The BEEF with eating Beef

Oct 17, 2020

4 min read

Updated: Aug 31

Let me start with a confession: beef and cow’s milk are delicious.

Whether it is a steak on the barbecue, beef in a lasagne, pasta topped with mince, or milk blended into a smoothie, these foods have become staples of the Western diet. There is nothing inherently wrong with enjoying them.

The problem, as with many things, is excess.

Too much ice cream can expand the waistline. Too much beef can expand something less visible: our environmental footprint. Behind the food sitting on our plate is a chain of land, water, energy and resources that we rarely see.

We enjoy the product.

We often forget the cost.

THE WATER WE DON'T SEE

It can take years to raise cattle to the point where they become beef. During that time, the animal consumes enormous quantities of food, including grains and other crops such as wheat, oats, barley, hay and grass.

Producing those inputs requires water. So does raising the animal itself.

One estimate places the water footprint of beef at around 15,400 litres for every kilogram consumed.

Pause for a moment and put that number into perspective.

Imagine a standard one-litre bottle of water.

Now imagine thousands of them stacked together to represent the water required to produce a single kilogram of beef.

Suddenly, the steak on your plate looks very different.

We see the meal.

We rarely see the resources behind it.

That is one of the defining problems of modern consumption. Convenience hides consequences.

FROM FARM TO PLATE

The environmental impact does not end at the farm.

Agricultural land is generally located away from major population centres, creating a physical distance between where food is produced and where it is consumed. Transporting food over long distances, particularly internationally, adds further emissions.

Then there is refrigeration.

Meat and dairy products need to remain cold throughout much of the supply chain. Refrigeration requires energy, and in countries that remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels, that energy can ultimately come from the burning of coal and other fuels.

None of this means that eating one steak makes you an environmental villain.

It means that consumption has consequences.

The challenge is that those consequences are often invisible.

A GROWING GLOBAL APPETITE

As developing economies become wealthier and diets become increasingly Westernised, demand for meat and dairy is rising in countries that traditionally consumed less of them.

Greater demand requires greater production.

Greater production requires land.

And sometimes that land comes at the expense of forests.

In Brazil, for example, large areas of the Amazon rainforest have been cleared for agriculture, contributing to carbon emissions while simultaneously reducing the capacity of forests to absorb carbon from the atmosphere.

The irony is difficult to ignore.

We remove one of nature's greatest tools for absorbing carbon in order to produce more of the food we demand.

Our individual choices may seem insignificant. But multiplied across millions or billions of people, they become powerful.

That is how consumption becomes environmental impact.

THE METHANE PROBLEM

Then there is the cow itself.

At first glance, cow flatulence might seem like an easy subject for a joke. But beneath the humour is a serious environmental issue.

Cows and other ruminants rely on specialised bacteria in their digestive systems to break down grasses and other plant material. Methane is produced as a by-product of this process.

Methane is a particularly powerful greenhouse gas. It traps substantially more heat than carbon dioxide over shorter timeframes and therefore contributes significantly to global warming.

The joke disappears when you consider the scale.

One cow producing methane may seem insignificant.

Millions of cattle are not.

Once again, scale changes everything.

SO WHAT CAN WE DO?

The answer is not perfection.

It is awareness.

We do not need to eliminate every food we enjoy or completely transform our lives overnight. But we can make different choices more often.

Cow's milk can be replaced, depending on preference, with alternatives such as almond, soy or coconut milk.

Beef can sometimes be replaced with beans, tofu, vegetable-based meals or plant-based meat alternatives.

Even choosing other meats, such as chicken, pork or kangaroo, can substantially reduce the environmental footprint compared with beef.

The point is not that one meal will save the planet.

The point is that repeated choices create patterns.

And patterns create consequences.

THE CHOICE IN FRONT OF YOU

Modern life gives us extraordinary convenience. We can walk into a supermarket and find almost any food imaginable, packaged, refrigerated and ready to consume.

That convenience is a remarkable achievement.

But convenience can also make us blind to the effort and resources required to create what we consume.

The lesson is not to feel guilty every time you eat a steak or drink a glass of milk.

It is to become conscious of the choices you make.

RISE teaches that awareness is the first step toward change. Before we can transform anything, we must first see it clearly.

The same principle applies to sustainability.

You cannot change what you refuse to acknowledge.

Every purchase is a choice. Every meal is a choice. Every habit, repeated often enough, becomes a force.

We may not control the entire food system.

But we control what we put on our plate.

And sometimes, rising means recognising that the easiest choice is not always the most responsible one.

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