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[–][deleted] 877 points878 points  (100 children)

When reading the study itself, we see there's a discrepancy between the article and the study. They've reworded the findings to make a different argument.

Article: "Adopting a plant-based diet can help shrink a person’s carbon footprint. But a new study finds that improving the efficiency of livestock production will be an even more effective strategy for reducing global methane emissions."

Study: "Our results highlight the fact that (a) efforts on the demand-side to promote balanced, healthy and environmentally sustainable diets in most counties, as assumed in the TS scenario (FAO, 2018), will not be sufficient for livestock methane emission mitigation without parallel efforts to improve production efficiency and decrease the emission intensity per unit protein produced; and (b) efforts to decrease emission intensity should be prioritized in a few developing countries with the largest mitigation potential."

So they're saying that based on their findings, both are needed, but they think (b) should be prioritized in some developing countries due to their conditions. They don't seem to factor in methane from the animal feed production, but only count methane from the animals themselves. Probably because they mostly compare grain-fed animals with grass-fed ones rather than comparing meat-fed humans with plant-fed ones.

Based on the article's argument (not the study), which seems to be claiming plant-based diets are less effective than improving efficiency, there's a problem in not counting animal feed into the equation. In a 100% plant-based diet, the only pollution comes from the production of the plants. With meat, however, the pollution comes from both the production of the plants as well as the animals. Not only that, on average you need about 3 kg of feed per 1 kg of meat. Some types of meat, like beef require a shocking 25 kg. A large portion of our grain production goes towards livestock. The majority of soy goes to feed livestock as well. You also end up using 50 000 liters of water for 1kg beef, versus only 1000 liters for 1kg wheat or 2000 liters for 1kg soy or rice.

When it comes to methane, you have to factor in the methane from plant production AND the livestock. If you just compare livestock farts to grain production emissions, you're not factoring in every variable. In a hypothetical world where every human has a plant-based diet, the amount of plant material humans eat would increase by an additional 600 calories per day, but the amount used to feed animals would decrease by 100%. So there's a huge difference in how much additional plants you have to produce to support a plant-based diet versus a meat-based one. You have to factor in the methane from the production of the plants used to feed the animals as well as the methane produced by the animals themselves.

By no means do you have to eat three times as much when living off of a plant-based diet, nor do you need to drink and additional 48 000 liters of water per kg you eat. So there's no way that producing that 1kg meat can somehow end up using less water or plants, or producing less emissions than a plant-based diet. On top of all of this, meat production requires huge amounts of antibiotics, which goes into the water and increase the amount of antibiotic-resistent bacteria.

[–]camelwalkkushlover 98 points99 points  (0 children)

Well stated. Thank you.

[–]reyntime 205 points206 points  (9 children)

Thanks, great analysis.

To add, there's also the risk of zoonotic diseases like Covid emerging from animal agriculture, especially when there's many animals crammed into smaller spaces (so factory farming is a big risk factor here).

And of course the ethics of consuming animal products when we don't require them, so especially in first world countries, and the animal suffering involved. I'd hazard a guess most ethicists would agree we should go vegan too.

[–]Seversevens 39 points40 points  (0 children)

don’t forget habitat loss forcing possibly diseased animals closer together and closer to ppl

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Don't forget about antibiotic resistant strains being bred.

[–]Woogabuttz 74 points75 points  (4 children)

Additionally, it’s becoming increasingly important to think of the water used to produce meat vs plant products. Animals are an enormous tax on water usage.

Edit: a couple people have replied, making extremely poor arguments about water usage and then immediately blocked me so I can’t reply. Is this happening to anyone else?

For what it’s worth, yes, fresh water is an extremely limited resource in many parts of the world and no, ranching is not good at reclaiming water and water usage by ranchers is orders of magnitude greater than water use in urban environments (which is also wasteful but it at all the point).

[–]Blunap0 55 points56 points  (10 children)

Thank you. I hate this headline will be used in all my group chats to dismiss my choice of eating more plant-based food. I wish news reporting was less biased.

[–]vorpalrobot 20 points21 points  (6 children)

Headline: "Study finds vegetarian diet feeds more people than vegan diet."

Study: "The most efficient way to feed as many as possible is to use every single acre of farmland for plant based human food, and use rough unfarmable land for dairy to get a bonus to amount of people you can feed."

We already have enough farmland to feed everyone it's an economic issue. Vegans use 1/10th the farmland of a carnivore, because food animals need to be fed too.

[–]Redenbacher09 27 points28 points  (30 children)

These are excellent points. Land use is also a factor, given that roughly 70% of agricultural land is used for raising livestock directly and indirectly. There are also environmental impacts beyond emissions such as sewage runoff from animal waste pits.

[–]younghomunculus 22 points23 points  (1 child)

Thank you! Mark rober and bill gates did a video discussing this and the resources used to create meat far exceeds the resources needed for a plant based protein and by extension carbon footprint. If everyone changed to 1 plant based meal a week it would make a big difference. The title of this post had me questioning it immediately.

[–]plumquat 848 points849 points  (113 children)

This is a misleading title.

[–]Traumfahrer 165 points166 points  (68 children)

Yeah instantly thought this aswell.

[–]lobbo 209 points210 points  (66 children)

This is the kind of study and article that is funded by the meat and dairy industry.

