That being said, they still come out ahead in comparison to animal-based foods due to the fact that you need to grow massive amounts of feed crops to raise other creatures. It turns out that pretty much every environmental metric comes out ahead
Transitioning to plant-based diets (PBDs) has the potential to reduce diet-related land use by 76%, diet-related greenhouse gas emissions by 49%, eutrophication by 49%, and green and blue water use by 21% and 14%, respectively, whilst garnering substantial health co-benefits
[…]
Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].
In terms of workers, the meat industry is arguably worse on that front. It’s one of the most dangerous industries anywhere for workers
US meat workers are already three times more likely to suffer serious injury than the average American worker, and pork and beef workers nearly seven times more likely to suffer repetitive strain injuries
[…]
Amputations happen on average twice a week, according to the data
And there’s great risk of PTSD from the workers that you don’t see for harvesting crops
There is evidence that slaughterhouse employment is associated with lower levels of psychological well-being. SHWs [slaughterhouse workers] have described suffering from trauma, intense shock, paranoia, anxiety, guilt and shame (Victor & Barnard, 2016), and stress (Kristensen, 1991). There was evidence of higher rates of depression (Emhan et al., 2012; Horton & Lipscomb, 2011; Hutz et al., 2013; Lander et al., 2016; Lipscomb et al., 2007), anxiety (Emhan et al., 2012; Hutz et al., 2013; Leibler et al., 2017), psychosis (Emhan et al., 2012), and feelings of lower self-worth at work (Baran et al., 2016). Of particular note was that the symptomatology appeared to vary by job role. Employees working directly with the animals (e.g., on the kill floor or handling the carcasses) were those who showed the highest prevalence rates of aggression, anxiety, and depression (Hutz et al., 2013; Richards et al., 2013).
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15248380211030243
Not do be pedantic but wouldn’t this imply you HAVE to grow feed for livestock? There’s lots of regions where you don’t feed your livestock but let them graze. It’s part of the reason why 100% of those with Irish decent are able to digest lactose as it was crucial for survival for thousands of years.
I think overwhelmingly you have the correct position here however.
Grass-fed doesn’t really scale and entails a number of other environmental issues from higher methane to higher deforestation. Even for Ireland in particular, it’s got quite a number of issues
Increased methane emissions
Grass-fed production requires longer growing times leading to more lifetime methane emissions overall. It also requires more cattle overall due to lower slaughter weight
Taken together, an exclusively grass-fed beef cattle herd would raise the United States’ total methane emissions by approximately 8%.
Not enough land to meet demand even if 100% of grassland was used
We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall
methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.
Problems in countries that have tried to scale it up
New Zealand has tried to scale up it’s grass-fed production and often touts it. To do so, they end up using heavy amounts of fertilizer in their production so much so that some regions need a 12-fold reduction in their dairy industry size just to have their water meet safety thresholds
The large footprint for milk in Canterbury indicates just how far the capacity of the environment has been overshot. To maintain that level of production and have healthy water would require either 12 times more rainfall in the region or a 12-fold reduction in cows.
[…]
The “grass-fed” marketing line overlooks the huge amounts of fossil-fuel-derived fertiliser used to make the extra grass that supports New Zealand’s very high animal stock rates.
Keep in mind that this is the case with New Zealand still using plenty of feed because their definition of grass-fed still allows for plenty of supplemental grain. A fully grass-fed system would fair even worse in that regard
The national dairy industry [in New Zealand] is consistently the country’s largest consumer of grain and feed at approximately 75 percent (Figure 4). The majority of dairy farms are on non-irrigated pasture-based systems (75 to 80 percent), where up to 25 percent of the annual diet could consist of supplemental feeding. With the recently high dairy prices experienced of over NZ$9.30 (US$6.05) in the last two years (Appendix 2), farmers have looked to maximize milk yields by utilizing more “purchased” feed for conversion to milk solids
In the UK and Ireland, the land that grass-fed cows are on is primarily actually not natural grass-land - its natural state is temperate rainforest
Most of the UK and Ireland’s grass-fed cows and sheep are on land that might otherwise be temperate rainforest – arable crops tend to prefer drier conditions. However, even if there were no livestock grazing in the rainforest zone – and these areas were threatened by other crops instead – livestock would still pose an indirect threat due to their huge land footprint
[…]
Furthermore, most British grass-fed cows are still fed crops on top of their staple grass
I feel like you want to argue about this but I really don’t. I agree with you, I just have some criticisms for how you cherry pick feed crops and now cows to support your argument. Sheep could easily be eating just grass and have their wool used to insulate housing that could theoretically decrease the burning of sequestered carbon for heating/cooling. But that’s not what is going on, it’s not a popular use, and it’s not really fair to you to cherry pick data like that.
The source looking at Ireland does talk about how sheep grazing in the UK and Ireland are primarily on temperate forestland. But more broadly, other ruminants like sheep are going to have similarly high methane emissions to cattle. Ruminants, unlike other farm animals, have most of their emission from eccentric fermentation (and or land use change/deforestation) which is going to occur at similar rates when they are eating grass as well. So should I have separated that out a bit, potentially yes, but my earlier comments were already getting quite long
From one study:
More than 80% of the emissions attributed to sheepmeat and wool result from on-farm methane emissions, due principally to enteric fermentation (Cottle et al., 2016, Peri et al., 2020, Vermulen et al., 2012). Other non-methane emissions and emissions that occur in the supply chain post farm gate are a relatively minor contributor to overall emissions (Australian Government, 2020, Vermulen et al., 2012).
