Earthsky

Christopher Weber finds environmental cost high for beef

Photo Credit: Anja Feijen

October 18, 2008 - Agriculture

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have found that eating less red meat and more chicken can help cut back on the greenhouse gas emissions now implicated in climate change.

Christopher Weber: When the bacteria in the cows’ stomachs digest food, they produce a gas called methane. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas – it’s about 20 times more potent than CO2.

Christopher Weber and his colleagues work in what’s called a ‘life cycle assessment’ – figuring out the effects that a product has on its environment across its life. Cows, said Weber, are environmentally expensive.

Christopher Weber: The second big difference is that to produce one calorie of beef requires a lot more grain than to produce one calorie of chicken. It actually takes about twice as much grain to make a pound of beef as it does to make a pound of chicken.

Then, of course, there’s the manure factor.

Christopher Weber: The amount of manure coming out of a cow happens to be a lot more per pound of meat than the amount coming out of chicken. When manure degrades it releases two very potent greenhouses gases.

Weber said that, in general, producing food, including red meat, creates far more greenhouse gas emissions than the vehicles used to transport it. He said if you gave up a day each week of red meat and dairy, it would have the same impact as driving 1,500 miles less in a year.

Christopher Weber: The point we’re trying to make is not that eating locally is bad, per se, but that if you’re trying reduce the greenhouse gases associated with your food, it’s easier to do that by shifting away from some of the red meat and dairy products you’re eating towards something else than it is to go locally, just because the production side is so important.

Weber stressed that this whole analysis was done in terms of an ‘average person’s’ diet, but there is no true ‘average person.’ He said that how much an individual can affect greenhouse gas emissions by reducing red meat in the diet depends on a variety of factors, including each person’s overall diet and how much he or she needs to drive in the course of a year.

Our thanks to:
Christopher Weber
Carnegie Mellon

Written by jshere

  • Peter

    No, I think they’re.

  • Orion

    Now there blaming cows for global warming?

  • cminch, I couldn’t reproduce what happened to you myself, but I think the formatting was due to “citation”. Note the difference in the type of your post, like this:

    Watch the change when I put double question marks before & after “the change”. I think y’all had question marks that got the autobot formatter confused. I think this is what you wanted:



    —-cow or chicken or pig or goat or ?? —has anyone ever heard of composting, burning methane for heat and electric??



    Yes?

    Anyways, a local factory egg farm is “composting” the fecal matter from their warehoused chickens to produce methane and using it to create electricity for the farm. Pretty eco, to me.

  • cmincb

    why does your site leave the question marks off of the end of my former comments on Preview and Submit ???? I couldn’t get it to change.

  • cmincb

    SOOOOOO!!!! since when are chickens so great?? filthy little “animals” all crammed together and putting out vast quantities of fecal matter—-cow or chicken or pig or goat or /?—has anyone ever heard of composting, burning methane for heat and electric

  • a p garcia

    Also eat less beans.

  • Amanda, I agree with you … and I’m someone who, if I had to have a last meal, would choose a hamburger. We are carnivores. And yet it’s possible to consciously choose to eat less beef if that’s what’s best for individual health, or the health of the planet … or our fellow humans. The trick is … to become conscious.

  • amanda wynn

    To those who care:

    There is nothing wrong w/ cutting back on eating cow. This article explained why it was wise to do so for the environment but it’s also better for your health to not eat ground beef or whatever part of the animal. Yes, we are carnivores, but I’m pretty sure this article is about the fast food craze that we Americans can all cry quilty of. Wouldn’t it be sweet if we could collectively boy-cot all of the McDonald’s and live clean,happy,healthy lives?

  • Benjamin Napier

    I think someone might try checking some facts. Birds are much less efficient converters of plant protein to animal protein than are ruminants. Also, the amount of methane produced by commercial beef operation is dwarfed by that leaking out of the fissures in the earth’s crust and that produced by the lowly termite.



    For efficient conversion of plant protein to animal protein, we might consider goats, deer and sheep. They can eat extremely low quality forage and use much less water. Pigs are alos fairly efficient, however, lacking the rumen, they must have higher quality feed that includes high amounts of lysine. an amino acid that can be produced in the rumen, but not in the digestive tract of swine, nor of humans. Lysine is known as an essential amino acid for the species homo-sapiens.

  • Scottw

    Obama is trying to shove American Beef down Japanese mouths.

    So I guess he has not gotten the message either?



    http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080518a5.html



    Isn’t wonderful, we sit around and fuss over cow farts !



    Wake up people.

  • adel

    here is a good suggestion to keep mama earth in good shape , just think like you are taking care of your mama before she became a grandma and



    do not disguard all that glory surrounding you from her and remember that her skin will be very delicate her time maybe very short don’t you think she deserve a long ,,respect

  • a p garcia

    BBQue eating al gore hasn’t gotten the message, yet.

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