As negotiations get underway at COP28, we compiled a list of the leading research documenting the connection between meat and greenhouse gas emissions.
Vegans love to conflate all meat into one big group because their goal is to make veganism look good in comparison.
In reality, beef is the main problem.
It would be a lot more environmentally effective to convince people to reduce beef consumption and replace it with chicken/pork instead, but vegans aren’t interested in that because for them it’s not really about the climate - it’s about reducing animal suffering and death.
This duplicity muddies the waters and makes getting real actual change that would benefit the climate harder to achieve and less likely to happen.
I would hazard saying “environmentally effective” here unless we are willing to ignore some of the other large environmental issues with meat production outside of just green house gases emission. Plant-based foods are lower not just on GHG emissions, but water usage, land usage, eutrophication, fertilizer usage1, etc.
There’s all kinds of other pollutants such as Nitrogen runoff. The rise of the pig farming is has helped fueled a crisis in Nitrogen runoff in the Netherlands for instance
There’s the high level of antibiotic usage to maintaining the high levels of production fueling antibiotic resistance.
And so on.
If we do want to look at the suffering, we should also note that chicken farming does not just keep things the same, but actually makes it worse with more chickens required than other creatures due to their smaller size.
EDIT: I should also mention that land use change (deforestation) factor can change as you rapidly increase these industries size. Deforestation makes up a large portion of beef’s current emissions. Plant-based foods require overall less cropland due to not needing to grow any feed and removing that energy loss. This is not the case for chicken production. Currently beef does make up the majority of Amazonian deforestation, however, the second largest portion is growing animal feed primary for chickens. Switch from beef to chickens and you might risk just moving around where the deforestation comes from
Yes. Sloppy choice of words on my part but this is a climate change topic, here.
Chicken meat uses 4x less water than beef. I’m not disputing your point, just firming up the perspective for anyone lurking.
Clearly, vegetables are way way better. But in terms of what kind of behavior change people are willing to consider, cutting out beef is a way way easier sell than cutting out all meat.
I tell people to try going without beef temporarily. What often happens is in doing so they learn to cook a bit and cut it out (maybe not fully but mostly) long term. Then they go after pork, chicken, etc. You’re right that beef is the worst offender, but we want to be careful not to overemphasise and make it seem like its the only offender. I think a lot of it is setting a tone. I’m veg not vegan but pick vegan options when available. I think the more we can normalise ‘eat less meat’ the better as that’s pretty hard to argue with
I mean, if we’re looking at the graphs, beef really is the only “offender” (if you can call it that) and only in the current consumed amounts. If people ate a lot more chicken and less beef, the GHG effect from animals would be lower than the same number 500 years ago due to animal population culling and advancements in agricultural methane reduction.
At that point, the term “negligible effect” becomes unreasonably harsh. Even with the worst claims against the effect of livestock on the environment (many of which we might not see eye to eye on), it’s simply objectively not an environmental issue if people are eating chicken and some pork as their staple proteins. You can call it an animal rights issue if you want. Considering chicken is almost objectively a correct and healthy food to eat, two thirds of the diet triforce (health, environment, animal rights) become non-issues.
And the cool thing, even if I disagree with the outcomes it’s healthier for us to eat a bit less red meat as long as our meat protein intake stays reasonable from white meat and seafood.
What’s the impact, if any, of any of these crops/livestock in non-water-short areas? Do other areas thousands of miles away cannibalize excess water if available to prevent draught, or are these numbers sometimes meaningless in the medium-term?
Yes. Sloppy choice of words on my part but this is a climate change topic, here.
Chicken meat uses 4x less water than beef. I’m not disputing your point, just firming up the perspective for anyone lurking.
Clearly, vegetables are way way better. But in terms of what kind of behavior change people are willing to consider, cutting out beef is a way way easier sell than cutting out all meat.
one aspect of this is that many vegans care about the environment and the victims of animal agriculture. Things are so bad for the animals (we kill trillions per year. That’s insane.) that people are desperate to do or say anything to get people to stop supporting it.
It would be a lot more environmentally effective to convince people to reduce beef consumption and replace it with chicken/pork instead,
Let’s not drive a wedge between the eco-vegans and the animal welfare vegans. Beef is the worst for climate while chickens get the least ethical treatment.