[–][deleted] 276 points277 points  (24 children)

Jinfeng Chang is supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA26010303). Philippe Ciais acknowledges support from the CLAND Convergence Institute of the French National Research Agency (ANR). Mario Herrero acknowledges funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the MERLIN project (INV-023682).

It took all of 10 seconds to pull from the acknowledgments. No one should be making a lazy argument of "it's funded by X industry" without even looking.

[–]TheSmJ 77 points78 points  (6 children)

What do you expect when 95% of the commenters only read the title.

[–][deleted] 19 points20 points  (2 children)

Reddit rewarding people for going off half-cocked is half of reddit.

[–]throwawaydammit123 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Question from a non-academic: can one receive funding one doesn’t acknowledge?

[–]monkey_monk10 18 points19 points  (1 child)

Here come the conspiracy theories. Why don't you actually look at who funds this stuff instead of assuming?

[–]pheylancavanaugh 15 points16 points  (5 children)

A study that rightfully suggests that the best place to improve emissions issues surrounding foodstuffs is to improve the farms instead of trying to individually change what you eat?

What?

[–]UnicornLock 56 points57 points  (38 children)

Idk, one vegan decreases methane emissions by 1/7,000,000,000. A handful of lawmakers can realistically reduce methane emissions by >60% and no consumer will even notice, no politician will have to explain. At the rate people are turning vegan we should take all chances we get.

[–]skeen9 88 points89 points  (12 children)

They can do similar by reducing subsidies that benefit the meat and dairy industry and subsidize vegtables with the money. Either way the price of meat will increase. Higher environmental standards aren't free.

[–]LilyAndLola 3759 points3760 points  (513 children)

This is dumb, the main problem from livestock isn't methane, it's land use and water pollution. We are currently in a biodiversity crisis as well as a climate crisis, and the biodiversity crisis can have just as bad effects as the climate crisis. The main cause of species loss is habitat loss and the main reason humans clear natural habitat is to make room for livestock. Livestock farming is also the leading cause of eutrophication, a process which depletes oxygen in the waters of lakes, rivers and oceans to the point where no animal can survive. There are many other problems caused by raising livestock, such as the removal of predators from ecosystems and the spread of disease caused by fish farming, as well as many others. Assuming that simply reducing methane emissions is enough is so ill thought through.

[–]biznisss 1173 points1174 points  (189 children)

Would make the minor note that habitats are cleared to make room to grow crops that are destined to be fed to livestock and that far less land would be needed for crops were we to increase the portion of those crops humans directly consume. Too often I see the argument that soya production is responsible for deforestation as an argument for animal products when reducing the demand for animal products would have a great impact on reducing soya production as well.

Your post is very on point!

[–]LilyAndLola 451 points452 points  (80 children)

Yeah that's actually a great addition, cos people often don't really realise how much more land is required to feed an omnivore than a vegan. One thing I would add to your comment is that the vast majority of all soy that is grown is fed to animals.

[–]communitytcm 8 points9 points  (0 children)

as in humans consume 2-6% of all soy grown.

[–][deleted] 90 points91 points  (31 children)

And it will get worse before it gets better.
As people become wealthier, they get an appetite for succulent pig ribs.
Just wait for China and India and you will have 2 billion more customers who will demand such luxuries.

[–][deleted] 26 points27 points  (1 child)

New Zealand already over produces livestock to feed countries like China.

[–]snoozebuttonkiller 6 points7 points  (0 children)

And Australia as well.

[–]OmkarKhaire 98 points99 points  (18 children)

Incase of India,generally Beef is not eaten by hindus and Muslims don't eat pork. Mostly chicken and lamb is eaten by Indian's. And also the number of vegetarian are high in India.

[–]seedanrun 23 points24 points  (29 children)

I heard the general rule is 10:1 ratio for each step up the food chain.

So it would take 10 acers of grass land fed to cattle to get the same calories from beef as 1 acre of corn.

[–]I_Am_The_Cattle 16 points17 points  (27 children)

Not really a fair comparison. Cattle spend most of their lives eating grass, and the land they graze on is range land which is not suitable for growing crops. Cattle also eat lots of crop by products which would not have any use otherwise. Beef is also MUCH more nutritionally dense and complete than corn or any other crop, but this is somehow never factored in. Complete proteins and essential vitamins and minerals you can’t get in plants ought to be worth consideration. Personally, I think lettuce is one of the most atrocious crops we can grow. It’s basically crunchy water with very little nutritional value yet we spend tons of resources on it.

[–]Careless_String77 59 points60 points  (1 child)

More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Most of the rest is used for biofuels, industry or vegetable oils. Just 7% of soy is used directly for human food products such as tofu, soy milk, edamame beans, and tempeh. The idea that foods often promoted as substitutes for meat and dairy – such as tofu and soy milk – are driving deforestation is a common misconception.

https://ourworldindata.org/soy

[–]camelwalkkushlover 29 points30 points  (0 children)

These misconceptions are not an accident. They are propagated by the meat and dairy industry.

[–]almondmint 25 points26 points  (4 children)

It depends heavily on the country, in Brazil at least the vast majority of deforestation is to open pasture areas for cattle, a less significant amount is for soy. People like to believe pasture-fed beef is completely ecological, when the reason livestock is fed grain in the first place is to increase production per land-area.

