We often hear we need to cut down on meat to reduce our carbon emissions. This may be hard if you love eating meat but with the right information of different types of meat, we can cut down our emissions by making easy substitutions in meals we enjoy.
Beef and lamb are the worst meat to eat
The meat with the highest carbon emissions is beef. Cows have a very high carbon footprint because of the way they are produced. They are large animals and need a lot of land to graze. It is estimated they are responsible for nearly half of deforestation each year. What is worse is that a lot of beef is produced in Latin America and cattle ranching is the main reason why the Amazon rainforest is cut down. Soy is used to feed cows and forests are cleared for soy production too. Deforestation releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and contributes 12-20% to all greenhouse gas emissions. Lamb and mutton also have a carbon footprint. Both cows and sheep produce methane when digesting food. Methane is another greenhouse gas that warms up the atmosphere. This is why substituting beef and lamb for chicken and pork is a good way to produce emissions.

It is better to eat less meat than eat more sustainable meat
Although one solution is to eat more sustainable meat such as chicken and pork instead of beef, what would that mean if everyone did this? This could only be met with a big reduction in animal welfare standards for chicken and pigs to meet demand. There is a trade off between carbon emissions and animal welfare. Most chickens are brought up in battery farms with less land and have a lower carbon footprint than those brought up in farms with higher animal welfare standards. However, chickens and pigs from farms with better welfare standards still have a lower carbon footprint than beef and lamb.
So what should one do to lower carbon footprint of their diet? It is best to substitute away from beef and lamb to a mixture of sustainable meat and plants. As you can see from the graph above, vegetables and food rich in protein such as nuts, peas, beans and tofu, have a lower carbon footprint than any meat and there would be no compromise on animal welfare standards.
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