In terms of land usage, the land usage is actually even higher for lamb and mutton production per kg and per kg protein compared to the already high usage for beef production [1] [2]. This entails wool production having high usage since sheep in wool production are typically killed for meat as well once their wool production decrease (similar to dairy).
When we compare wool emissions to other textiles, we find that wool has some of the highest emissions per kg of any textile [3]. We could just as easily be using cotton (lower emissions to produce per kg) which has similar insulation R values and lower emissions
Ah no worries, I have a tendency to just dump a lot into comments so it might be easy to miss some of the details. My infodumping tendencies have their cons sometimes :)
Not at all, I find it really refreshing to talk to someone who is willing to cite and give chunks of info in a concise manner. This was 100% on me and not your fault in any way.
That being said, they still come out ahead in comparison to animal-based foods due to the fact that you need to grow massive amounts of feed crops to raise other creatures. It turns out that pretty much every environmental metric comes out ahead
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/htm
In terms of workers, the meat industry is arguably worse on that front. It’s one of the most dangerous industries anywhere for workers
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/05/amputations-serious-injuries-us-meat-industry-plant
And there’s great risk of PTSD from the workers that you don’t see for harvesting crops
Not do be pedantic but wouldn’t this imply you HAVE to grow feed for livestock? There’s lots of regions where you don’t feed your livestock but let them graze. It’s part of the reason why 100% of those with Irish decent are able to digest lactose as it was crucial for survival for thousands of years.
I think overwhelmingly you have the correct position here however.
Grass-fed doesn’t really scale and entails a number of other environmental issues from higher methane to higher deforestation. Even for Ireland in particular, it’s got quite a number of issues
Increased methane emissions
Grass-fed production requires longer growing times leading to more lifetime methane emissions overall. It also requires more cattle overall due to lower slaughter weight
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401/pdf
Not enough land to meet demand even if 100% of grassland was used
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401
Problems in countries that have tried to scale it up
New Zealand has tried to scale up it’s grass-fed production and often touts it. To do so, they end up using heavy amounts of fertilizer in their production so much so that some regions need a 12-fold reduction in their dairy industry size just to have their water meet safety thresholds
https://theconversation.com/11-000-litres-of-water-to-make-one-litre-of-milk-new-questions-about-the-freshwater-impact-of-nz-dairy-farming-183806
Keep in mind that this is the case with New Zealand still using plenty of feed because their definition of grass-fed still allows for plenty of supplemental grain. A fully grass-fed system would fair even worse in that regard
(emphasis mine)
https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileName=New Zealand Grain and Feed Market Situation_Wellington_New Zealand_NZ2023-0003.pdf
Problems with grass-fed production in Ireland
In the UK and Ireland, the land that grass-fed cows are on is primarily actually not natural grass-land - its natural state is temperate rainforest
https://theconversation.com/livestock-grazing-is-preventing-the-return-of-rainforests-to-the-uk-and-ireland-198014
I feel like you want to argue about this but I really don’t. I agree with you, I just have some criticisms for how you cherry pick feed crops and now cows to support your argument. Sheep could easily be eating just grass and have their wool used to insulate housing that could theoretically decrease the burning of sequestered carbon for heating/cooling. But that’s not what is going on, it’s not a popular use, and it’s not really fair to you to cherry pick data like that.
The source looking at Ireland does talk about how sheep grazing in the UK and Ireland are primarily on temperate forestland. But more broadly, other ruminants like sheep are going to have similarly high methane emissions to cattle. Ruminants, unlike other farm animals, have most of their emission from eccentric fermentation (and or land use change/deforestation) which is going to occur at similar rates when they are eating grass as well. So should I have separated that out a bit, potentially yes, but my earlier comments were already getting quite long
From one study:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751731122000416#s0050
In terms of land usage, the land usage is actually even higher for lamb and mutton production per kg and per kg protein compared to the already high usage for beef production [1] [2]. This entails wool production having high usage since sheep in wool production are typically killed for meat as well once their wool production decrease (similar to dairy).
When we compare wool emissions to other textiles, we find that wool has some of the highest emissions per kg of any textile [3]. We could just as easily be using cotton (lower emissions to produce per kg) which has similar insulation R values and lower emissions
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-protein-poore
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/ndustrial-carbon-footprint-of-textile-fabrics-in-this-study-kgCO-2-e-kg_tbl1_303634993 along with other studies all showing the same trends of other regions with wool as a great outlier in terms of emissions. The emissions don’t seem to vary much from what I have read even when looking at regions with mostly all pasture-based production
Sorry, my apologies I didn’t read more into it.
Ah no worries, I have a tendency to just dump a lot into comments so it might be easy to miss some of the details. My infodumping tendencies have their cons sometimes :)
Not at all, I find it really refreshing to talk to someone who is willing to cite and give chunks of info in a concise manner. This was 100% on me and not your fault in any way.