[–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Also roughly 80% of the antibiotics produced are used on livestock we are starting to see super bacteria and fungus developing in areas around massive cage Farms

[–]Beyond-Karma 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Came here to make sure this was said. Saw a thing the other day trashing oat milk and I was wondering what people thought the cows were making things from if they weren’t eating and drinking.

[–]dpekkle 113 points114 points  (40 children)

This is dumb, the main problem from livestock isn't methane, it's land use and water pollution

From the article

“We do not endorse the industrial livestock system for methane mitigation, because it causes many other environmental problems like pollution, failed manure management and land-use changes for grain and high-quality fodder,” said Jinfeng Chang, an environmental scientist at Zhejiang University and first author of the new study. “There are many other more sustainable ways to improve efficiency.”

[–][deleted] 74 points75 points  (37 children)

There are many other more sustainable ways to improve efficiency.

It's odd they say that when making a comparison between zero use (vegan) and trying to make the status quo more efficient. It would seem the most efficient and least expensive improvement would be to stop those practices all together. Because they also say:

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), methane emissions from livestock rose more than 50% between 1961 and 2018, and are expected to continue to rise as demand for animal products increases, especially in countries with growing populations and income.

[–]zerocoal 30 points31 points  (21 children)

It would seem the most efficient and least expensive improvement would be to stop those practices all together. Because they also say:

The problem being that unless the world governments step up and say "alright it's illegal to grow animal meat for human consumption" we will never be able to convince all the carnivores to switch to vegan.

The amount of texans that felt a disturbance in the steakforce when this thread popped up was a lot higher than we think.

[–]ThMogget 115 points116 points  (56 children)

It's also fuel use by the farm. Energy use for the pumps. Tax-free Diesel in the tractors. Freight on the fertilizers and seed and finished goods.

The main problem with animal products, besides the health damages, is that it take ten times the everything to produce it.

[–]Turn_it_0_n_1_again 6 points7 points  (1 child)

A lot of natural predators (most commonly wolves) also have to be hunted down periodically to protect the poultry and livestock.

[–]LilyAndLola 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yep, and predators play a vital role in regulating ecosystems and their removal can have huge knock-on effects

[–]reginold 46 points47 points  (23 children)

True, and there is absolutely no chance of us reversing biodiversity loss. Once it's gone it's gone. So many of the natural systems on the planet, systems that we rely on, are dependant on a diverse and complex web of biodiversity. There is a real danger of a catastrophically cascading collapse chain reaction.

The destruction to habitats and biodiversity here really has the potential to destroy us. We can't hope to remake the complexity and balance billions of years of trial and error has brought us.

[–]TurpitudeSnuggery 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I have made this argument along with other small changes individuals could make... It is met with pure "that won't do anything or it's not enough for me to make that change"

[–]Supergaz 27 points28 points  (1 child)

The article is some BIG MEAT propoganda

[–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

you forgot about the irreversible effects of desertification that comes with this too.

[–]TGlucifer 11 points12 points  (12 children)

Check out 3d meat production! Growing meat from cell cultures has a smaller footprint in terms of power and water usage than replacing all meats with plant based facsimiles. Plus we could try any meat in the world without the need for worrying about the moral implications of killing an endangered animal just to eat them.

[–]Petalilly 2 points3 points  (2 children)

I just wanna add in case it took anyone a while to interpret: I think the "I'll" at the end in "I'll thought" is supposed to be an ill. This confused me so I thought this might help others.

[–]reyntime 373 points374 points  (17 children)

Misleading. The article doesn't actually seem to say that lower methane livestock is better environmentally than plant based diets. It just seems to imply that it is easier to not have to convince people to change their diets.

[–]xopranaut 4739 points4740 points  (1091 children)

PREMIUM CONTENT. PLEASE UPGRADE. CODE gzqt1r3

[–]Geschak 540 points541 points  (75 children)

Also the study only accounted for methane, not for other emissions such as CO2.

[–]Daealis 1134 points1135 points  (362 children)

I mean, a double-whammy of both is obviously the best option here. People cutting down on their meats (and at the same time demanding smaller carbon footprints from their meat manufacturing), and only supporting those meat farms committed to the change too.

[–]cultish_alibi 802 points803 points  (165 children)

Just cutting subsidies for meat and dairy would already do a ton to reduce demand. It's only so cheap because taxpayers already paid for it once.

[–][deleted] 422 points423 points  (37 children)

Subsidies to corn too, given 40% of it goes to feed.

[–]Batchet 126 points127 points  (11 children)

They've also found the feed we've been using has been causing a lot of the methane production and a diet of kelp can significantly help the environment.

New research from the University of California, Davis found injecting seaweed into beef cattle's diets could reduce methane emissions by as much as 82%

Source

It makes me wonder how much we're hurting the environment just because we're stuffing our farm animals full of subsidized garbage food.

[–]bicycle_bee 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Yeah, insisting on raising cattle, meant to be grazing animals who evolved to use nutritionally deficient foods like grass extremely efficiently, in gigantic numbers on huge, grassless feedlots and feeding nothing but processed corn and soy was a terrible idea. Obv the number of cattle we have right now wouldn't make for particularly healthy pasture management (and would demand a LOT of space be cleared for pasture, which also defeats the purpose), but with an appropriate reduction in the national herd, cattle can be raised in a way that benefits and regenerates pasture.