This duplicity muddies the waters and makes getting real actual change that would benefit the climate harder to achieve and less likely to happen.
Dividing an already tiny population of much needed activists is not how you get progressive change. Non-beef meats still shadow plant-based food in terms of their climate harm.
Your pic was too big for me to download but if it’s the same data I’ve seen, then beef is the worst and lamb is 2nd at about ½ the emissions of beef, and all the meats are substantially more harmful than plant based options.
Honestly this whole argument reminds me of the importance of intersectionality. Yes different groups have different forms, levels and styles of oppression, but there is still a joint cause for dismantling oppression as a whole.
To summarize his infographic. Pork, Chicken, and farmed seafood are better than some plant-based options, and worse than some other plant-based options. The graph seems to leave off some of the famous outliers (like wild-caught seafood).
Unfortunately the graph leaves out a lot of important variables, like the usability of the land (whether growing corn on an acre that can support a forest is better or worse than having pork on an acre that cannot support much plantlife). It also uses global averages, which leaves out situations where many regions may be looking at entirely different calculations.
Coffee and chocolate are not substitutes for animal meat though. If you look at the chart and compare animal proteins to substitutes like tofu, beans, peas, and nuts the plant based options win every time.
Coffee and chocolate are not substitutes for animal meat though. If you look at the chart and compare animal proteins to substitutes like tofu, beans, peas, and nuts the plant based options win every time.
You came so close to the answer, and then fell away. Factory farming as a process is what jacks up those numbers dramatically, not the thing that’s being farmed. A few large corporations have seized the cattle and chicken industries, so their numbers would be far lower if regulations reversed that horrific trend (with a few caveats regarding methane in cattle, but I’m trying to stick to the topic). Remember how I mentioned “leaves out a lot of important variables”? That’s another of them. Nobody cares that Tyson collects a feed subsidy that’s paid for by small-scale farmers, or that small-scale farmers’ animal products are 100% environmentally sustainable in most countries. There’s nothing inherent about animal agriculture that means it NEEDS to be factory-farmed, or that we need to penalize small farmers so we can kick money over to Purdue.
But even in the current graph, poultry, pork, and seafood are in the same realm as most crops and are dramatically more usable calories. Several things that are not on the chart (wild-caught seafood, animals raised with certain processes, the influence of the symbiotic relationship between animals and crops) put most animals comfortably in with plants.
As for beef, that would deserve it’s own entire conversation because those numbers misrepresent a lot of the reality. But that’s another topic and I’m starting to tire of having 10+ people reply to me every hour on this topic, most of whom are angry at or belittling me (not you, just in general)
Let’s not drive a wedge between the eco-vegans and the animal welfare vegans
Why not? If the right eco answer is to eat more of a certain kind of meat instead of quitting meat, then eco-vegans aren’t eco at all (and should admit it to themselves) if they can’t embrace that fact. The willful oversimplification of the environmental impacts of meat-eating is a Tell that a given vegan couldn’t care less about the environment.
Dividing an already tiny population of much needed activists is not how you get progressive change
I’m an environmental activist that the vegans try to burn because I’m also an advocate for small aggriculture and local rancher protections. How is that not “dividing an already tiny population”? You should let the eco-vegans join our team for a while, too, if the environmental side matters to you.
You know who the eco-vegans would have marching side-by-side with them if they focused on the environmental impact instead of the animal rights side? BLOODY FREAKING RANCHERS . There’d be 10x the people fighting for the environment. Get us all hugging fluffy bunnies after we save the world. Seems reasonable enough for me.
EDIT: Whoops. Double-post unintended. Just ignore one or both or reply to both or whatever.
Why not? If the right eco answer is to eat more of a certain kind of meat instead of quitting meat,
First of all that’s not likely correct info. I can’t see the uncited chart you posted but it certainly sounds untrustworthy. I’ve seen several charts in documentaries and research papers and they generally show roughly the same pattern, comparable to this chart.
