Search results: USDA meat

The commentary: Perspective: Soy-Based Meat and Dairy Alternatives, Despite Classification as Ultra-Processed Foods, Deliver High-Quality Nutrition on Par With Unprocessed or Minimally Processed Animal-Based Counterparts.  By Mark Messina, John L Sievenpiper, Patricia Williamson, Jessica Kiel, John W Erdman, Jr.  Advances in Nutrition, nmac026, https://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmac026

Purpose: “This perspective argues that none of the criticisms of UPFs [ultra-processed foods] apply to soy-based meat and dairy alternatives when compared with their animal-based counterparts, beef and cow milk, which are classified as unprocessed or minimally processed foods (group 1). Classifying soy-based meat and dairy alternatives as UPFs may hinder their public acceptance, which could detrimentally affect personal and planetary health. In conclusion, the NOVA classification system is simplistic and does not adequately evaluate the nutritional attributes of meat and dairy alternatives based on soy.

Conflicts of interest: the statement is so long that I will save it for the end.

Comment: This commentary is a critique of the NOVA classification system, which puts foods in four categories by level of processing:

• Group 1: Unprocessed/minimally processed (fruit, vegetables, nuts, grains, meat, milk with no complicated additives)
• Group 2: Processed culinary ingredients (oils, fats, butter, vinegars, sugar, and salt eaten with added to Group 1)
• Group 3: Processed (mix of groups 1 and 2, chiefly for preservation)
• Group 4: Ultra-processed (industrially produced, cannot be made in home kitchens, chemical additives)

By this time, literally hundreds of studies have linked frequent consumption of ultra-processed (“junk”) foods to weight gain and its associated chronic diseases—type 2 diabetes, heart disease, etc—as well as high risk for poor outcome from COVID-19.  One carefully controlled clinical trial has shown that ultra-processed diets induce people to unwittingly take in more calories (“you can’t eat just one.”).

Artificial meats and dairy products made with plant proteins clearly meet the definition of ultra-processed.   Are soy products in a different category from those made with pea protein, for example?  Should plant-based meats in general be exempt from being considered ultra-processed?

I don’t think we know yet whether these products are better for health and the environment.  The issues are complicated and we don’t yet have the research or experience.

These authors report conflicted ties—many such ties—to companies making soy products and other products that might be considered ultra-processed:

Author disclosures: MM is employed by the Soy Nutrition Institute Global, an organization that receives funding from the United Soybean Board and industry members who are involved in the manufacture and/or sale of soyfoods and/or soybean components. JLS has received research support from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, Ontario Research Fund, Province of Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation and Science, Canadian Institutes of health Research (CIHR), Diabetes Canada, PSI Foundation, Banting and Best Diabetes Centre (BBDC), American Society for Nutrition (ASN), INC International Nut and Dried Fruit Council Foundation, National Dried Fruit Trade Association, National Honey Board (the USDA honey “Checkoff” program), International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), Pulse Canada, Quaker Oats Center of Excellence, The United Soybean Board (the USDA soy “Checkoff” program), The Tate and Lyle Nutritional Research Fund at the University of Toronto, The Glycemic Control and Cardiovascular Disease in Type 2 Diabetes Fund at the University of Toronto (a fund established by the Alberta Pulse Growers), and The Nutrition Trialists Fund at the University of Toronto (a fund established by an inaugural donation from the Calorie Control Council). He has received food donations to support randomized controlled trials from the Almond Board of California, California Walnut Commission, Peanut Institute, Barilla, Unilever/Upfield, Unico/Primo, Loblaw Companies, Quaker, Kellogg Canada, WhiteWave Foods/Danone, Nutrartis, and Dairy Farmers of Canada. He has received travel support, speaker fees, and/or honoraria from Diabetes Canada, Dairy Farmers of Canada, FoodMinds LLC, International Sweeteners Association, Nestlé, Pulse Canada, Canadian Society for Endocrinology and Metabolism (CSEM), GI Foundation, Abbott, General Mills, Biofortis, ASN, Northern Ontario School of Medicine, INC Nutrition Research and Education Foundation, European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), Comité Européen des Fabricants de Sucre (CEFS), Nutrition Communications, International Food Information Council (IFIC), Calorie Control Council, International Glutamate Technical Committee, and Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. He has or has had ad hoc consulting arrangements with Perkins Coie LLP, Tate & Lyle, Wirtschaftliche Vereinigung Zucker eV, Danone, and Inquis Clinical Research. He is a member of the European Fruit Juice Association Scientific Expert Panel and former member of the Soy Nutrition Institute (SNI) Scientific Advisory Committee. He is on the Clinical Practice Guidelines Expert Committees of Diabetes Canada, European Association for the study of Diabetes (EASD), Canadian Cardiovascular Society (CCS), and Obesity Canada/Canadian Association of Bariatric Physicians and Surgeons. He serves or has served as an unpaid scientific advisor for the Food, Nutrition, and Safety Program (FNSP) and the Technical Committee on Carbohydrates of ILSI North America. He is a member of the International Carbohydrate Quality Consortium (ICQC), Executive Board Member of the Diabetes and Nutrition Study Group (DNSG) of the EASD, and Director of the Toronto 3D Knowledge Synthesis and Clinical Trials foundation. His wife is an employee of AB InBev. PW is employed by Cargill, Inc, a global food company headquartered in Wayzata, MN. Cargill produces soy-based food and industrial products. JK is employed by Medifast Inc., a nutrition and weight-management company based in Baltimore, Maryland, that uses soy protein in many of its products. JWE is a scientific advisory to the Soy Nutrition Institute Global.

