Should I Stop Eating Beef?

The anti-beef campaign has been in full force lately, following Epicurious’ announcement they will no longer publish beef recipes and rumors that Biden will limit our hamburgers to reduce climate change.

But like so many things in the natural world, the actual environmental impact of eating beef is complicated. There are many factors that don’t always make their way to news headlines, and countless political and economic pressures clouding the water.

Now I’m no environmental scientist, but as a chef and nutritionist who cares about the planet, I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking into the issue. I’ve made the choice to continue eating beef and encouraging my clients to do the same, and I’ll do my best to summarize my reasons here:

Cows are ruminants, and this is their super power. Their digestive system includes four chambers, which allows them to turn high-fiber grass into food. This in turn creates valuable protein for humans in the form of meat and dairy. Because grass grows where other plants can’t, grazing cattle is a great way to make use of non-arable land. Note: chickens and pigs are mono-gastric like humans, which means they DO eat human-suitable foods like grain. If we’re worried about livestock using up food that could nourish people, we should really take a closer look at our insatiable appetite for chicken (1, 2).
Properly managed grazing is like giving the Earth a probiotic. The cows chomp grass, trample plant matter into the ground, pee and poop, and move on (the moving on part is critical, and requires intervention). What’s left behind is naturally fertilized soil teaming with microbes that restore topsoil (3), increase nutrient density, enhance carbon storage, and improve water retention (4, 5, 6). Compare this to the vast swaths of chemically fertilized monoculture that have been destroying our soil for 100 years (7,8), and the benefit of animal inputs becomes very clear.
Holistic grazing actually removes carbon from the atmosphere. That rich soil left behind from properly managed cattle? It acts like a sponge for carbon, storing it in the form of organic matter–then growing healthy vegetation to capture even more carbon (5). The carbon sponge more than makes up for the infamous methane emissions from the cow burps (9,10, 11). Note: there were 30-60 million bison roaming the US before we got here (plus millions of other ruminants) (12), and their carbon emissions were about 86% of the emissions we see today (13).

Alt-meats aren’t the answer. To be frank, rich white guys in Silicon Valley want you to believe their products are better than meat (there’s a lot of money to be made). But these ultra-processed foods rely heavily on industrially grown, chemically fertilized corn, soy and rapeseeds (for canola oil). Factor in the fossil fuels needed to build labs and production facilities, and the end result isn’t pretty. In fact, one third party analysis of a holistic farm in Georgia found that you’d have to eat 1 grass-fed burger to offset the carbon emissions of 1 Beyond Burger (14).

Our food system is broken, but the real enemy is industrial farming–plant or animal. Factory farmed meat is terrible. Corn and soy monoculture are terrible. We need to reframe our understanding of the cycles that exist in nature–and the ways that humans, other animals, and plants can interact symbiotically. According to Richard Manning, author of Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics and Promise of the American Prairie “Farming becomes sustainable when it looks like an ecosystem. It works when we mimic natural systems. And we have to include animals, because that’s what’s found in nature.” Some farms that are doing things right include, but are not limited to: Polyface Farms, Belcampo, Singing pastures, White Oak Pastures, and more.

There’s an elephant in the room–isn’t grass-fed beef crazy expensive? Not always, as sustainability advocate Diana Rodgers points out in an article titled “Is Grass-Fed Beef Elitist? These 10 Foods are More Expensive and Less Nutritious Than Grass-Fed Beef. But for real, certain cuts of grass-fed beef from holistic farms can cost a pretty penny. I’m just not sure it has to stay that way–the more consumer demand there is, the more efficient the process becomes, and the more innovation takes place. According to John Ikerd at the american Grassfed Association (15), 85% of the cost of meat comes from processing and distributing–whether that beef grass-fed or not makes little difference to the cost to consumers. The answer lies in creating a food system that helps smaller farms compete, and that will only happen when consumers start to ask for it. As Will Harris of White Oak Pastures puts it, “our methods may not be highly scalable, but they are highly replicable (14). If we have the means to vote with our dollar for better beef, this might be the most important thing we can do to work toward this future.
Even if we can’t always buy grass fed beef, there are much more important ways we can reduce our footprint. Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels should be goal #1 (transportation, industry and electricity are responsible for for more carbon emissions than agriculture, according to the EPA (16, 17, 18). And as far as food goes, reducing food waste is going to be way more effective than eliminating types of food (19). Check out this short video to learn more.

There are many more resources I highly encourage you to seek out if you’re interested in the topic, including the excellent book and documentary Sacred Cow. But again, I’m not trying to persuade anyone to change how they eat–that is highly personal. I simply hope that I’ve shed light on some information that doesn’t always get a lot of attention, so you can make a more informed decision for yourself.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Will Harris, owner of White Oak Pastures:

“I wish that you could know how much fun it is, how great it is to work with friends and family, how good it is to be in touch with the changing of the seasons, how rewarding it is to see the condition of the soil improve, how peaceful it is to watch animals express their instinctive behavior, how pleasing it is to watch our community start prospering again . . .” – Will Harris
Sources:

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7-Day Real Food Reset