But let’s say someone managed to convincingly cherry-pick some corner-case legumes that are bizarre outliers to the overall pattern. Maybe there are some rare fruits that get shipped all over the world. It certainly does not make sense to divide, disempower, and diffuse the vegan movement in order to make exotic fruit/veg X the enemy of climate action in favor of preserving chicken factory-farming. Not a fan of Ronald Regan but there is a useful quote by him:
“if you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
IOW, you’ve added counter-productive complexity to the equation at the cost of neutering an otherwise strong movement – or in the very least failed to exploit an important asset we need for climate action. This is not an environmental activist move. It’s the move of a falsely positioned meat-eating climate denier strategically posturing.
The wise move is to consider action timing more tactfully. That is, push the simple vegan narrative for all it’s worth to shrink the whole livestock industry (extra emphasis on beef is fine but beyond that complexity works against you). No meat would be entirely eliminated of course (extinction mitigation is part of the cause anyway), but when a certain amount of progress is made only then does it make sense to go on the attack on whatever veg can really be justified as a worthy new top offender. The optimum tactful sequence of attack is not the order that appears on whatever chart you found.
The somewhat simplified take is: “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, then beat ’em”. Vegans are united and it’s foolish to disrupt that at this stage.
And don’t neglect the disease factor. Recent research shows that stressed animals (both human and non-human) have weakened immune systems. And as you might expect farmed animals are stressed in high numbers. This has been linked to diseases. Diseases in non-human animals sometimes jumps to humans. There would be substantial overlap between climate activists and those valuing safety from pandemics. And indeed, that same political party in the US who fought masks and vaccines happens to be the same group of people who deny climate change.
And don’t neglect the disease factor. Recent research shows that stressed animals (both human and non-human) have weakened immune systems. And as you might expect farmed animals are stressed in high numbers
Good news. Much of the livestock industry is incredibly incentivized to keep livestock stress levels down because it is the cheapest way to include meat quality and (as you say) keep disease down.
Diseases in non-human animals sometimes jumps to humans. There would be substantial overlap between climate activists and those valuing safety from pandemics
Couldn’t agree more. Nobody with a brain is trying to deregulate the agricultural industry.
First of all that’s not likely correct info. I can’t see the uncited chart you posted but it certainly sounds untrustworthy
Because its results disagree with your opinion? I’m not sure what constructive can come in any discussion after a line like that.
I’ve seen several charts in documentaries and research papers and they generally show roughly the same pattern, comparable to this chart.
So evidence that concludes anything other than “everyone has to stop eating meat now” is immediately untrustworthy. Understood.
But let’s say someone managed to convincingly cherry-pick some corner-case legumes that are bizarre outliers to the overall pattern
Let’s say someone made the brash presupposition that the only way to show eating meat isn’t destroying the environment is cherry-picking corner cases.
Not a fan of Ronald Regan but there is a useful quote by him:
“if you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
IOW, you’ve added counter-productive complexity to the equation
I agree with your statement about as much as I agree with Ronald Reagan. Like many Republicans, he was a fan of the tactic of oversimplifying an issue until it was easy enough to pretend to fix it with a trivial solution. Economy? Trickle-down! Anything more than saying “trickle-down” is adding counter-productive completixy to the equation.
The problem here, specifically, is that there are more farmers in the US than vegans in the US. You might have a point in that many farmers are already working towards improving the environment and most vegans tend to have such a shallow view of the issue that you need to reconcile veganism with the environment to get them to help the environment. But in the process you’re losing environmentally conscious educated people who are in a position to take action, which most vegans are not.
This is not an environmental activist move. It’s the move of a falsely positioned meat-eating climate denier strategically posturing.
And here is the problem. You just did it. You just told me I’m not allwoed to be an environmental activist because I support ethical meat-eating. Another guy (well I assume it’s someone else) was attacking UC Davis, a reputable college.
I came to say that. Not everyone has to change completely, reducing meat intake a little, eating meat with less emissions and even different beef farms haslve large range of emissions. There are different ways of raising beef.
So for sustainability there are multiple solutions.
For promoting veganism and reduce animal suffering only one, which I do support, but don’t put them together. It will only pusg people away from any improvement.
I’ll double down. In reality, beef in Africa, India, and China are the problem (except agriculture isn’t a significant enough problem to call “the problem”). In most countries, the climate impact of beef is low for the number of people fed by it.