I can hardly believe it but we are going to have to endure another round of dietary guidelines, these for 2025-2030.

Why endure?

Because they have basically said the same things since 1980:

• Eat more fruits and vegetables
• Balance calories
• Don’t eat too much of foods high in saturated fat, salt, and sugar

As I am fond of quoting Michael Pollan: “Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.”

The wording changes from edition to edition.  The editions get longer and longer.  And the basic problems—nutrients as euphemisms for the foods that contain them, more and more obfuscation–stay the same.

But maybe not this time?

ODPHP, the Health and Human Service Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (of which I am an alum) has just announced “Proposed Scientific Questions to Inform the Development of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030: Available for Public Comment April 15 to May 16!”

The questions whose answers will form the research basic of the forthcoming guidelines are listed here.

Several break new or necessary ground:

• What is the relationship between consumption of dietary patterns with varying amounts of ultra-processed foods and growth, size, body composition, risk of overweight and obesity, and weight loss and maintenance?  Comment: This was one of my big criticisms of the 2020-2025 guidelines; the word “ultraprocessed” was never mentioned, yet I consider it the most important nutrition concept to come along in decades.  So this is a big step forward.
• What is the relationship between beverage consumption (beverage patterns, dairy milk and milk alternatives, 100% juice, low- or no-calorie sweetened beverages, sugar-sweetened beverages, coffee, tea, water) and growth, size, body composition, risk of overweight and obesity, and weight loss and maintenance? risk of type 2 diabetes?  Comment: it will be good to have this clarified.
• What is the relationship between food sources of saturated fat consumed and risk of cardiovascular disease?  Comment: This is an old issue but one under attack as being irrelevant.  Let’s get it settled, if that is possible.
• What is the relationship between specific food-based strategies during adulthood and body composition, risk of overweight and obesity, and weight loss and maintenance?  Comment: With luck, this will resolve the diet wars over low-carb v. low-fat, etc.  My prediction: they all work for some people.
• What is the relationship between specific food-based strategies during adulthood and body composition, risk of overweight and obesity, and weight loss and maintenance?  Comment:  Finally, an unambiguous demand for research on diet and obesity (as opposed to euphemisms).

What’s missing here?  I think they should have a question on meat, since evidence on risk/benefit is also controversail.  OK, saturated fat is a euphemism for meat, but let’s stop using euphemisms.

