Meat vs. ‘Alt-Meat’: A False Debate
One is not ‘better’ than the other. But it’s a start down the road of protein diversity that we all need to embrace.
I’ll admit it: I’m an omnivore.
I eat red meat.
But how much I eat, and where I buy it from, has changed a lot over the past decade and half.
I mix in a lot more non-animal protein into my diet. My consumption of legumes has grown, and correspondingly, my consumption of red meat has declined significantly. I’ve also mixed in a lot more ‘bird’ protein (duck, guinea hen, chicken, etc.) and fish.
In addition to a greater mix of protein, I also pay much greater attention to where my protein is coming from. Organic and grass-fed beef when I can get it; free-range chickens with no antibiotics or other growth hormones; fish that is sustainably farmed using methods that are the least harmful to the ecosystem, or even caught wild with sufficient protections of stock levels.
I feel that I’m doing what’s right for me, and what’s right for farmers who choose to do better in how they raise their animals. In so doing, I’m having an impact on the health of our planet through the choices I make.
But there’s a lot of effort being dedicated to getting me to switch off of animal protein altogether and opt for a completely vegan diet. It’s better for the environment, I’m told. It’s better for the animals and better for humans.
Most of us have seen the announcement by Epicurious to no longer post recipes that feature beef. Their rationale: beef is too expensive from an environmental perspective. And their readers are migrating away from meat-heavy dishes as shown by how they have apparently rallied around recipes that feature beef replacements. Manhattan restaurant Eleven Madison Park announced that it was overhauling its menu to be all vegan, citing that the modern food system was simply unsustainable. The controversial Netflix ‘documentary’ Seaspiracy started with some good information about declining seafood stocks and overfishing, but then veered abruptly into a dogmatic rant about adopting veganism, despite all the good work being done by a whole range of organizations to reduce overfishing, and harvest seafood responsibly.
All three events have caused the issue of the ethics of animal protein consumption to come to the fore. There are good reasons to advocate for reducing our consumption of beef. Agriculture as a whole is responsible for 10% of US greenhouse gas emissions; beef production is responsible for about one-third of that. Globally, more than 40% of overall emissions from Agriculture come from beef production. Clearly, it’s a lot, and we need to be doing something to reduce these numbers.
But the key question for me is, what is the environmental impact of switching to much more consumption of plant-based proteins and meat alternatives?
Beyond Meat, for example, claims that its BeyondBurger uses 99% less water, 93% less land, 50% less energy and 90% fewer greenhouse gasses to produce than an equivalent quarter pound of beef.
So, if we were to switch, holus bolus, away from red meat and consume an ‘alt-meat’ product like BeyondMeat in its place, how would this impact the environment, and more specifically, will this reduce our overall greenhouse gas emissions? Would it be better for our farms? Better for our farmers? Better for soil health?
Intuitively, I’d say ‘not necessarily’.
The reason is related to the methods used to produce the base proteins used in the BeyondBurger and similar products from other companies. They’re either soy or pea for the most part, requiring large amounts of land to produce the base product.
Yes, it’s true that producing a particular amount of soy protein takes less land than it would take to produce the same amount of beef. But at what cost to the land? If the soy is produced in typical mono-crop fashion, then that production method is highly mechanized, totally reliant on chemical inputs that gradually erode the health of the soil over time, and creates a number of associated environmental issues, such as highly toxic chemical run-off, soil erosion and a complete lack of animal life on the land.
Some independent research on the subject backs up my intuition.
In a peer-reviewed paper entitled Plant-Based Meats, Human Health, and Climate Change by three researches in the United States, there’s a good overview of the most recent scientific literature to date on the composition of essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals derived from non-animal sources of protein versus animal sources. The part that interested me the most, however, was their review of the literature on the ecological impacts of plant-based proteins versus animal-based proteins.
For example, both the BeyondBurger and ImpossibleBurger demonstrate that they have a lower carbon footprint (between 3.2 and 3.5 kg of CO2-equivalent emissions per kg of product) than US beef finished in a feedlot (between 10.2 and 48.5 kg of emissions per kg of product, depending on the modelling used).
However, the researchers also found that, when comparing the alt-meat product to beef that is sustainably raised, i.e., grass-fed, and on farms where rotational grazing is implemented and cover-cropping is used, the beef actually produces net negative carbon emissions — actually sequestering carbon — rather than emitting surpluses into the atmosphere.
That said, the majority of the beef (96%) produced in the United States, and a significant proportion in Canada, is finished in feedlot systems. As Mark Bittman so eloquently described in his recent book, in the United States, the concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) is an offshoot of the predominant mono-culture agricultural system. Using the surpluses generated in the field, animals are crammed into airplane hanger-sized barns, and fattened with formulaic food, mostly soybeans. In order to mitigate the risk of disease, the animals are also fed a constant diet of antibiotics because eating soy protein actually makes them sick.