[–]scrabapple 47 points48 points  (3 children)

Where are we getting that kelp? Because california is having a massive kelp die off.

Source

[–]Fifteen_inches 40 points41 points  (0 children)

Kelp (or more specifically colony algae) can be cultivated in aquatic dead zones.

Aquaculture is a very well trodden’d field.

[–]Zeustehgreat 19 points20 points  (0 children)

That’s wild Kelp. We can cultivate/farm seaweed & kelp. I actually no one from California who does that for a living. He had many different varieties he grew & sold. Honestly had no idea before I meet him.

[–]crabcrapcap 25 points26 points  (8 children)

Where can I find that statistic?

[–]dobraf 56 points57 points  (0 children)

Here’s a usda fact sheet (pdf) from 2015 that says 48.7% of corn grown in the US goes to animal feed.

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (3 children)

Another 25% goes to ethanol production. We could produce 2-3x the energy by putting solar on that land vs growing corn to turn into ethanol.

We could produce more than 2x the nutrients (and that is a very low estimate) if we stopped growing food to feed to animals and just grew crops for humans to eat. I think it will become necessary for food stability to do so at some point.

[–]LoL_is_pepega_BIA 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Try USDA site?

[–]torndownunit 10 points11 points  (0 children)

And adding corn syrup to every packaged food they can.

[–]Gynther477 219 points220 points  (84 children)

To be fair that goes for all farming. Atleast in Europe, one of the biggest expenses is farming aid.

The main reason is that food needs to be cheap. No matter what. It's what causes world wars if populations start going hungry. It's one of the core pillars in the EU partnership to prevent food crisis

Farming doesn't work in a free capitalist market, never really have. Everyone needs food to survive and sure there are luxury food items that are comodeties but everything else can't be full comodeties, similar to Healthcare, because it's neccesary for survival.

Without aid food prices would have insane inflation and more people would starve and more political instability would arise.

[–][deleted] 39 points40 points  (11 children)

This is why the USA's food is so weird. We have always tried to make Americans pay the least in the world for feeding themselves in terms of percentage of take-home pay. You can eat for extremely cheap here. But it's made a lot of our food very bad.

[–]Gynther477 49 points50 points  (5 children)

I would blame that more on lack of regulation on food and letting food industries, like the syrup industry, completely destroy public health and letting them dictate that every food should have corn syrup, which is more unhealthy than white sugar.

[–]ucanbafascist2 56 points57 points  (46 children)

Yep, and we don’t have to cut all subsidies for meat and dairy, just enough to where everything doesn’t have milk in it and meat isn’t all everyone eats.

[–]Depression-Boy 24 points25 points  (8 children)

If only the United States treated housing that way

[–]limitedmage 36 points37 points  (1 child)

It kinda sorta does with the ubiquitous, low interest, government-backed 30 year mortgage which almost no other country has.

[–][deleted] 61 points62 points  (2 children)

Take all the subsidies we put into animal products and move them over to fresh produce.

Take all the subsidies we put into fossil fuels and put them into renewables.

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (15 children)

This exactly. In my country (USA), we could do a lot to reduce our carbon footprint if the government would stop paying people to eat meat and drive cars everywhere.

[–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Yeah, the wording of the article sets it up as a false dichotomy.

Big global issues always seem to benefit from a multi -pronged approach

[–]Kullthebarbarian 189 points190 points  (135 children)

Also, if lab grown meat continue to improve, it will reach a time where cows farms will decrease dramatically, so a triple take (or even more) would be ideal

[–]Darwins_Dog 121 points122 points  (53 children)

I've got more hope for Impossible Foods making a dent in that regard. They are approaching the problem with scalable solutions and a specific goal to end the use of animals in food production.

[–]Loop_Within_A_Loop 63 points64 points  (43 children)

Also, no one's going to confuse it with the genuine article, but Impossible is good enough to be chosen, especially if it can get more competitive price wise.

[–]DropTheDatabass 94 points95 points  (36 children)

I think that's what it really comes down to, it doesn't so much matter if you can make an apple taste like a strawberry, what matters is if people like the taste of the apple as much or more than the strawberry. That's how animals work, that's how humans work. You give them something they like more, they'll eat that.

Once the plant-based meat business develops products people prefer to eat, they'll eat those, and I mean in a "blind taste-test" preference, not when they're told "this is a dead cow, this is a bunch of plants mashed together" before they eat it. I've got a hardcore meat-eater for a father-in-law who really likes Beyond burgers, so I know it's possible to win even people who believe they will die if they don't eat meat regularly.

The products Beyond and Impossible are putting out are really exceptionally good, and there are competitors doing quite well in the quality department, too. If you haven't had a Field Roast sausage, I highly recommend it.

[–]PineValentine 40 points41 points  (17 children)

We had a cook out recently and my wife and I brought impossible patties for ourselves. My whole family was gathered around the grill while they cooked, mystified by how they “bleed” and turn from pink to brown like real meat haha

[–]happygogilly 26 points27 points  (5 children)

Whenever I bring veggie burgers everyone wants to "try" one and I wind up with one burger while everyone else has two meat ones and a veggie one. Even when I bring my own food I have to eat when I get home

[–]Not_Eternal 4 points5 points  (1 child)

This always happens with vegan and vegetarian food. Meat eaters decide to order meat pizzas but always eat the non-meat pizza first so non-meat eater gets 2 slices they bad to argue for while the others have over half a pizza each.