What’s being ducked, at least in the guidelines?

There are two topics not on the list of questions to be examined by the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee that will be addressed in separate processes.

• Alcoholic beverages remain a high priority topic, but because it requires significant, specific expertise and has unique considerations, it will be examined in a separate effort led by HHS Agencies that support work on this topic.
• Sustainability and the complex relationship between nutrition and climate change is an important, cross-cutting, and high priority topic that also requires specific expertise. HHS and USDA will address this topic separate from the Committee’s process to inform work across the Departments.

Want to weigh in on this (please do!):  here’s how (read and follow the directions carefully to have maximum impact)

As usual ConscienHealth has interesting things to say about all this.  I particularly enjoyed:

So it’s both unsurprising and unimpressive to hear that people with strong views about nutrition believe the process is rife with conflicts of interest. A group that is disenchanted with the last output from this process lays it out with a new paper in Public Health Nutrition. But Tamar Haspel made the same point much more efficiently in a recent tweet:

“I think they should just let me write the Dietary Guidelines and call it a day.”

This also reminds me about the need to select a scientific committee as free of conflicted interests as possible.  The last committee was rife with them.  HHS/USDA ought to be starting the committee selection process fairly soon.  Stay tuned.

This is another example of my seeing the title of a paper and wondering right away who paid for it.  The paper is displayed as a research article, but reads more like an analytical opinion piece.

The paper: Nutritionism in a food policy context: the case of ‘animal protein’.  Frédéric Leroy, Ty Beal, Pablo Gregorini, Graham A. McAuliffe, and Stephan van Vliet. Animal Production Science –   Published online: 21 February 2022

The rationale: Reductionist approaches to food focus on isolated nutritional criteria, ignoring the broader physiological and societal benefits and trade-offs involved…Among our present-day array of issues is the disproportionate stigmatisation of animal-source foods as harmful for human and planetary health.

The problem: “…animal-source foods (reduced to the notion of ‘animal protein’) are represented as an intrinsically harmful food category that needs to be minimised, thereby falsely assuming that ‘proteins’ are nutritionally interchangeable.

The solution: “…we suggest referring to said foods as ‘protein-rich foods’, while acknowledging the expanded pool of non-protein nutrients that they provide and their unique capabilities to support a much broader range of bodily functions. Several essential or otherwise beneficial nutrients are generally more bioavailable in animal-source foods than in plant-source foods.

The overall solution: “A more appropriate way forward would consist of combining and integrating the best of animal and plant solutions to reconnect with wholesome and nourishing diets that are rooted in undervalued benefits such as conviviality and shared traditions, thus steering away from a nutrient-centric dogma.”

Funding: FL acknowledges financial support of the Research Council of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, including the SRP7 and IOF3017 projects, and in particular the Interdisciplinary Research Program ‘Tradition and naturalness of animal products within a societal context of change’ (IRP11). GM is funded by Soil to Nutrition (S2N), Rothamsted Research’s Institute Strategic Programme supported by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) (BBS/E/C/000I0320). SvV grant support by SvV reports grant support from USDA-NIFA-SARE (2020-38640-31521; 2021-67034-35118), the North Dakota beef commission, the Turner Institute of Ecoagriculture, the Dixon Foundation, and the Greenacres Foundation for projects that link agricultural production systems (including livestock and crops) to the nutritional/metabolite composition of foods and human health. PG and FL acknowledge financial support of the project ‘Grazing for environmental and human health’ funded by the New Zealand Royal Society’s Catalyst Seeding Fund.

Conflicts of interest: FL is a non-remunerated board member of various academic non-profit organisations including the Belgian Association for Meat Science and Technology (President), the Belgian Society for Food Microbiology (Secretary), and the Belgian Nutrition Society. On a non-remunerated basis, he also has a seat in the scientific committee of the Institute Danone Belgium, the Scientific Board of the World Farmers’ Organization, and the Advisory Commission for the ‘Protection of Geographical Denominations and Guaranteed Traditional Specialties for Agricultural Products and Foods’ of the Ministry of the Brussels Capital Region. PG is an Associate Editor of Animal Production Science but was blinded from the peer-review process for this paper. SvV reports financial renumeration for academic talks, but does not accept honoraria, consulting fees, or other personal income from food industry groups/companies. All authors consume omnivorous diets.

