Project confirms beef is sustainable

The checkoff-funded U.S. Beef Sustainability Project has used science and surveys to confirm the continuing progress made by people all along the beef production chain to improve sustainability. The results also provide what Kim Stackhouse-Lawson of Denver, director of sustainability research for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, calls “the words to the song” in defending the beef industry against untrue and unfair criticism on issues ranging from global warming to food safety to consumption of natural resources. The two-year peer-reviewed and third party-certified study that started in September 2011 found that beef’s overall sustainability improved 5 percent from 2005 to 2011. The environmental and social fingerprint was reduced by 7 percent. “It’s about continuous improvement over time,” Stackhouse-Lawson said earlier this week in Kearney as a Cattlemen’s College speaker at the Nebraska Cattlemen convention. “Using less to produce more” in a world where a population that is forecast to reach 9 billion by 2050 will need 70 percent more food...more