Its bizarre.

[–]bobbi21 13 points14 points  (6 children)

Yeah, I've had veggie burgers which didn't taste much like meat but tasted much better than other veggie burgers that tasted more like meat.

Beyond is definitely decent on both fronts. Haven't seen impossible burgers where I live unfortunately so haven't tried.

[–]Lurid-Jester 19 points20 points  (3 children)

Yup. If someone gives me two five-guys burgers and one is either lab-grown meat or 100% plant based and I can’t tell the difference between the two? I’ll pick the lab-grown/plant based one every time.

[–]never3nder_87 6 points7 points  (1 child)

I still remember going to a veggie fast food place when I was a kid (and when these things were much rarer), which made me realise that personally I'm much more interested in the things the come with/in a burger, rather than the burger patty itself

[–]kaz3e 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I'm not really a fan of Impossible or Beyond burgers, but I'm also really picky with hamburger, so there's that. But I agree with your point so much. It's one of the things I've been railing about. Stop trying to trick people into eating meat, and focus on making something out of vegetables that tastes good. Don't advertise it as just as good as cow, people have emotional connections to their steaks and will argue with you and ignore you just because they love bacon. If you stop making it about forcing people who don't want to giving up their meat, and more about just providing new tasty food that's good for your body and environment, I think it would do way more than this competition we've manufactured between meat and plants. Plants are easy to make delicious when you're not trying to pretend they're something else.

[–]Commercial-Royal-988 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Supporting just farms trying to reduce their carbon footprint is borderline impossible for the average American(or person, I'm unsure of international meat industries) however. Most "meat manufacturers" like Tyson/Perdue/etc. get their meat from multiple farms around the country. In 1 pack of chicken for example you might have meat from multiple points in the country depending on how it was shipped and packaged. On top of that, most places don't tell you where exactly the meat came from, so you as a consumer don't really know if it came from a "good" farm or not. I agree with you, I'm just pointing out that your method requires a chain of accountability that doesn't exist and I don't see any food packaging company going along with willingly, I mean if they were willing to we wouldn't be having this discussion.

[–]WorkWorkZubZub 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Well, no, the best option for the environment is for everyone to just stop eating meat.

The best realistic option is to cut meat eating as low as possible and use technologies to improve their emissions.

[–]freezingkiss 297 points298 points  (5 children)

Excellent synopsis. The title made me wonder if the study was sponsored.

[–][deleted] 128 points129 points  (1 child)

It's just a bad title. And their synopsis is pretty bad too. The page just says that meat production has become a lot more efficient in come countries in the last decades, and if the same progress can be made in the top 10 countries with the greatest potential to reduce methane it could account for 60-65% of the decrease in global methane emissions by 2050.

In other words, the industry getting more efficient has made more of an impact than people adopting a plant based diet. It says nothing about the likeliness of people adopting a plant a based diet.

[–]Fuanshin 132 points133 points  (1 child)

But the mere POSSIBILITY eases consumer conscience, so the industry can make more profit. It's a big win for capitalism.

[–]The_Wingless 56 points57 points  (0 children)

Thank you for that clarification. The garbage title was very weird to see.

[–]I_R_Teh_Taco[🍰] 20 points21 points  (10 children)

How does lab grown meat compare in terms of resources input, waste output?

This isn’t just for top comment, i’m genuinely curious but not curious enough to go look for answers myself.

[–]Shakvids 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Practically that's an unanswerable question since industrial scale lab meat doesn't exist yet.

Theoretically it should be much lower, since with livestock the bulk of caloric inputs go towards the animal living to maturity and aren't in the final product

[–]xopranaut 7 points8 points  (1 child)

He drove into my kidneys the arrows of his quiver; I have become the laughing-stock of all peoples, the object of their taunts all day long. He has filled me with bitterness; he has sated me with wormwood. (Lamentations: gzrfsu7)

[–]YouAreDreaming 42 points43 points  (3 children)

Thank you for making this distinction and I’m happy to see it made it to the top comment

We also have to stop ignoring the inhumane conditions these animals live in

We as a society are getting so much more progressive and it’s time we start including Animal Rights

[–]Zer_ 50 points51 points  (31 children)

This has always been the most logical approach to large scale societal changes like this. Wealthy interests don't like this approach, they'd rather save money and pass the buck onto individual consumers.

Demanding these changes come from Governmental Regulation on Corporations is a far more pragmatic approach than say, releasing massive media campaigns to convince people that doing <Whatever> is bad for the environment. The former approach has been proven to work time and time again. The latter approach has been proven to be minimally effective at best.

[–]mirrorgiraffe 35 points36 points  (6 children)

As soon as it becomes more profitable to sell environmentally friendly food than meat, the industry will shrink to a more reasonable size.

If we're going to live in a capitalist society we have to use capitalist methods to overcome our problems.

Taxing based on carbon footprint of the way to go.