And even in a full vacuum, plant-based food STILL accounts for 29% of greenhouse gas emissions caused by agriculture/horticulture.
Not nearly as many people as in the US. But between ranching and leaving them in the wild, about 1/3 of all cows in the world are in India. As you might have caught, most of the cows in India are actually used for milk… which is a real problem because the lower tech means they get dramatically less milk per cow than we get in the US. As in, 1/4 as much.
The environmental impact of the Indian cow population is non-trivial, both because of how many cows are not used for food and how inefficient their food processes are with cows. In comparison, the environmental impact of the US cow population is arguably quite trivial. Ditto with the other large beef/milk consumers of the western world like Spain.
Vegans love to conflate all meat into one big group because their goal is to make veganism look good in comparison.
In reality, beef is the main problem.
It would be a lot more environmentally effective to convince people to reduce beef consumption and replace it with chicken/pork instead, but vegans aren’t interested in that because for them it’s not really about the climate - it’s about reducing animal suffering and death.
This duplicity muddies the waters and makes getting real actual change that would benefit the climate harder to achieve and less likely to happen.
I would hazard saying “environmentally effective” here unless we are willing to ignore some of the other large environmental issues with meat production outside of just green house gases emission. Plant-based foods are lower not just on GHG emissions, but water usage, land usage, eutrophication, fertilizer usage1, etc.
There’s all kinds of other pollutants such as Nitrogen runoff. The rise of the pig farming is has helped fueled a crisis in Nitrogen runoff in the Netherlands for instance
There’s the high level of antibiotic usage to maintaining the high levels of production fueling antibiotic resistance.
And so on.
If we do want to look at the suffering, we should also note that chicken farming does not just keep things the same, but actually makes it worse with more chickens required than other creatures due to their smaller size.
1 Even less synthetic fertilizer even compared to the maximal usage of manure per https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344922006528
EDIT: I should also mention that land use change (deforestation) factor can change as you rapidly increase these industries size. Deforestation makes up a large portion of beef’s current emissions. Plant-based foods require overall less cropland due to not needing to grow any feed and removing that energy loss. This is not the case for chicken production. Currently beef does make up the majority of Amazonian deforestation, however, the second largest portion is growing animal feed primary for chickens. Switch from beef to chickens and you might risk just moving around where the deforestation comes from
Yes. Sloppy choice of words on my part but this is a climate change topic, here.
Chicken meat uses 4x less water than beef. I’m not disputing your point, just firming up the perspective for anyone lurking.
Clearly, vegetables are way way better. But in terms of what kind of behavior change people are willing to consider, cutting out beef is a way way easier sell than cutting out all meat.
I tell people to try going without beef temporarily. What often happens is in doing so they learn to cook a bit and cut it out (maybe not fully but mostly) long term. Then they go after pork, chicken, etc. You’re right that beef is the worst offender, but we want to be careful not to overemphasise and make it seem like its the only offender. I think a lot of it is setting a tone. I’m veg not vegan but pick vegan options when available. I think the more we can normalise ‘eat less meat’ the better as that’s pretty hard to argue with
I mean, if we’re looking at the graphs, beef really is the only “offender” (if you can call it that) and only in the current consumed amounts. If people ate a lot more chicken and less beef, the GHG effect from animals would be lower than the same number 500 years ago due to animal population culling and advancements in agricultural methane reduction.
At that point, the term “negligible effect” becomes unreasonably harsh. Even with the worst claims against the effect of livestock on the environment (many of which we might not see eye to eye on), it’s simply objectively not an environmental issue if people are eating chicken and some pork as their staple proteins. You can call it an animal rights issue if you want. Considering chicken is almost objectively a correct and healthy food to eat, two thirds of the diet triforce (health, environment, animal rights) become non-issues.
And the cool thing, even if I disagree with the outcomes it’s healthier for us to eat a bit less red meat as long as our meat protein intake stays reasonable from white meat and seafood.
What’s the impact, if any, of any of these crops/livestock in non-water-short areas? Do other areas thousands of miles away cannibalize excess water if available to prevent draught, or are these numbers sometimes meaningless in the medium-term?
