worth addressing:
Statement: An animal didn’t have to die to bring you your plant-based burger.
Response: actually that’s not entirely true. Yes a cow didn’t have to die, but millions of invertebrate insects and thousands of mice and other small critters died due to the mono-cropping required to bring you that plant based burger. If we are going to place a value on animal life, it is difficult to place the value of one animal (cow) above others (mouse).
Statement: Cow’s fart a lot of methane which is 10x more powerful than carbon.
Response: Well, they don’t fart it, they burp it...but that’s beside the point... they do output a lot of methane. However, the amount of methane emitted by the 90 million cattle in America today is only 14% higher than it was prior to European settlement of the Americas when over 60 million bison, 10 million elk and millions of wild sheep goats and deer roamed the grasslands. So it raises the question: is the warming climate due to having “too many cows” or did something else change? The two charts below show that total US methane production over the last 30 years has increased while the size of the US cattle herd has decreased. Meanwhile researchers at Harvard’s School of Engineering & Applied Sciences recently discovered that we have been underestimating the total methane release by oil and gas fracking and drilling by 50-90%. So we need to be careful about equating cows with the ‘methane problem’.
Statement: eating too much red meat is bad for your health.
Response: For the most part, this is true, but it doesn’t have to be. 99% of the beef produced in this country comes from cattle finished on a grain diet which results in an omega 6 to omega 3 ratio of 9:1. Since the ideal ratio in a human diet of omega 6 to omega 3 is 1:1, eating grain-fed beef on a regular basis is far from ideal.. The solution is to consume grass-fed, grass-finished beef which has an omega 6 to 3 ratio of 2:1.
Statement: plant-based meat is healthier for humans to consume.
Response: increasingly the general public are coming to terms with the fact that this is simply not true. If we want to enjoy the health benefits of a plant-based diet, we will benefit most from eating plants in their unadulterated form. A plant based burger has the potential to include all kinds of hyper processed oils and ingredients which can be toxic to our health, including several which are known carcinogens. Remember what your Mom taught you, if you cannot pronounce the ingredients on the label it’s probably not good for you. In fact, a recent metabolic analysis published in the Nature journal highlighted the many ways in which plant-based meat is a poor substitute for the many important metabolites that we obtain from animal meat:
Statement: there is a massive carbon footprint from moving cows around and moving their food around.
Response: this is true, but unfortunately there are similar challenges with the production of “plant-based” meat. The fertilizer comes from Canada or abroad and has a heavy carbon footprint; the plant inputs have to be trucked to a manufacturing facility somewhere; the manufacturing facility needs lots of energy and water to operate.
Statement: you’re raising cattle where there should be trees!
Response: This doesn’t have an easy true or false answer.. Few would disagree (I hope!) that we should not be cutting down the Amazon rainforest to raise beef. Ok, but we’re not arguing about that. In the US 40% of the landscape is natural grasslands (like the great plains). A grassland is a brittle ecosystem where trees have never grown because rainfall is too scarce and inconsistent for trees to survive. In fact, you need look no further than the title of this article to know that grasslands should not be covered by trees: “Ecosystem carbon loss with woody plant invasion of grasslands”. Furthermore the prevalence of natural fires makes trees a dangerous thing to grow in these environments. Not everything has to be, or should be a forest. There are millions of birds, bugs, animals and other critters whose natural home is the grasslands. The grasslands in the US are predominantly where we raise our cattle. And grazing is an important component of maintaining a healthy grassland. Yes, it would be better if it were bison and elk grazing the grasslands, and not cows. But for now, cattle grazing that land prevents it from being turned into office buildings and roads. Meanwhile the cows prevent desertification by cycling nutrients back into the soil and promoting the grass to grow deeper roots and sequester carbon in the soil.
Why isn’t “cultured-meat” the answer?
Cultured-meat is what “lab-grown” meat is being referred to since consumer-behavior has revealed that no one is excited about eating something that is a lab project. Well, it’s early days, but some are predicting the ‘cultured-meat’ trend will be short-lived. Check out this article by Joe Fassler: “Lab-grown meat is supposed to be inevitable. The science tells a different story.“
The TLDR: Open Philanthropy, a non-profit which is a major donor to the Good Food Institute, which is one of the major backers of cultured meat, conducted a robust Technical Economic Analysis regarding the viability of plant-based meat in which David Humbird, a UC Berkeley PhD in chemical engineering who spent over two years researching the report concluded, “it’s hard to find an angle that wasn’t a ludicrous dead end” and “it seems like a bunch of hooey to me.”
So what’s the solution?
If you’ve followed my previous posts you’ll know that it has been a journey of discovery that has brought me to this deep interest in regenerative agriculture. A return to a more balanced, locally-focused way of farming, that produces both delicious and healthy food (both meat and plants). I believe if we can find a way to incentivize farmers financially, wide-spread regenerative farming is not just a pipe dream.
The beef industry is far from perfect today, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved upon. In Part 2 of this post I will outline what you can do to help more producers make animal meat in a carbon negative fashion, the way that White Oak Pastures has already done.
Good work, Fats and their Ratios need to be part of the Dietary conversation and also the desire for sugar their lack of consumption produces....