Beef has 10 times environmental impact as pork or poultry | Food and Environment Reporting Network

Research into the grain, water and other material needed to produce food says that eating beef is 10 times more costly to the environment as other food derived from animals, such as pork or poultry, says the Weizmann Institute of Science, based in Israel. “Cattle require on average 28 times more land and 11 times more irrigation water, are responsible for releasing 5 times more greenhouse gases, and consume 6 times as much nitrogen, as eggs or poultry,” says the Institute in a statement. “Poultry, pork, eggs and dairy all came out fairly similar.”

The team of scientists, which examined the five main sources of protein in the American diet – dairy, beef, poultry, pork and eggs, said it was ideal to use the United States for the study because it has high-quality data. Environmental costs considered in the study included land use, irrigation water, greenhouse gas emissions, and nitrogen fertilizer use. The team led by Ron Milo of the Institute’s Plant Sciences Department, said its analytical tool could be refined to gauge the relative cost of plant-based diets or diets in other nations. “Models based on this study can help policy makers decide how to better ensure food security through sustainable practices,” said the Institute.

The study, titled “Land, irrigation water, greenhouse gas, and reactive nitrogen burdens of meat, eggs, and dairy,” was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and is available here.