{"id":4407,"date":"2014-08-12T18:20:17","date_gmt":"2014-08-12T17:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=4407"},"modified":"2014-08-12T18:20:17","modified_gmt":"2014-08-12T17:20:17","slug":"eating-meat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=4407","title":{"rendered":"eating meat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is eating meat sustainable?\u00a0 This controversial subject has been raised again in a couple of recent<\/a> academic studies.\u00a0 However, like most areas to do with the environment the whole subject of eating meat is more complicated and less open and shut than it might seem.\u00a0 Some of the issues that need considering are what type of meat, where its grown, where its consumed and if we stop eating it what we eat instead and also where that is grown.<\/p>\n

Emissions and energy use (of direct interest to this site) fall into the energy consumption of the feed used to feed cattle, the emissions from the cattle (belching and breaking wind) and the transport of large animals to market and the meat preparation and storage.\u00a0 Plus the use of water.\u00a0 The infographic below from the Environmental Working Group shows the relative carbon emissions for different foods.\u00a0 Please click on the graphic to visit their site which has a lot more info and is well referenced.<\/p>\n

\"green_house_proteins\"<\/a>There is no doubt that growing grains to feed to beef cattle as happens in the US is crazily inefficient.\u00a0 Ruminants turn a tiny proportion of what they eat into protein.\u00a0 But the situation in the UK is slightly different.\u00a0 Much of our sheep and cattle are raised on marginal land and are largely or solely grass fed.\u00a0 This is particularly the case in Scotland.\u00a0 There are few other agricultural options for this land, although we could grow wood on it for future biofuel.\u00a0 Whilst this grass fed beef gets round the energy use from growing grains as feed it still doesn’t overcome the next objection to eating meat that of methane emissions.\u00a0 These however, come from cattle, eating pork and chicken reduces these emissions greatly (see graph).\u00a0 There is also research going on to vaccinate the cattle against the gut bacteria that cause the problem.<\/p>\n

The final issue of eating meat is that of the energy use in the transport, preparation and storage of the meat.\u00a0 This is an issue common to many foods.\u00a0 The best thing to do is to eat as locally grown food as possible (preferably growing some it yourself).\u00a0 As the graph above shows these emissions are surprisingly small for all foods and make-up a minority of the energy use for everything apart from potatoes.\u00a0 In a post oil world though with energy shortages this “post growing” energy use could be an increasing problem.<\/p>\n

If we are going to stop eating meat we need to replace the protein.\u00a0 The main alternatives are fish and soya.\u00a0 The graph from EWG gives little information on fish apart from tuna, which has little advantage over chicken and nothing on soya (although Tofu is very low on the graph).\u00a0 But he second paper by Scarborough et al<\/em>. referenced in the link above on UK food emissions does and they are about the same as tofu.\u00a0 The problem with fish and soya is that neither are very sustainable.\u00a0 Fish stocks are being overfished and soya is mostly grown in the tropics intensively, with issue of rainforest deforestation.\u00a0 There is little point in growing soya when we release the carbon from trees chopped down to grow it on into the atmosphere.\u00a0 In addition a lot of soya is used to feed cattle and fish.<\/p>\n

I hope you have seen from the post that the issue of what to eat to reduce your environmental impact is not simple.\u00a0 I think there are a number of key points.<\/p>\n