That's some mighty fine green-washing going on there, as well as creating the illusion of a "premium" product for which they can justify a higher price.
The self-reported "low carbon" certification doesn't seem to include the GHG produced by growing and transporting the feed to the cattle, the cattle to the abattoir, running the factory, distributing the beef, though, does it? I could not find those numbers anywhere.
It also elides the other issues with beef, such as water and land-use. A kcal of beef is going to cost hundreds more gallons of water to produce than a kcal of vegetables. What about nitrogen run-off into ground water from feed lots?
I don't know why the article doesn't mention it but most of the product is already premium: it's grass fed (and often grass finished) beef. It's low carbon because the ranchers don't need to buy them much food, but it's not a sustainable alternative for most of the country.
The ranch I buy my annual half-cow from runs a sister ranch in Wyoming and they claim a 2:1 ratio of energy input to output in kcal simply because the cows roam. It's almost $5,000 for an XL whole cow though (compared to $2,000-3,000 elsewhere), so it's definitely an upmarket product.
The GHG cost post slaughter depends too much on customer specifics though. Shipping half a cow to a single customer California is a lot worse than shipping 10 tons of beef to a supermarket or a large group of buyers.
> While the EPA reports the cattle industry in the United States accounts for 2.4% of total greenhouse gas emissions, some consumers are convinced that beef production is a major cause of climate change.
This seems to imply that cutting 2.4% of total greenhouse emissions wouldn’t have an impact on climate change. Motivated reasoning.
Every industry is trying to claim that every other industry is THE worrying source of GHG emissions. And every individual points out at the activities of others as being more polluting.
And just one kind of food from a single country which is only 4.2% of the world's population. That makes beef more than 50% of our "fair share" of emissions.
Isn't it wild that the only meat-producing industry that hasn't been completely vertically monopolized by the likes of Tyson or Smithfield gets 100% of the online wrath for its greenhouse gas emissions?
2) Raising cattle has drastically higher emissions of greenhouse gasses than other animals. For instance, looking at the chart here: https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane beef is 5x to 10x the emissions of chicken.
By my estimate, the online commentary about beef's contributions to the climate crisis feels pretty correctly proportional to their level of emissions.
If you switch to veggies, the 2.4% doesn't go to zero. Veggies have impact too. I think it was 30% reduction (overall, not just certain emissions)? Someone more informed can us know.
Yeah this is a tricky ploy to use language in bad faith.
Literally nothing is a "major" cause of climate change. There's so many things contributing to climate change that any one contributor can be made to look small.
The fact that the cattle industry in one country alone contributes to more than 1% of all greenhouse gas emissions is pretty insane in the context of the entire world.
It wouldn't. Just like manufacturing moving out of the US didn't reduce smoke - it just moved it to China, these cattle will just be raised elsewhere. Except, now a few hundred thousand folks in the US are out of a job.
Interesting idea to jack up beef prices even more... So, having worked with a few ranchers out in Wyoming on the oil and gas side, I can tell you that in some cases the cattle have access to free water, but it ain't that good water you and I can drink. Produced water from oil and gas wells, depending on cleanliness at the well head, can be "land applied" and that is what some ranchers use. This water is a health hazard for us, but is supposedly fit for cattle. That water still evolves entrained gas and has some sort of rough minerals/chemicals for the body in it. I wonder if this is all getting captured by their calculations.
I agree with you that it would be better for cattle to simply never be born and to never live on Earth, than for them to have access to water of questionable quality.
This is in alignment with the perspective of the plant-based diet community, which holds that animals should not be born because then they might die.
This is just inventing a differentiated market labeling for ranched beef from the western US based on existing practice. It is a market positioning ploy for widely sold products that will have negligible impact on greenhouse gas emissions.
> A USDA certification program for producers who demonstrate a 10% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from their cattle below an industry baseline will earn them a certification that allows them to market their beef as low-carbon.
I feel like the beef industry should have started selectively breeding based on gas emissions like 20 years ago. The people want less farty cows, so go engineer them!
What about human farts? Don't humans out number cows? And don't humans fart daily?
Shouldn't we instead focus on a diet that prevents humans from farting?
(Incidentally, I ate no calories from any plant-based source during all of 2021, and an interesting side effect that I noticed (other than spectacular overall health) was that I completely stopped farting. Others who have tried the all-meat diet have also commented on the fact that humans don't fart on an all-meat diet.)
Better, clean natural gas. If they were to capture the methane emitted AND use it to generate renewable electricity it should count twice towards reducing emissions.
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The self-reported "low carbon" certification doesn't seem to include the GHG produced by growing and transporting the feed to the cattle, the cattle to the abattoir, running the factory, distributing the beef, though, does it? I could not find those numbers anywhere.
It also elides the other issues with beef, such as water and land-use. A kcal of beef is going to cost hundreds more gallons of water to produce than a kcal of vegetables. What about nitrogen run-off into ground water from feed lots?
The ranch I buy my annual half-cow from runs a sister ranch in Wyoming and they claim a 2:1 ratio of energy input to output in kcal simply because the cows roam. It's almost $5,000 for an XL whole cow though (compared to $2,000-3,000 elsewhere), so it's definitely an upmarket product.
The GHG cost post slaughter depends too much on customer specifics though. Shipping half a cow to a single customer California is a lot worse than shipping 10 tons of beef to a supermarket or a large group of buyers.
This seems to imply that cutting 2.4% of total greenhouse emissions wouldn’t have an impact on climate change. Motivated reasoning.
It is all a bit self-serving.
2) Raising cattle has drastically higher emissions of greenhouse gasses than other animals. For instance, looking at the chart here: https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane beef is 5x to 10x the emissions of chicken.
By my estimate, the online commentary about beef's contributions to the climate crisis feels pretty correctly proportional to their level of emissions.
Literally nothing is a "major" cause of climate change. There's so many things contributing to climate change that any one contributor can be made to look small.
The fact that the cattle industry in one country alone contributes to more than 1% of all greenhouse gas emissions is pretty insane in the context of the entire world.
> and if the rancher uses any anti-methane feed additives
If this effort reduces methane emissions in any meaningful way then it's useful.
How does beef fare compared to something like turkey?
This is in alignment with the perspective of the plant-based diet community, which holds that animals should not be born because then they might die.
> A USDA certification program for producers who demonstrate a 10% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from their cattle below an industry baseline will earn them a certification that allows them to market their beef as low-carbon.
Shouldn't we instead focus on a diet that prevents humans from farting?
(Incidentally, I ate no calories from any plant-based source during all of 2021, and an interesting side effect that I noticed (other than spectacular overall health) was that I completely stopped farting. Others who have tried the all-meat diet have also commented on the fact that humans don't fart on an all-meat diet.)
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