This Feature addresses the effects of meat production and consumption on climate because domestic livestock accounts, globally, for about 18% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, exceeding that from transport – from all the cars, trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes that move people and goods around the world. Our choices – how much meat we consume, what kinds, and what management practices are used for those animals and their effluents – have the potential to greatly increase, or to significantly reduce, the already too-large impact of our meat consumption on global warming. For example, for the average US household in 1997, nearly 14% of the greenhouse gas emissions came from producing the food that was eaten. In the average US diet, red meat (beef and pork) and dairy comprised only 22% of calories consumed, but accounted for 57% of all US food-related greenhouse gas emissions.
The following sections bring together a number of primary or secondary sources that show in detail how deeply flawed our current "business as usual" food production methods and dietary choices are, compare and contrast alternative approaches, and offer choices for consideration by each of us that can lead to quite significant improvements in both personal and planetary health.
Problems with Meat – in which we look at effects of practices that REALLY do not work in current meat production systems and why. These include the costs related to our current dependence on fossil fuel use, greenhouse gas production, and impacts on the land and watershed, nutrition yield to the degree we have found apt comparisons, as well as the prices along with the life cycle of the products. We spice menu items with observations from Michael Pollan, a spokesperson in the Food and Farming arena. We include reports by the Union of Concerned Scientists of Cambridge, MA; Integrated Sustainability Analysis of Sydney, Australia; Center for Sustainable Systems, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MA; New Scientist, London, UK, and others that are current and relevant.
We then move to Better Ideas that include new ways of thinking about new and old practices, such as analyses of nutrition yield and impacts of CO2 equivalents (all greenhouse gases) and fossil fuels from the US, Japan, and the UK. We encourage US participants to note mature standards such as PAS – Publicly Available Specification – the British carbon footprint guidelines by product, look to the Locavores' analysis of greenhouse gas reductions, and place the food mile discussion in a broader context.
In our section What Can I Do?, we draw comparisons between and among selected reports, and present those comparisons both in CO2 equivalent and fossil fuel use terms, as well as personal transportation terms to anchor the report findings in the personal experience of each reader. We feature different ways to inspire eaters to shift their diets. For example, we present a clear, documented action in food and farming that reduces greenhouse gas emissions in the form of bookmarks – simple, useful tools for encouraging action. We encourage readers to use these examples as models for companies to inspire employees, or teachers to inspire students, to create their own communication exemplars and disseminate them in their own relevant communities. We forward a discussion among eaters to inspire shifting our diets stimulated by Low Carbon Diet, published in Audubon Magazine. Further, we feature an outstanding British nation-wide policy decision – meatless meals in all British national hospitals – to inspire global policy makers to support leaders in making some well-substantiated, bold moves.
We open up Further Questions to readers to note their questions, comments, analogies, graphs – whatever communicates and inspires eaters to shift their diets. To start, Michael Pollan, in his superb essay "Letter to the Farmer in Chief," proposes that the White House observe one meatless day a week – "a step that, if all Americans followed suit, would be the equivalent, in carbon saved, of taking 20 million midsize sedans off the road for a year. Let the White House chef post daily menus on the Web, listing the farmers who supplied the food as well as recipes." Pollan makes two critical points in this sentence: 1) he uses an easily graspable analogy so that we can begin to think about our food in a more systemic way, and 2) he reminds our Farmer in Chief (as a representative of all eaters) to respect and celebrate the good work and talented people in the food and farming professions. To your health and the health of the world around you!