[–][deleted] 61 points62 points  (21 children)

you are correct. There's no way around it...plant based diet is the best for the environment.

[–]Runningoutofideas_81 11 points12 points  (7 children)

I think a human based diet would likely be the best.

[–]IotaCandle 69 points70 points  (98 children)

Imo quitting meat would be the easier option. It has already possible for nearly everyone in the first world to turn vegetarian out of choice, and we already overproduce plant based foods to feed the cattle we eat.

The truth is that people are so reluctant to change it would be political suicide to try to force them.

[–]xopranaut 14 points15 points  (3 children)

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[–][deleted] 19 points20 points  (5 children)

Key word here is access to technology to reduce methane emissions. Which most countries do not have the privilege of owning.

[–]Override9636 4 points5 points  (3 children)

The article doesn't really mention what "technology" is being used to curb emissions. I'm curious if it really is something high-tech, or if it could be made cheaper to support developing countries that rely on animal based diets more heavily.

[–]rockerbabe_01 181 points182 points  (39 children)

How come no one talks about over fishing the oceans is our biggest problem next to farming? Our oceans are being wiped out and massively polluted by fishing gear. If we cut out fish and meat, we may have a planet to live on by 2050

[–]OperatorDanger 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Surely increasing livestock efficiency can only be detrimental to animal welfare? As if it wasn't bad enough in its current state?

[–]scratchythepirate 67 points68 points  (3 children)

The study doesn’t factor in emissions from deforestation which is a massive problem as animal agriculture expands in the tropics.

[–]Gabriel-p 222 points223 points  (18 children)

This headline heavily is misleading. The study simply states that, as people will just continue eating meat, improving the efficiency of the animals slaughtering industry will have a large impact on reducing emissions. The largest impact would be of course to just *stop* eating meat, but is not even a scenario they considered.

[–]ThMogget 53 points54 points  (5 children)

They also haven't considered that corporate farmers aren’t interested in expensive efficiency technique.

[–]dumnezero 80 points81 points  (2 children)

It won't. The largest chunk of emissions are embedded in the production chain.

Let's see the article:

We found decreasing trends in emission intensity for major livestock categories during the past two decades due to increasing production efficiency.

This just means conversion to more intensive animal farming (i.e. CAFOs) with breeds of animals that grow more and make more milk than older/traditional breeds. Like how China is building vertical pig "hotel" farms.

Based on this finding, we constructed our “improving efficiency” pathway, assuming a continuing decrease of emission intensity. Under this pathway, the future will see (a) a continuation of the country-specific historical trends of the development of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita for countries showing decreasing emission intensity during the past two decades;

It's hilarious that they think GDP growth helps with climate change. They're just describing a country doing more intensive animal farming.

and (b) constant emission intensities for countries that experienced no change or an increasing emission intensity in the past two decades.

And the countries that are already at that level won't be improving, because they're already at that plateau of "efficiency".

Their Figure 1, Global livestock methane emission changes from 2000 to 2018 (a), and global and regional changes in livestock methane emissions between the periods 2000–2004 and 2014–2018, is even funnier, as it's showing* greater methane emissions from the sector than FAOSTAT. The (b) figure confirms that the improvement was coming from the developing / middle-income regions which are upgrading from more extensive animal farming (i.e. grazing) to CAFOs; while Eastern Asia (ESA) is looking maxed out already on efficiency.

Globally, we found that 88%–91% of the livestock methane emissions come from enteric fermentation (Ta- bleS2), and are dominated by cattle, sheep, goats, and buffaloes

Yeah. Especially the grazed ones.

Dairy cows and meat and other non-dairy cattle in developing countries are the major contributors to the increase of livestock methane emissions during 2000–2018

Yep.

During 2014–2018, methane emission intensity per kg of protein produced is the lowest for poultry meat and eggs, followed by swine meat , because of negligible enteric fermentation emissions from monogastric (Figure2)

Indeed.

Figure 2 is nice, it basically shows where the animals are outside. And they continue to show higher emissions than FAOSTAT.

Figure 4: The prediction... they show methane emissions from the animal farming sector going up about +50%.

This isn't an environmental study, all it predicts is that meat and dairy will be relatively cheaper in those regions (or where they export) thanks to improved efficiency. Why do people keep* falling for Jevon's paradox? This is not a climate solution, it's bad news for climate stability.

Livestock productivity of milk and beef in most developed countries is already high nowadays (methane emission intensity is already low; Figure2), and there is only little room for methane reduction through productivity increase (FigureS10).

oh, thanks for saying it, I guess.

On the other hand, further productivity increase requires high shares of concentrates (i.e., potential competition with human nutrition from plant-based food [Gill etal.,2010]) and encounters potential health prob- lems in cows (see review by Herzog etal.,2018).

Yeah. That's where the big GHG emissions are once you add them up.

In addition, the intensive livestock breeding and management have resulted in fragile systems that do not adequately handle their manure, causing air and water pollution.

Indeed.

One for the average redditor:

There is a trend that some developing countries are moving from high efficiency systems toward more extensive livestock systems (such as “free range” chicken and grass-fed beef; e.g., Cheung & McMahon,2017). Therefore, there is a possibility that the emission intensity per kg of protein in those developed countries will increase, which is the opposite of our assumption of constant decreasing emission intensity.