Comment: I too am an omnivore, do not disagree with much of it, and could have written a lot of this myself, particularly the concerns about nutritionism (the use of nutrients to stand for the foods that contain them) and the concluding sentence in the Abstract: “Humans do not consume isolated nutrients, they consume foods, and they do so as part of culturally complex dietary patterns that, despite their complexity, need to be carefully considered in food policy making.”

But the purpose of this piece is to defend meat as a nutritious source of protein.

Why feel the need to take this on?

That’s what made me wonder who paid for it and whether authors had ties to the meat industry, which of course they do.

Reference: For research on why and how industry sponsorship can influence opinions and study outcomes, see Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.

I was sent an email with this message:

Calling your attention to this newly released review article, Animal source foods in healthy, sustainable, and ethical diets – An argument against drastic limitation of livestock in the food system. It was published in the March 2022 edition of Animal and is well worth a read, as it makes a strong case for the role of animal source foods in healthy, environmentally sustainable and ethical diets. See below for “highlights” taken directly from the paper, with the full review attached.

–Animal source foods are seen by some as unhealthy, unsustainable, and unethical.

–Outcomes depend on practical specificities, not on the fact that animals are involved.

–As for any food, the challenge is to promote best practices and limit harm.

     –Well-managed animals contribute to food security, ecological function and livelihoods.

     –Heavy reduction of livestock may lead to a fragile food system and societal damage.

I happen to agree that food animals are essential components of regenerative agriculture systems but there was something about this that triggered my “who paid for this?” question.  Bingo!

Here is the paper’s financial support statement:

FL acknowledges financial support of the Research Council of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, including the SRP7 and IOF342 projects, and in particular, the Interdisciplinary Research Program “Tradition and naturalness of animal products within a societal context of change” (IRP11). PM acknowledges financial support of the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability (HELSUS) through the project “Understanding pastoralism sustainability through an interdisciplinary lens”. PG and FL acknowledge financial support of the project “Grazing for environmental and human health” funded by the New Zealand Royal Society’s Catalyst Seeding Fund. SvV acknowledges grant support from the North Dakota Beef Association to study the health effects of red meat in relation to diet quality. SvV reports additional grant support from USDA-NIFA-SARE (2020-38640-31521; 2021-67034-35118), the Turner Institute of Ecoagriculture, the DixonFoundation, and the Greenacres Foundation for projects that link agricultural production systems (including livestock and crops) to the nutritional/metabolite composition of foods and human health.

Here are the authors’ conflict of interest declarations:

All authors follow omnivorous diets. FL is a non-remunerated board member of various academic non-profit organisations including the Belgian Association for Meat Science and Technology (president), the Belgian Society for Food Microbiology (secretary), and the Belgian Nutrition Society. On a non-remunerated basis, he also has a seat in the scientific committee of the Institute Danone Belgium, the World’s Farmers Organization, and the Advisory Commission for the “Protection of Geographical Denominations and Guaranteed Traditional Specialties for Agricultural Products and Foods” of the Ministry of the Brussels Capital Region. PM is a non-remunerated member of the Spanish Platform for Extensive Livestock and Pastoralism. SvV reports financial renumeration for academic talks, but does not accept honoraria, consulting fees, or other personal income from food industry groups/companies.

Comment: The authors say much more than is usual about their potential conflicts of interest, either via their personal diets or their professional financial links to the meat industry.  Still, those links exist, as I could predict from the paper’s title.  The role of food animals in health and sustainability is heavily disputed.  Because of its funding and the ties of some of the authors to the meat industry, this study appears less convincing than it might if funded independently and carried out by independed researchers.