Yes. Sloppy choice of words on my part but this is a climate change topic, here.
Chicken meat uses 4x less water than beef. I’m not disputing your point, just firming up the perspective for anyone lurking.
Clearly, vegetables are way way better. But in terms of what kind of behavior change people are willing to consider, cutting out beef is a way way easier sell than cutting out all meat.
one aspect of this is that many vegans care about the environment and the victims of animal agriculture. Things are so bad for the animals (we kill trillions per year. That’s insane.) that people are desperate to do or say anything to get people to stop supporting it.
Let’s not drive a wedge between the eco-vegans and the animal welfare vegans. Beef is the worst for climate while chickens get the least ethical treatment.
Dividing an already tiny population of much needed activists is not how you get progressive change. Non-beef meats still shadow plant-based food in terms of their climate harm.
Your pic was too big for me to download but if it’s the same data I’ve seen, then beef is the worst and lamb is 2nd at about ½ the emissions of beef, and all the meats are substantially more harmful than plant based options.
Honestly this whole argument reminds me of the importance of intersectionality. Yes different groups have different forms, levels and styles of oppression, but there is still a joint cause for dismantling oppression as a whole.
To summarize his infographic. Pork, Chicken, and farmed seafood are better than some plant-based options, and worse than some other plant-based options. The graph seems to leave off some of the famous outliers (like wild-caught seafood).
Unfortunately the graph leaves out a lot of important variables, like the usability of the land (whether growing corn on an acre that can support a forest is better or worse than having pork on an acre that cannot support much plantlife). It also uses global averages, which leaves out situations where many regions may be looking at entirely different calculations.
Coffee and chocolate are not substitutes for animal meat though. If you look at the chart and compare animal proteins to substitutes like tofu, beans, peas, and nuts the plant based options win every time.
You came so close to the answer, and then fell away. Factory farming as a process is what jacks up those numbers dramatically, not the thing that’s being farmed. A few large corporations have seized the cattle and chicken industries, so their numbers would be far lower if regulations reversed that horrific trend (with a few caveats regarding methane in cattle, but I’m trying to stick to the topic). Remember how I mentioned “leaves out a lot of important variables”? That’s another of them. Nobody cares that Tyson collects a feed subsidy that’s paid for by small-scale farmers, or that small-scale farmers’ animal products are 100% environmentally sustainable in most countries. There’s nothing inherent about animal agriculture that means it NEEDS to be factory-farmed, or that we need to penalize small farmers so we can kick money over to Purdue.
But even in the current graph, poultry, pork, and seafood are in the same realm as most crops and are dramatically more usable calories. Several things that are not on the chart (wild-caught seafood, animals raised with certain processes, the influence of the symbiotic relationship between animals and crops) put most animals comfortably in with plants.
As for beef, that would deserve it’s own entire conversation because those numbers misrepresent a lot of the reality. But that’s another topic and I’m starting to tire of having 10+ people reply to me every hour on this topic, most of whom are angry at or belittling me (not you, just in general)
Why not? If the right eco answer is to eat more of a certain kind of meat instead of quitting meat, then eco-vegans aren’t eco at all (and should admit it to themselves) if they can’t embrace that fact. The willful oversimplification of the environmental impacts of meat-eating is a Tell that a given vegan couldn’t care less about the environment.
I’m an environmental activist that the vegans try to burn because I’m also an advocate for small aggriculture and local rancher protections. How is that not “dividing an already tiny population”? You should let the eco-vegans join our team for a while, too, if the environmental side matters to you.
You know who the eco-vegans would have marching side-by-side with them if they focused on the environmental impact instead of the animal rights side? BLOODY FREAKING RANCHERS . There’d be 10x the people fighting for the environment. Get us all hugging fluffy bunnies after we save the world. Seems reasonable enough for me.
EDIT: Whoops. Double-post unintended. Just ignore one or both or reply to both or whatever.
First of all that’s not likely correct info. I can’t see the uncited chart you posted but it certainly sounds untrustworthy. I’ve seen several charts in documentaries and research papers and they generally show roughly the same pattern, comparable to this chart.