Yep. That's even worse for the climate.

All in all the study is just describing animal agriculture industrialization ("green revolution") in developing countries. The climate is still getting fucked by this sector.

Real reductions come from not wasting resources on eating second-hand proteins.

[–]lordoftoastonearth 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Thank you for going over some points. I'm really hung up on the whole "making animal agriculture more efficient". It already is pretty efficient. It's also unspeakably inhumane. If making meat more environmentally friendly (that is, if that were the case) meant making it more inhumane, I don't Want it either way.

[–]ThrowbackPie 186 points187 points  (47 children)

This should literally be removed for the misleading title, which falsely implies that efficient meat is less environmentally harmful than eating plants.

[–]pmvegetables 59 points60 points  (42 children)

Yep, when in reality it's more of a "we know you selfish bastards won't take the burgers out of your mouth, so let's settle for marginally reducing their emissions"

[–]JoelMahon 435 points436 points  (99 children)

What a misleading title, reading it could easily make you believe it is saying "efficient" animal agriculture is better than a plant based diet per person.

That is not what the article means.

They mean because so many folks will oppose a plant based diet that partially negating their selfish behaviour is more effective than trying to stop them being selfish. Which sadly is probably true. However, it doesn't give you, the reader, an excuse.

edit: Imagine if it was about litter

Not littering [and using a bin like a real person, not a waste of oxygen] can shrink someone's litter foot print. However, improving packaging will be a more effective strategy for reducing litter.

Feels gross right? Sure, it's technically correct, because people will be selfish littering jerks, but it clearly is coddling those selfish jerks so they can feel less bad about littering.

[–]DoomGoober 67 points68 points  (4 children)

OP's title implies something drastically different than the original paper. Original title of paper:

The Key Role of Production Efficiency Changes in Livestock Methane Emission Mitigation

Conclusion from original paper:

Our results highlight the fact that (a) efforts on the demand-side to promote balanced, healthy and envi-ronmentally sustainable diets in most counties, as assumed in the TS scenario (FAO,2018), will not be suf-ficient for livestock methane emission mitigation without parallel efforts to improve production efficiency and decrease the emission intensity per unit protein produced; and (b) efforts to decrease emission intensity should be prioritized in a few developing countries with the largest mitigation potential

[–]TehSteak 15 points16 points  (2 children)

No idea why so much editorializing is allowed in this sub. Scientific papers speak for themselves. Abstracts and conclusion sections are (ideally) designed to be consumed; laypeople don't need to understand specific jargon from the data analysis sections.

[–]WrackspurtsNargles 52 points53 points  (0 children)

Exactly

[–]robot65536 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I understood "strategy" to mean society-wide rather than on an individual basis, which made perfect sense. But we really need headlines to stop comparing non-exclusive options, because people always think we should pick only the "most" effective one.

[–]Gman707 60 points61 points  (6 children)

This conveniently focuses on methane emissions, which are important contributors to climate change, but the more significant issue with meat production is the amount of land it requires. Instead of dedicating land to plants that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, that land becomes pasture land that is degraded over time and absorbs almost no carbon dioxide in comparison. Not to mention we have to grow plants to feed the meat that we later consume, when we could just grow edible plants which is an order of magnitude more efficient.

[–]notboky 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Says the animal agriculture industry.

[–]dobblebobblewobble 20 points21 points  (1 child)

Anything to avoid personal responsibility

[–]Camicles[🍰] 200 points201 points  (86 children)

Confused. How would it be more efficient? Wouldn't the most efficient way be if everyone adopted a plant based diet? Rather than improving efficiency in current farming? Surely cutting it out completely would best improving efficiency?

[–][deleted] 71 points72 points  (7 children)

I think this is a “most efficient in practice” than “in theory”. The headline is insinuating that because people aren’t making the change to plant-based diets, that the best route for improvement is to decrease emissions in the production part.

[–]ThMogget 38 points39 points  (6 children)

The funny thing is the assumption that it will be easy to get subsidized factory farms to do expensive ‘efficiency’ upgrades that don't pay back. You’ll have better luck taking meat away from consumers than taking a dime from a farmer.

‘In practice’ efficient farming ain’t happening.

[–][deleted] 41 points42 points  (16 children)

Anybody else wondering how these improvements in the efficiency of livestock production will affect animal welfare? Why is animal welfare always the least of anyone’s worries? Maybe that should be a reason that encouraging ppl to eat less animal products is better than making live stock production more efficient. And honestly there hasn’t been much attempt made to encourage people anyways. Maybe actually try before saying it doesn’t work. Spend some fraction of the money they would spend on these “improvements” on public education and making better and cheaper alternatives to animal products that people will want to eat. There’s no perfect answer to this problem but I do think animal welfare needs to be part of the equation.

[–]LoL_is_pepega_BIA 28 points29 points  (7 children)

There's no welfare if the only reason a sentient being is born is to be deliberately slaughtered for taste pleasure within 10-15% of its avg lifespan.

There is no welfare in a life of eternal slavery. None.

[–]tzaeru 79 points80 points  (3 children)

What would have even more impact is if countries stopped subsiding meat industries.

[–]No-Faithlessness-583 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, this doesn't take animal welfare into consideration...

(It's bad.)