Reference: For research on why and how industry sponsorship can influence study outcome, see Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.

If you want to know what’s wrong with the US food system, consider corn.

• Hardly any of it is grown for food.
• Most—half—goes for animal feed, domestic or exported.
• One-third goes for ethanol fuel.

Let’s start with the big picture, courtesy of the National Corn Growers Association (FSI means Food/Seed/Industrial).

The USDA explains how much of total corn production ends up as ethanol fuel.

What’s wrong with this?  See The Conversation: The US biofuel mandate helps farmers, but does little for energy security and harms the environment.

If you’ve pumped gas at a U.S. service station over the past decade, you’ve put biofuel in your tank. Thanks to the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS, almost all gasoline sold nationwide is required to contain 10% ethanol – a fuel made from plant sources, mainly corn.

With the recent rise in pump prices, biofuel lobbies are pressing to boost that target to 15% or more. At the same time, some policymakers are calling for reforms. For example, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators has introduced a bill that would eliminate the corn ethanol portion of the mandate.

This article is worth serious attention for its discussion of the effects of corn growing on profits, carbon-neutrality, indigenous populations, and agriculture policy in general.

Or, to summarize in a corn cob (thanks to Mother Jones):

It’s hard to know where to begin to comment on this.

• Many people in the world do not have enough to eat.
• It would be better for people and the planet if we in industrialized countries ate less meat.
• It would be better for people and the planet if we used fewer cars.

Growing corn for animal feed and automobile fuel makes no sense for human health or that of the enviroment.

I have a long-standing interest in pet food (see Feed Your Pet Right, and Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine) and in conflicts of interest in research (see Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat).  Knowing of both, a reader, Teresa Reinhardt, alerted me to this one.

The study:  Investigation of diets associated with dilated cardiomyopathy in dogs using foodomics analysis.  Caren E. Smith, Laurence D. Parnell, Chao-Qiang Lai, John E. Rush & Lisa M. Freeman.  Scientific Reports volume 11, Article number: 15881 (2021).

Purpose: to identify specific pet food ingredients associated with Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM) in dogs.

Methods: Metabolomic profiling of 25 diets associated with canine DCM and 9 diets not associated with DCM.

Results: “Four diet ingredients distinguished the two diet groups (peas, lentils, chicken/turkey, and rice). Of these ingredients, peas showed the greatest association with higher concentrations of compounds in 3P/FDA diets [the ones associated with DCM].“

Funding:  “This work was funded in part by Nestlé Purina PetCare and the Barkley Fund. This work was funded in part by United States Department of Agriculture project number 8050-51000-107-00D, and this entity had no part in the design of the experiments, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, nor in composing the manuscript.”

Conflicts of interest: “In the last 3 years, Dr. Freeman has received research funding from, given sponsored lectures for, and/or provided professional services to Aratana Therapeutics, Elanco, Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Nestlé Purina PetCare, P&G Pet Care (now Mars), and Royal Canin. In the last 3 years, Dr. Rush has received research funding from, given sponsored lectures for, and/or provided professional services to Aratana Therapeutics, Boehringer Ingelheim, Elanco, IDEXX, Nestlé Purina PetCare, and Royal Canin. None of the other authors has any competing interests to declare.”

Comment:  DCM is a common heart disease affecting dogs, with a prevalence that exceeds 50% in some breeds (e.g., Doberman Pinschers). More than 1100 cases have been reported to the FDA.

Despite endless speculation, its cause is unknown.  Much attention has focused on one or another dietary deficiencies or specific components (e.g., grains).  As the authors explain:

The diets reported to be associated with DCM often are marketed as “grain-free” and often contain certain ingredients that became part of commercial foods relatively recently (e.g., pulses, potatoes, and sweet potatoes) and lack others (such as rice or corn). Most of the ingredients that are included in the associated diets are also found in human diets, but dogs often eat them in even higher quantities because most dogs eat a single commercial pet food, rather than a variable mixture of multiple foods as humans do.

I think there three issues need further discussion.

