How Much C02 Emissions From One Gram of Beef

The Impact of Consuming Beef on Greenhouse Gas Emissions

By Ashley Broocks, Emily Andreini, Megan Rolf, Sara Place

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• Summary
• Literature Cited

Some have proposed but removing beef from the human nutrition to significantly lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, upon exam of the scientific evidence, completely removing beefiness from the diet would likely not result in huge declines in GHG emissions, and would likely have negative implications for the sustainability of the U.S. nutrient organization.

One must kickoff consider the amount of beef consumed by Americans. The current U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends 5.v ounces of lean poly peptide per day for a person consuming a 2,000-calorie diet.¹ Beef is 1 of the most common sources of lean protein in the U.Southward., with one.8 ounces of beef per twenty-four hours available to U.S. consumers in 2013, according to the USDA's Economic Inquiry Service (ERS) Loss-Adjusted Food Availability Data Series.²  The ERS Loss-Adjusted Food Availability Data Series is derived from ERS's food availability data by adjusting for food spoilage, plate waste and other losses to closely gauge actual intake.  Per capita beef availability (loss adjusted) has actually been declining in the U.S. through the past 35 years (Figure 1), due in part to beef production non keeping pace with U.S. population growth. Along with being a significant source of lean protein, beef provides key nutrients such every bit fe, zinc and B vitamins. Removing beef from the food chain would result in consumers having to seek alternative poly peptide and micronutrient sources.

Effigy i. U.South. boneless beefiness availability per capita² compared to U.Southward. Dietary Guidelines protein recommendations¹.

Source: USDA-ERS. *Protein intake recommendation includes: meats, poultry, and eggs (3.7 ounces per twenty-four hours) seafood (1.1 ounces per day) and processed soy products, nuts and seeds (0.7 ounces per twenty-four hours)

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), beef cattle production was responsible for 1.9 per centum of total U.Southward. GHG emissions in 2013.³ By comparison, GHG emissions from transportation and electricity deemed for 25.viii percent and 30.six pct of full U.Southward. GHG emissions in the aforementioned year (Table 1).³ Comparing food production (essential for human life) to transportation and electricity (non-essential for human being survival, simply important to mod lifestyles) is problematic. Still, the comparison is instructive because though electricity and transportation produce much of the GHG emissions in the U.S., nearly people do not phone call for the elimination of electricity or transportation. Rather, efforts are made to lower the GHG emissions produced to provide the same energy and transportation services (due east.g. switching to renewable energy sources for electricity generation). Using this frame of reference, some other manner to consider GHG emissions from beefiness production would be, "How can the aforementioned corporeality of man nutritional value be produced by the beef system while producing fewer GHG emissions?" Studying the different ways inputs (feed, water and land) can exist used more than efficiently throughout the beef value concatenation to reduce GHG emissions per pound of beef would provide the ways to maintain the same level of food production, while reducing GHG emissions. Through time, beefiness production has made impressive advances to see the poly peptide demands of a growing population while reducing the amount of natural resources required to produce a pound of beef.^4,5,6 For example, due to improved genetics (of cattle and the plants they consume), animal nutrition, direction and the utilise of growth-promoting technologies, the U.S. beef manufacture has decreased its GHG emissions per pound of beef 9 to 16 percent from the 1970's to today.^5,7 Further improvements in the efficiency of beef product are existence continuously evaluated and researched at universities and research institutions, both in the U.Southward. and abroad.

Table 1. U.S. EPA GHG Emissions Inventory for 2013.