But let’s say someone managed to convincingly cherry-pick some corner-case legumes that are bizarre outliers to the overall pattern. Maybe there are some rare fruits that get shipped all over the world. It certainly does not make sense to divide, disempower, and diffuse the vegan movement in order to make exotic fruit/veg X the enemy of climate action in favor of preserving chicken factory-farming. Not a fan of Ronald Regan but there is a useful quote by him:
“if you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
IOW, you’ve added counter-productive complexity to the equation at the cost of neutering an otherwise strong movement – or in the very least failed to exploit an important asset we need for climate action. This is not an environmental activist move. It’s the move of a falsely positioned meat-eating climate denier strategically posturing.
The wise move is to consider action timing more tactfully. That is, push the simple vegan narrative for all it’s worth to shrink the whole livestock industry (extra emphasis on beef is fine but beyond that complexity works against you). No meat would be entirely eliminated of course (extinction mitigation is part of the cause anyway), but when a certain amount of progress is made only then does it make sense to go on the attack on whatever veg can really be justified as a worthy new top offender. The optimum tactful sequence of attack is not the order that appears on whatever chart you found.
The somewhat simplified take is: “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, then beat ’em”. Vegans are united and it’s foolish to disrupt that at this stage.
And don’t neglect the disease factor. Recent research shows that stressed animals (both human and non-human) have weakened immune systems. And as you might expect farmed animals are stressed in high numbers. This has been linked to diseases. Diseases in non-human animals sometimes jumps to humans. There would be substantial overlap between climate activists and those valuing safety from pandemics. And indeed, that same political party in the US who fought masks and vaccines happens to be the same group of people who deny climate change.
Good news. Much of the livestock industry is incredibly incentivized to keep livestock stress levels down because it is the cheapest way to include meat quality and (as you say) keep disease down.
Couldn’t agree more. Nobody with a brain is trying to deregulate the agricultural industry.
Because its results disagree with your opinion? I’m not sure what constructive can come in any discussion after a line like that.
So evidence that concludes anything other than “everyone has to stop eating meat now” is immediately untrustworthy. Understood.
Let’s say someone made the brash presupposition that the only way to show eating meat isn’t destroying the environment is cherry-picking corner cases.
I agree with your statement about as much as I agree with Ronald Reagan. Like many Republicans, he was a fan of the tactic of oversimplifying an issue until it was easy enough to pretend to fix it with a trivial solution. Economy? Trickle-down! Anything more than saying “trickle-down” is adding counter-productive completixy to the equation.
The problem here, specifically, is that there are more farmers in the US than vegans in the US. You might have a point in that many farmers are already working towards improving the environment and most vegans tend to have such a shallow view of the issue that you need to reconcile veganism with the environment to get them to help the environment. But in the process you’re losing environmentally conscious educated people who are in a position to take action, which most vegans are not.
And here is the problem. You just did it. You just told me I’m not allwoed to be an environmental activist because I support ethical meat-eating. Another guy (well I assume it’s someone else) was attacking UC Davis, a reputable college.
I came to say that. Not everyone has to change completely, reducing meat intake a little, eating meat with less emissions and even different beef farms haslve large range of emissions. There are different ways of raising beef.
So for sustainability there are multiple solutions.
For promoting veganism and reduce animal suffering only one, which I do support, but don’t put them together. It will only pusg people away from any improvement.
I’ll double down. In reality, beef in Africa, India, and China are the problem (except agriculture isn’t a significant enough problem to call “the problem”). In most countries, the climate impact of beef is low for the number of people fed by it.
And even in a full vacuum, plant-based food STILL accounts for 29% of greenhouse gas emissions caused by agriculture/horticulture.
who tf is eating beef in India?
Not nearly as many people as in the US. But between ranching and leaving them in the wild, about 1/3 of all cows in the world are in India. As you might have caught, most of the cows in India are actually used for milk… which is a real problem because the lower tech means they get dramatically less milk per cow than we get in the US. As in, 1/4 as much.
The environmental impact of the Indian cow population is non-trivial, both because of how many cows are not used for food and how inefficient their food processes are with cows. In comparison, the environmental impact of the US cow population is arguably quite trivial. Ditto with the other large beef/milk consumers of the western world like Spain.