{"id":990,"date":"2019-01-11T14:33:11","date_gmt":"2019-01-11T01:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/?p=990"},"modified":"2019-01-11T14:33:11","modified_gmt":"2019-01-11T01:33:11","slug":"why-you-shouldnt-eat-beef","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2019\/01\/11\/why-you-shouldnt-eat-beef\/","title":{"rendered":"Why you shouldn’t eat beef"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Don’t eat beef.”<\/p>\n

Such a statement does not go down well in New Zealand,\u00a0 especially in Waikato, where the cow reigns supreme.<\/p>\n

I don’t say it as someone who wants to peddle a “Meat is Murder” message. I don’t believe that at all. I say it as someone who wants New Zealand to take Climate Change seriously.<\/p>\n

Quite simply, producing a serving of beef produces a staggering amount of carbon dioxide, as the diagram here from Poore and Nemecek (2018) demonstrates:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

[Source:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/science-environment-46459714\u00a0 ; original data from: Poore, J. and Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science<\/em> 360, 987-992.\u00a0DOI: 10.1126\/science.aaq0216\u00a0 ]<\/a><\/p>\n

This might need to be put into more context.\u00a0 Driving 100 km in my car produces something around 14 kg of carbon dioxide.\u00a0 One<\/em> serving of high-impact beef tops this. Even a low impact serving of beef is similar to driving about 30 km in a typical car, carbon dioxide-wise. Or put it another way: about 10 kWh (10 units) of electricity from coal-fired Huntly power station will give about 9 kg of carbon dioxide, a smidgen more than an average serving of beef.<\/p>\n

But, one should also observe that meat in general is bad news for the Earth’s climate. While beef is by far the largest offender, one should note that plant based-foods in general are far better that all animal-based foods.\u00a0 So, while I won’t claim that it is morally wrong to eat meat on the basis of the feelings of animals, as some do, I will claim that it is morally wrong to eat meat, especially beef, (to any substantial degree) on the basis of climate change.<\/em><\/p>\n

Actually, it is interesting to delve into Poore and Nemecek’s data a bit more.\u00a0 As well as CO2 emissions, they look at land use, phosphate use & eutrophication, and water use. The variation across a food type from the ‘best’ to the ‘worst’ can be staggering. For example, the median<\/em> stress-weighted water use for producing one ‘nutritional unit’ of tofu is 20 litres, but the mean<\/em> is 3 thousand litres!\u00a0 What this means is that a lot of production requires very little irrigation, while a minority of production requires huge volumes. (It is also an example of why one needs to be careful with quoting medians and means, and how a story can be spun to suit one’s own ends by picking the ‘right’ statistic.) One obvious conclusion that Poore and Nemecek make is that we (as a world) must be smarter in how we use agricultural land and resources<\/p>\n

Finally, in relation to my last post<\/a>, and climate change, it is good to hear that the “right-to-repair” campaign is making some progress, in Europe at least…\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/science-environment-46797396<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Don’t eat beef.” Such a statement does not go down well in New Zealand,\u00a0 especially in Waikato, where the cow reigns supreme. I don’t say it as someone who wants to peddle a “Meat is Murder” message. I don’t believe that at all. I say it as someone who wants New Zealand to take Climate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[31],"yoast_head":"\nWhy you shouldn't eat beef : Physics Stop<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2019\/01\/11\/why-you-shouldnt-eat-beef\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why you shouldn't eat beef : Physics Stop\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"“Don’t eat beef.” Such a statement does not go down well in New Zealand,\u00a0 especially in Waikato, where the cow reigns supreme. 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