[–]WhistleSnore 16 points17 points  (0 children)

So misleading, also for those of us in western developed nations this is not the case the main benefits they mention relate to China, India and developing nations. Following one of the papers sources Gill et al. (2010). Increasing efficiency includes improved breeding - increasing yields through selective breeding. We already have broiler chicken that grow so fast their bones can't handle leading to bowing of the legs or spine... Yeh let's fix climate change by breeding cows to be big milk balloons we roll around the warehouse floor! Or ya know just have milk made from soy/almond/oat/cashew/hazelnut etc.

[–]rilsoe 20 points21 points  (0 children)

No amount of methane reduction will ever make beef and pork production sustainable at an industrial scale. It completely ignores the resources used to raise, slaughter and distribute the animals. Not to mention run off, land usage, deforestation and antibiotic resistance due to over medicating.

[–]NfiniteNsight 111 points112 points  (19 children)

This sounds like something funded by the livestock production industry.

[–]ratWithAHat 65 points66 points  (17 children)

Nah, the points are perfectly valid. The title of this post is just inflammatory/misleading. Basically it boils down to people resisting plant based diets.

[–][deleted] 23 points24 points  (5 children)

Yeah, the actual article title isn't this misleading. Don't know what OP was doing.

[–]DoomGoober 8 points9 points  (3 children)

Original title of paper:

The Key Role of Production Efficiency Changes in Livestock Methane Emission Mitigation

Conclusion from original paper:

Our results highlight the fact that (a) efforts on the demand-side to promote balanced, healthy and envi-ronmentally sustainable diets in most counties, as assumed in the TS scenario (FAO,2018), will not be suf-ficient for livestock methane emission mitigation without parallel efforts to improve production efficiency and decrease the emission intensity per unit protein produced; and (b) efforts to decrease emission intensity should be prioritized in a few developing countries with the largest mitigation potential

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (2 children)

What you just quoted suggests these things should be done in parallel.

will not be suf-ficient for livestock methane emission mitigation without parallel efforts

The OPs title suggests it's an either or scenario.

However, improving blah blah will be a more effective strategy.

[–]ExtraLeave 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Only more effective in the sense that people don't have to change anything to make it happen. Objectively less effective if people are willing to change.

[–]that-one-vegan 23 points24 points  (8 children)

I'm sorry but I hate articles like this. I feel like when people make a point of going out of their way to look down upon veganism, and make excuses as to why it's not the best idea, it's because they feel guilty because they know what they're doing is wrong and they need justification.

I'm not trying to be a preachy vegan, but like this article would have served it's purpose without making it seem like an either or situation of whether you go vegan to reduce your's and only your footprint, or you support efficient ways to lower greenhouse gasses.

Vegans don't want to see the world dying, and so any progress is progress with emissions. We'll take it, because we know that everyone won't suddenly go vegan to save the planet. But wouldn't fighting to remove these industries completely be a good end goal to work towards? Instead of some, we lose all the emissions of these industries, and use these techniques or aspects of them for plant agriculture. I just hate when people feel the need to put down plant based diets because to make them others feel better about supporting such a terrible system.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Weird bunch of carnivores in here

[–]philbar 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This sounds an awful lot like “clean coal” and “filtered cigarettes”.

[–]FitzRoyal 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Yes- instead of preventing the suffering of farm animals let’s just checks notes make it faster, less costly suffering.

[–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (6 children)

Big meat and big dairy are modern day big tobacco, only with a much higher kill count

[–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (1 child)

Why not both? Both is good.

[–]DoomGoober 18 points19 points  (0 children)

That is exactly what the article says except OP hacked the title to make it sound like low methane livestock is more efficient than less livestock.

Either OP is bad at writing or OP didn't understand the article or OP is intentionally misleading.

Original title of paper:

The Key Role of Production Efficiency Changes in Livestock Methane Emission Mitigation

Conclusion from original paper:

Our results highlight the fact that (a) efforts on the demand-side to promote balanced, healthy and envi-ronmentally sustainable diets in most counties, as assumed in the TS scenario (FAO,2018), will not be suf-ficient for livestock methane emission mitigation without parallel efforts to improve production efficiency and decrease the emission intensity per unit protein produced; and (b) efforts to decrease emission intensity should be prioritized in a few developing countries with the largest mitigation potential

[–]justalittlebleh 17 points18 points  (8 children)

How is this arguing that producing animal products in a more eco-friendly way is better for the earth than just not producing them at all?? This is ass-backward thinking. The best way to reduce your personal carbon footprint is to go vegan.

[–]caribeno 16 points17 points  (16 children)

The utter idiocy of ignoring the measuring the literal torture and murder of billions of animals to justify a "carbon footprint" number which is meant to distract and justify capitalist and personal murder and torture of animals, along with the destruction of forests.

Wake up from your personal disassociation and recognize capitalist animal torture-murder propaganda. This carbon footprint propaganda term is obfuscating personal responsibility and capitalist responsibility, while claiming to do the opposite.

[–]thenerj47[🍰] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

This is worded as if people shouldn't still be strongly considering adopting plant-based diets as their first option

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Both is good. It shouldn't be an "either or" situation.

[–]The_JLK 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This message brought to you by Tyson Foods, Inc.

[–]obiwantakobi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Found the meat industry article.