The Myth of Green Beef

If I had to name one food that's been in the hot seat over the past 30 years, it would be beef. Linked to cardiovascular disease and maligned for its industry's dependence on federal corn subsidies, it now has a reputation as the Hummer of foods—an excessive contributor to environmental ills including climate change, nitrogen blooms, pollution, and depletion of Midwestern aquifers—not to mention E. coli contamination that has sickened and scared thousands. Although our consumption of beef peaked in the mid-1970s, Americans still eat about a half-pound of meat a day on average (that's 10 billion animals a year), far more than anyone else on the planet. In late 2005, when I proposed a company-wide initiative to reduce the amount of beef and cheese we serve in our 400 cafés by 25 percent as part of our Low Carbon Diet Program, I was equipped with a half-dozen independent studies, mostly from Europe. Beef and other products from ruminant animals, including cheese, clearly had a higher GWP ("global warming potential") than other foods because the animals emit significant amounts of potent methane through their digestive processes—regardless of what they eat (grain or grass) or where they eat it (pasture or feedlot; both have been studied). The greenhouse gases emitted per pound of beef produced were much, much higher than for other foods...more