MEAT OF THE MATTER

Meat, livestock, animals. The things that come to mind when we hear climate change and food production. It’s understandable as to why that is with livestock contributing to 14% global emissions (including growing crops and providing land for livestock) (Ritchie). But what about smaller proteins, such as seafood?

Seafood can actually have higher climate impact than chicken and even pork. Namely deep sea creatures such as lobster and shrimp which requires more fuel to pull them up. But that’s the thing, most of seafood emissions are due to the burning of fuel by the fishing boats and not the creatures themselves. Seafood even causes deforestation to some extent with the striping of mangroves to make room for fish and shrimp farms (Your Questions About Food and Climate Change).

Dairy also has a significant impact. Similar to seafood, some cheeses can have more environmental impact than chicken and pork as it can take 10 pounds of milk to make just a pound of cheese (Your Questions About Food and Climate Change). Therefor, it’s understandable as to why people would give up dairy and milk products for alternatives such as plant based options. Livestock, practically the epitome of agriculture and climate change. Well known for their emissions of methane, ruminant livestock, such as cows, have a digestive system that produces methane through a process called enteric fermentation (Ritchie). Cattle are also known for their method of emitting the gases, by… well… passing gas along with burping. Feeding into livestock’s emissions, quite literally, is the food they eat along with the energy and emissions that go into just producing that food. It take roughly 3 pounds of wheat to raise/produce a single pound of meat. And with a single pound of beef, roughly 26 pounds of greenhouse is produced with it (FoodPrint) but that number tends to vary place to place as US raised beef tends to have less impact than Brazil raised beef and such (Your Questions About...) What goes in must come out. Manure, a well known contributor to emissions and a widely used fertilizer. Not only emitting methane but also nitrous oxide. But solids isn’t the only going in, right? Urine patches also create an environment for nitrous oxide to nitrous oxide production with certain environmental factors such as weather with more N2O being produced during wet weather (Chadwick). Though livestock does account for a major portion of food emissions, we can manage the animals and their waste to reduce emissions. We are responsible. 6