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> What has a bigger carbon footprint: driving from London to Brighton or eating an eight ounce steak?

The answer the author expects is eating steak, because growing 1kg of beef makes the most carbon footprint in comparison to 1kg of other meats. But counting beef footprint in that way is not fair because most beef on the market had provided milk for some time before getting to market as meat.

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> most beef on the market has provided milk

Where did you get this data ? In my own experience this is not the case and a quick search seems to show the opposite [0] :

> 21 percent of the commercial beef supply in the US comes from dairy cows.

[0] https://foodprint.org/blog/eating-dairy-cow-meat/

Depends on the region. In my country beef comes largely from dairy cows, because it would be too expensive otherwise. It's pretty chewy, hence not particularly popular.

That being said cows are grown for meat here - just not for domestic consumption.

That’s not true, most beef comes from beef cows, which are slaughtered around 2 years. Milk cows are much different breeds and the females are kept around for up to 10 years. They might be eaten after that, but they don’t produce nice steaks.

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