CAFOs are mega-polluters. For example, each hog CAFO generates — on average — waste equivalent to a town of 10 thousand people. The amount of animal waste produced in such operations in the state of Iowa alone is equivalent to 168 million human beings.
What do they do with all the shit?
Well, it ends up being stored in vast lagoons which, when they flood, poison the surrounding land and water. One way they try to get rid of the waste is to spray the sludge from the lagoon into the air, which produces a disease-causing chemical fog for miles around. The accumulated ammonia, methane and hydrogen sulfide in the finishing barns is forced out through the use of immense fans, which again, pollute the neighbouring environment with another poisonous fog.
Fog on fog. I wouldn’t want to live there. But people do, and as Bittman makes clear, its usually communities of colour and the poor who suffer the most from this egregious form of agriculture. People of colour in North Dakota are 50% more likely to live within smelling distance of a CAFO than average, and more likely to suffer from a variety of diseases.
We’ve grown too used to getting cheap meat, without realizing that such low prices create costs elsewhere, in the form of degraded land, pollution, meager wages for workers and animal cruelty.
It’s clear that choosing to eat alt-meat produced by either BeyondMeat and Impossible Foods is a better choice for the environment based solely on the emissions produced by each as compared to how most beef is produced in the United States.
For example, BeyondMeat uses Pea protein sourced from Canadian farms in the Prairies. Roquette Frères — one of BeyondMeat’s suppliers — states that it works with the farmers it contracts with to grow their pea protein sustainably, by encouraging their farm partners to adhere to the Environmental Farm Plan (EFP), a Canadian Federal program administered by each province. The EFP is designed to assist farmers change their farming practices so that air, soil and water quality is improved; biodiversity is preserved; and that they implement actions designed to reduce environmental risks. So far, 93% of their Canadian farm partners have done their assessments through the EFP, and 40% have received their statement of completion. Roquette hopes the completion rate will rise to about 95% over the course of 2021.
There’s no argument that vegetarian diets in general have a greater carrying capacity than the current North American diet that is high in ultra-processed foods. On this basis alone — and for animal welfare, climate change and ethical reasons — one can argue for a shift to an all plant-based diet.
But what this ignores is that a diet of only plant-based foods does not integrate farming and grazing to improve soil health, which would improve both plant and animal farming systems. It ignores the fact that billions of people — mostly poor — rely on livestock grazing for their livelihood on land that is totally unsuitable for crop production. Add to this that most crops today are grown in monocultures where life above and below ground — which includes critical protozoa needed to maintain and enhance soil fertility and health — are sacrificed by the chemical and mechanical means to produce these crops. Finally, such monoculture cropping is used by and large to grow feed for animals that are fattened in feedlots, not for the production of food that humans will consume.
What’s needed is a more balanced approach. We likely cannot address all the world’s beef protein needs through the widescale application of regenerative agricultural practices to the cattle industry. We will all need to make changes to our diets so that we get our proteins from a variety of sources, rather than predominantly one source, and a source that is ruining our environment. Some research has shown that greenhouse gas emissions may not increase if diets were vegetarian, pescatarian, or Mediterranean that include whole food sources of fruit, vegetables, seafood, grains, eggs, dairy, as well as limited amounts of beef, lamb, and poultry. In other words, more diversity of protein sources, but also, more ethically and sustainably sourced protein sources.
It seems that this future is already being embraced by Millennials and Generation Z. According to a recent survey by Dalhousie University, 64% of Millennials have thought of reducing their meat consumption in the last 12 months, and 57% of Gen Zs did the same. And as pointed out by Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, Canada can and will profit from this switch to greater protein plurality, as we grow chick peas and lentils for export markets and peas for BeyondMeat and others.
Even Canadian beef producers and ranchers are making a major contribution to the production of sustainably raised beef cattle. By working with Ducks Unlimited and the Nature Conservancy of Canada, ranchers in Alberta and Saskatchewan are gradually changing their land management practices by encouraging their animals to graze natural grasslands, which is essential to preserve the Canadian grassland ecosystem. Without a ‘keystone’ species such as cattle, native grassland actually becomes dormant, is gradually overrun with invasive species, is less diverse and less hospitable to native wildlife. In other words, cattle are an essential ingredient for the preservation of what is left of Canada’s native grassland ecosystem.
So yes, please do eat less animal protein. But don’t eliminate it entirely from your diet, at least not for environmental reasons.
There are good reasons to keep cows around, particularly for ecosystem and habitat preservation in this part of the world. Plus, if you’re choosing beef that is sustainably raised, you’re actually contributing to the sequestration of carbon, not the release of more of it into our atmosphere. Yes, you’ll likely pay more. But you’ll eat a product that is cleaner and healthier than what is produced from traditional cattle raising methods.
And do you really need to eat 152 pounds of red meat in a year, which is what the average Canadian eats? Probably not. Choosing wisely, mixing up the proteins you eat could lead to better health outcomes, and will lead to better environmental outcomes as well.
