Only one There are many ways to describe a piece of beef. Stroll through the meat counter of a US grocery store and you’ll be presented with a series of meat descriptions detailing the upbringing of your dinner: Angus, no antibiotics, no hormones , herbivore, vegetarian-feeding, and so on. But you may soon see another, more confusing, description on the label: low carbon.
In November, the United States Department of Agriculture approved a program that would open an avenue for beef producers to market their meat as low-carbon. Producers who can demonstrate that their cattle are raised in a manner that emits 10% less greenhouse gases than the industry baseline may be eligible for a certification program, run by a private company. called Low Carbon Beef Executive.
This is the first time the USDA has approved this type of certification for beef, and it will make it easier for producers to suggest that their product is more environmentally friendly than their competitors’ products. “If you go to the meat counter, you can’t really tell if a pound of one hamburger produces more emissions than another pound of hamburger,” says Colin Beal, a former ranch owner and founder of Low Carbon Beef. Are not”. Beal said some small producers are already certified by his company, although applications to label beef as low-carbon go through a separate USDA approval process. A USDA official said the agency has yet to receive any such applications.
But some scientists worry that such labels could mislead shoppers by underestimating the climate impact of livestock farming. Beef has one of the largest carbon footprints of any food item. In 2018, climate scientists Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek released greenhouse gas analysis emissions involved in the production of 40 common foods. Beef leads the way: Per gram of protein, beef produces about nine times more emissions than poultry, six and a half times more than pork, and 25 many times more than soybeans. Even lamb, which came in second in Poore and Nemecek’s analysis, produces less than half of beef’s carbon footprint per gram of protein.
“The purpose of a label is to communicate precisely something to the consumer,” said Matthew Hayek, an environmental scientist at New York University. The low-carbon label “implies that it’s lower-carbon than something else they can get right there.” Most of the time, for beef, that simply isn’t true.
There’s also the question of where you set the bar for low-carbon beef. Producers that want to be certified must provide detailed data on how their cattle are raised, and Beal’s company uses that data to estimate the carbon emissions associated with bringing those cows. from birth to slaughter. If the assessment shows that these emissions are at least 10% lower than the Low Carbon Beef standard, the beef can be certified as having reduced greenhouse gas emissions. This certification can then be used by the manufacturer to support the marketing claims made on their labels, which must be approved by the USDA. The agency uses similar programs to regulate much of the wording that appears on meat labels.
To earn its certification, Low Carbon Beef requires that the meat be at least 10 percent below 26.3 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per kg of carcass weight — a way of expressing the most effective emissions. greenhouse effect that takes into account the different warming effects of gases such as methane. But this might be a bit high : A Research in 2019 U.S. beef production shows that it produces an average of 21.3 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per kg of carcass weight.
Karen Beauchemin, an animal nutrition expert at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, also says that Beal’s standards seem a bit too high: In Canada, the average carbon footprint until slaughter is around 19 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per kg of carcass weight. Higher standards mean more producers will automatically find themselves within the 10 percent threshold of Low Carbon Beef, which could reduce the incentive for farmers to reduce their carbon footprint. more.