Item	COii-eq emissions (Meg Metric Tons)	Pct of U.Due south. Total CO2-eq emissions
Enteric Methane Emissions from Beef Cattle (from their digestive tracts)	117.ane	1.75%
Beef Cattle Manure Nitrous Oxide Emissions	seven.6	0.11%
Beef Cattle Manure Marsh gas Emissions	three	0.04%
Full Direct Emissions from U.S. Beefiness Cattle	127.seven	1.xc%
Burning fossil fuels for transportation carbon dioxide emissions	1718.4	25.80%
Burning fossil fuels for electricity generations carbon dioxide emissions	2039.8	30.sixty%
All other GHG sources	2787.viii	41.70%
2013 U.Due south. Total CO2-eq Emissions	6673	100%

Another key component of reducing GHG emissions from the whole beef system is the role of the consumer.  More than 20 percentage of edible beefiness is wasted at grocery stores, restaurants and in the home (Figure 1).^viii As with other foods, the amount of non-renewable resources used and the ecology impacts used in producing the portions of beef ending upward in a landfill frequently are overlooked.  Consumers could improve beef sustainability by 10 percent if beef waste were reduced by half.⁸

Beef production makes many positive contributions to the sustainability of our food organization that often are overlooked past analyses of GHG emissions' bear on of removing beefiness from the diet. Cattle have the ability to utilize forages (e.1000., grass) and byproducts (e.g., distillers grains) unfit for human consumption. Specifically, cattle can utilise cellulose, one of the world's virtually arable organic (carbon containing) molecules indigestible by humans.⁶  Consequently, U.S. beef producers feed their cattle from sources not in straight competition with humans and/or would have gone to waste (byproducts).⁶ Cattle likewise can catechumen depression-quality feeds into high-quality protein from land not suited for cultivation, thereby reducing soil erosion and enhancing soil carbon storage.⁶ Furthermore, integrated crop and beef systems (e.m., using cattle to graze ingather residues and cover crops) can pb to many positive ecology sustainability outcomes including increased soil water-belongings chapters and enhanced nutrient cycling.^ix

Summary

Beef is a valuable nugget to the human nutrition; it is an affordable, food-dumbo source of lean poly peptide.  Equally with the production of all foods, the production of beef results in GHG emissions; however, straight emissions from the U.South. beef industry are but estimated to exist one.9 percent of the full U.Southward. GHG emissions.³ Thus, fifty-fifty without consideration of the unintended consequences and impacts of alternative protein sources, completely removing beefiness from the U.S. nutrition would likely have a minimal touch on GHG emissions. However, as historical progress has demonstrated (GHG emissions per pound of beef have been reduced ix to 16 percentage since the 1970s^{5,half dozen}), there are opportunities to reduce beef's affect, primary among them being reducing consumer waste.

Literature Cited

^one USDA. 2015. Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Available from: http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/

² USDA. 2014. Food Availability (Per Capita) Information System.  Available from: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-availability-%28per-capita%29-data-system/readings.aspx

^three EPA. 2015. U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report: 1990-2013. Available from: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/usinventoryreport.html

⁴ Capper, J.L. and D.J. Hayes. 2012. The ecology and economic impact of removing growth-enhancing technologies from U.South. beef production. Journal of Animal Scientific discipline. 90:3527-3537

⁵ Capper, J.Fifty. 2011. Ecology impact of beef production in the U.s.: 1977 compared with 2007. Journal of Animal Science. 89:4249-4261.

⁶ Oltjen, J.Due west. and Beckett, J.L. 1996. Part of ruminant livestock in sustainable animal agricultural systems. Journal of Animal Science. 74:1406-1409.

⁷ Rotz, C.A., B.J. Isenberg, K.R. Stackhouse-Lawson, and E.J. Pollak. 2013. A simulation-based approach for evaluating and comparing the ecology footprints of beefiness production systems. Journal of Brute Science. 91(11):5427-5437.

⁸ Beef Checkoff. 2014. Sustainability Executive Summary. Available from:

https://world wide web.beefboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/SustainabilityExecutiveSummary.pdf

⁹ Sulc, R. 1000. and A. J. Franzluebbers. 2014. Exploring integrated ingather-livestock systems in different ecoregions of the United States. European Periodical of Agronomy. 57:21-30.

Ashley Broocks

Graduate Student

Emily Andreini

Graduate Educatee

Megan Rolf

Banana Professor

Sara Place

Assistant Professor of Sustainable Beef Cattle Systems

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Source: https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/the-impact-of-consuming-beef-on-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html

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