(1)  Grains. Some pet owners believe that dogs should not eat grains. They buy pet foods that do not contain them.  This study identified grains only in the pet foods that were not associated with DCM.  Ms. Reinhardt also sent a link to a commentary from someone who questions this finding and raises other critical points about the study.  Dogs are fully capable of digesting grains and grains have been used safely in pet foods for decades.  The FDA describes the association of DCM with on its website.  What’s needed to resolve the peas question is a long-term (years, not months) trial of diets with and without peas.  The pet food industry has no incentive to pay for something like that.

(2)  The funding effect.  Nestlé Purina PetCare [no relation] paid for the study, and two of the authors consult widely for pet food companies.  Grains are inexpensive pet food ingredients and it is to Nestlé’s interest to have evidence demonstrating that grains do no harm.  How much influence did this company have over the research?  The conflict of interest statement is oddly worded.  The USDA funder is stated to have stayed out of the study, but the statement does not seem to apply to Nestlé, suggesting company influence.

(3)  Pet food research funding in general.  This study had some USDA funding, but government funding for pet food research is rare.  Most pet food research is funded by pet food companies, and most focuses on taste preferences.  Remarkably little research is designed to answer questions about which diets are better than others—a big issue because most pets eat commerical pet foods designed to take care of their complete nutritional needs.

This study identified peas as most strongly associated with DCM.  Pea protein is a main ingredient in plant-based meat alternatives.  It would be good to know more about the dietary effects of peas and pea proteins.

If nothing else this study demonstrates why pet food research matters.  We only have one food system, and pet food is very much a part of that system.

A couple of weeks ago I did a post about a beef industry ad promoting the idea that eating beef promotes sustainability.  The ad claimed that beef contribute only 2% of greenhouse gases.  In rebuttal, I cited the widely quoted figure of 14.5%.

Two readers argued for a correction.

The first, Stephen Zwick, describes himself as a “regenetarianist,” a “huge soil nerd,” and independent of industry interests.  He sent lengthy and highly technical notes.  These, in my interpretation, boil down to:

• The 14.5% figure comes from a study that included land-use change, “specifically in Brazil at peak deforestation rates from 1998 to 2004,” and just for OECD countries.
• In North America, deforestation isn’t a large issue. The 2014 UN Climate Change Conference numbers from countries where land change is not a big factor total 8.1% for all agriculture.  Of that, only a quarter is from enteric fermentation (cattle methane burps).  Adding in manure management, brings it to about 40% of 8.1%  or a bit over 3%.
• These global or regional numbers do not account for soil sinks or tropospheric sinks (elimination of methane).  He cites three references: (1) WTF happens to all that methane?,  (2) Methane: Accounting for both sides of the scale,  (3) Ruminations: Methane math and context

He says:

Enteric methane is a distraction. Poor land management destroying soil sinks and reducing photosynthesis via desertification, deforestation and ocean acidification are also a huge problem. And yes, cattle and palm oil are part of the problem in tropical regions (see The Deforestation Process... )…Cattle is a very conspicuous driver, though it’s not really the primary driver. Human greed is…So, in other words, we need better regional and system data, and we can’t really make universal claims.

The second set of comments comes from Greg Miller, the chief science officer of the National Dairy Council.

While FAO estimates livestock emissions at 14.5% based on LCA [life cycle assessment], the emissions from transportation are only from the tailpipes (not LCA), so comparing apples and bananas – FAO did this, but later retracted because it is an inappropriate comparison, that now keeps getting repeated, thought you should know.

He cites this source on greenhouse gas emissions from the dairy sector:

And he cites this reference:  Recht, L. 2021 An Inclusive Transition to a Sustainable and Resilient Meat Sector, which talks about how to raise cattle sustainably.

How to make sense of this?

The percentage of greenhouse gases due to animal agriculture depends on who is doing the counting, and what factors and assumptions go into the estimations.  Low estimates predictably come from the beef and dairy industries (Stephen Zwick does not, which is why I am quoting him).  The Environmental Protection Agency also produces low estimates: 1.3% of total emissions for dairies.

