Labeling Beef ‘Low Carbon’ Could Open Premium Market for Wyoming Ranchers
cowboystatedaily.com
cowboystatedaily.com
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?
> Ruminant cattle for beef and dairy rank high in greenhouse-gas emissions; monogastric, or pigs and poultry-related foods, are low.
I think it's all about the methane, for which cattle are notorious.
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.)
1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1648028/
2. https://academic.oup.com/jas/article-abstract/73/8/2483/4632...
What about 'em? I'll let you do your own research on the methane production from a human vs. a head of cattle. Here, I'll give you a head start: it ain't the farts, so start your search there.
This idea that RED MEAT IS BAD is one of the worst ideas to have ever taken hold in the mind of a society. This anti-meat perspective/attitude is just poisonous.
Almost the entirety of the American healthcare costs are due to people eating ultra-processed food, which are rooted in grains and seed oils and sugar.
Just cut out every plant-based calorie from your diet and THRIVE.
Vegetables are not as bad as sugar, grain, and seed oils, but they're just full of fiber and anti-nutrients, so they're not beneficial to human health. Red meat also has more vitamins and micro-nutrients that vegetables, whose vitamins are in any case often not bioavailable.
It is honestly almost impossible to put the beneficial effects of the carnivore diet into words -- it would sound miraculous.
Just try it and see for yourself. (And note that it is the diet we evolved on).