Beef and Dairy
Meat and Milk
Meat milk and cheese have a big impact and we eat a lot of them. On average every year a person in Wales eats 64 kg of meat and meat products, 105 kg of milk and cream and 24 kg of cheese, yogurt etc.
Meat and Milk
Each person in a developing country eats less than 30 kg of meat and meat products and 45 kg of milk and dairy products.
Methane
Animals, particularly cows and beef cattle, produce a lot of a gas called methane.
Methane is a powerful Greenhouse Gas (21 times more powerful than CO2, per molecule)
Methane
Methane is produced when plant material rots with no oxygen around and this happens on a large scale in the guts of beef and dairy cattle. It does come from both ends but most of it is burped.
Methane
Cows have 5 chambered stomachs! Scientists hope to be able to reduce the amount of methane cows burp by feeding them different things, so they are doing research on that at the moment.
Methane
Methane emissions from agriculture in Britain are 873,000 tonnes, which is 37% of all Britain’s methane emissions.
Meat and Dairy
So the production of Steak, beef burgers, cheese, yoghurt and milk that we consume adds to this methane in the atmosphere and, therefore, to Climate Change.
Meat and Milk
As well as the methane, animal products have to be kept chilled or frozen when they are stored or transported and a lot of energy is used in processing animal products so there is also a lot of CO2 produced.
Carbon Footprint
It has been calculated that the production of a kg of beef produces as much as the equivalent of 36kg of CO2 and this doesn’t include the transport emissions.
Carbon Footprint
This is 30 times the greenhouse gases from the production of the equivalent protein value of lentils.
Carbon Footprint
Meat and dairy products cause 17% of global warming potential across Europe. Carbohydrates (bread, flour etc.) only cause 1%.
Land Use
A great deal of land is used to produce a tonne of meat or cheese. The animals either graze over a wide area or they eat grains and beans which need land to grow.
Land Use
Large areas of rainforest are cut down to grow that food and we need the rainforest to help protect us from climate change.
Land Use
We would feed more people from the same amount of land if they ate the grains and beans themselves.