In contrast, the Humane Society uses 18% (referring to carbon dioxide equivalents), as does Cowspiracy.

A new paper in Sustainability argues that the correct estimate is 16.5%.

It matters whether we are talking about carbon dioxide or methane.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommends “strong, rapid and sustained reductions in CH4 [methane] emissions” and notes that the growth in atmospheric methane is “largely driven by emissions from the fossil fuels and agriculture (dominated by livestock) sectors.”

I was interested to see yesterday’s Politico, which had a report about the current politics of methane emissions. (behind a paywall).  It notes:

While oil and gas production is the main reason methane emissions have boomed since 2007, agriculture (namely livestock operations) remains a massive source of the potent greenhouse gas, accounting for 40 percent of methane emissions worldwide. ..Senate Democrats plan to include a “methane polluter fee” in their $3.5 trillion budget resolution that would hit energy producers that vent or burn off excess methane and compressors used to pressurize and transport natural gas.

The precise percentage contributed by animal agriculture?  I’m not sure it matters.  Everyone agrees that cattle produce more greenhouse gases than produced by any other food (as a result of burps, deforestation, feed production, manure, etc).

Raising cattle more sustainably and regeneratively is a really good idea.

That’s where policy needs to be directed.

My colleague, Lisa Young, forwarded this ad to me from the weekend’s Wall Street Journal.

In case it’s too small for you to read, the ad makes some eyebrow-raising points:

• “If all U.S. livestock were eliminated and every American followed a vegan diet, greenhouse gas emissions 0would only be reduced by 2%, or 0.36% globally.”
• “Plus, cattle play an important role in protecting and enhancing our ecosystems by increasing carbon storage, improving soil health, mitigating wildfires, and providing habitat for wildlife.”
• “We all play a role in a more sustainable future, but eliminating beef is not the answer.”

This, in case it is not instantaneously obvious, is part of the beef industry’s well documented effort to fight concerns about the well documented role of beef production in climate change.

The ad is paid for by the Beef Checkoff, one of the USDA-sponsored marketing and promotion programs funded by what is essentially a tax—the “checkoff”—on producers.  I recently wrote about how the Beef Checkoff funds research in this industry’s interest.

The ad cites research studies supporting its statements, but these are cherry-picked.

Estimates of the percent of greenhouse gases contributed by lifestock production vary, but the most widely accepted range from 14% to 18%.  Beef accounts for at least 10%.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, for example, says:

Total emissions from global livestock: 7.1 Gigatonnes of Co2-equiv per year, representing 14.5 percent of all anthropogenic GHG emissions…Cattle (raised for both beef and milk, as well as for inedible outputs like manure and draft power) are the animal species responsible for the most emissions, representing about 65% of the livestock sector’s emissions…feed production and processing (this includes land use change) and enteric fermentation from ruminants are the two main sources of emissions, representing 45 and 39 percent of total emissions, respectively.

The New York Times describes foods that have the largest  impact on climate change.

Meat and dairy, particularly from cows, have an outsize impact, with livestock accounting for around 14.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases each year. That’s roughly the same amount as the emissions from all the cars, trucks, airplanes and ships combined in the world today.

In general, beef and lamb have the biggest climate footprint per gram of protein, while plant-based foods tend to have the smallest impact. Pork and chicken are somewhere in the middle.

A study published in Science calculated the average greenhouse gas emissions associated with different foods.  The New York Times summarizes its results:

Beef production creates emissions of methane as well as carbon dioxide from multiple sources: feed production, cow burps, manure production, etc.

Beef production that involves grazing on grasslands could meet sustainability goals, but beef cattle raised in feedlots cannot.

There are plenty of environmental reasons for eating less beef, and these are on top of health reasons.

The Beef Checkoff ad does not tell the whole story, alas.

Addition

Lisa reminds me that the cost of a full-page color ad in the Wall Street Journal runs around $200,000.