Giving up animal products is one of the best things you can do for the planet. But can you have your steak and eat it too?
Another day, another deluge of alarming statistics about meat eating. There are four chickens for every person alive on Earth. Livestock is responsible for 11-17% of global emissions, making it as bad or worse than the entire transportation (15%), forestry (6%) and manufacturing (12%) sectors. The expansion of meat consumption and production will threaten the habitats of 17,000 species by 2050. While 83% of the global calorie supply and 62% of the global protein supply comes from plant-based food, 80% of the world’s agricultural land is used for livestock.
Dairy isn’t off the hook either, with butter and cheese being some of the least climate-friendly foods we commonly consume in New Zealand.
The science is clear: eating a plant-based diet is one of the most impactful ways to reduce your carbon footprint. But for the carnivorous foodies among us, it’s also a buzzkill idea. “I’ll catch public transport for the rest of my life,” the foodies wail, “but you will prise the salami from my cold, dead hands.”
So what is the prosciutto and provolone lover (who also cares about the planet) supposed to do?
Understand that your biggest beef should be with beef
Beef is by far the worst meat you can eat in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, according to both global and local data, with lamb runner-up. Chicken, on the other hand, is not too bad – 3.97 kg Co2e/kg compared to 21.43 kg Co2e/kg for beef – and ditto yoghurt, eggs and tinned tuna.
Beef is by far the worst meat you can eat. Photo / The Spinoff, OurWorldinData.org
When it comes to impact on the climate, it’s more nuanced to think in terms of individual foods rather than categories: less “meat is bad” and more “beef is really bad, pork is middling, and chicken is okay – maybe even better than nuts”.
So if you can’t face the idea of giving up meat full stop, perhaps start with giving up, or heavily cutting down on, the worst culprit, beef.
Consider cutting (way) down on pork belly and brie, rather than foregoing it altogether
Being flexitarian is almost as good for the planet as going vegan, according to a 2021 New Zealand study, and drastically better than the current Kiwi diet based on national nutrition data. Cutting way down on the highest-emitting foods rather than foregoing them altogether is one way to have your steak and eat it too.
But before you get carried away, remember the reduction needs to be meaningful: The EAT-Lancet’s protein recommendations (which the above definition of “flexitarian” is based on) prioritise legumes and nuts (60%) while meat accounts for 20% and fish for 14%. This is what your plate should look like if you’re a flexitarian:
What a flexitarian diet should look like. Photo / The Spinoff, EAT-Lancet
Just a sliver of dairy and meat! By contrast, the current Kiwi diet has Aotearoa ranking 13th for beef and veal consumption globally, seventh for poultry meat and third for sheep meat, and New Zealanders may be eating around 284g of beef and lamb a week, according to data from the 2020 OECD-FAO – which, however you cut it, is more than a sliver.
Still, cutting your animal protein down to just a small fraction of your plate is arguably the best way to express your true love for meat and dairy: savouring it in small doses shows more appreciation than mindlessly chowing down bulk amounts.
Waste not, want not
Given meat and dairy are climate-guilty pleasures, one no-brainer, if you’re going to consume them anyway, is to be vigilant about not wasting them. That means using every part of the animal product: make stock with your leftover chicken bones, for example, and store your Edam in an airtight container so that you don’t need to cut off the hard bits that form in the fridge.
Only buy as much as you need, and keep expiry dates in mind: there’s nothing more heartbreaking (and environmentally brutal) than throwing away an entire tray of meat because you didn’t get around to cooking it in time.
Consider the little guys
Mussels are a climate-friendly food. Photo / The Spinoff, Getty Images
Have you considered eating bugs? They’re nutritious, can be eaten whole (less waste) and insect protein requires a third of the land and a fifth of the water required for beef.
If that’s too much for you to stomach, what about sea bugs? Mussels, clams, oysters and scallops are an easier dietary sell for most people, and it would be very good for the planet if they overtook our beef, lamb and pork consumption. “We know that meat and fish have a greater environmental impact than plant-based foods,” David Willer, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge, told the BBC. “But the environmental footprint of bivalve aquaculture is even lower than many arable crops in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, land and freshwater use.”
Willer adds that while beef produces 340 tonnes of greenhouse gases per tonne, for bivalve protein it’s just 11 tonnes of emissions per tonne. They also increase biodiversity and clean up the water.
Precision fermentation is being touted as a food technology as revolutionary as the dawn of farming 10,000 years ago, which could one day see us producing the entire world’s protein on an area of land the size of Greater London, and then rewilding three-quarters of today’s farmland. Better yet, we don’t need to change our tastes and can eat guilt-free meat, milk and cheese without killing any animals.
You can read about how this magical technology works here. There are milk and cheese alternatives made using precision fermentation available for sale in the US and Germany, but for now, precision fermentation in New Zealand is at the startup stage, potentially due to our soon-to-be-loosed gene tech laws. Maybe you could throw all your coins behind it?
Sacrifice in other non-food areas
If you simply can’t face giving up greasy, traditional hamburgers, you could always make pro-planet changes in other areas of your life. Buying an electric car, cycling to work, foregoing international travel and having one fewer kid than you planned to are all good ways to significantly reduce your carbon footprint, you bacon-loving bastard.
