Climate change and eating meat

Methane emissions come from livestock, mostly from beef and dairy cattle, produced in the digestive process that allows ruminants (hoofed animals including cows, sheep and goats with four-part stomachs) to absorb plants. Cows and other farm animals produce methane from their burps and manure. 

Although methane breaks down relatively quickly in the atmosphere, it is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. “Cutting methane is the biggest opportunity to slow warming between now and 2040,” Source: Durwood Zaelke, a lead reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in August 2021.

91% of households eat red meat as part of a healthy balanced diet (NFU). In the UK, 81% of total greenhouse gas emissions are carbon dioxide (CO2), 11% are methane and 4% are nitrous oxide. For UK agriculture, 12% of its emissions are CO2, 56% are methane and 31% are nitrous oxide.  So, methane emissions from UK agriculture account for around 5.5% of the country’s total Greenhouse gas emissions. (Source: NFU climate friendly farming August 2020)

Actively managed pastures that are grazed by livestock are a good carbon sink, capturing CO2 in the vegetation and storing carbon in the soil which could otherwise be released into the atmosphere, as are hedgerows that separate fields. So it's not as simple as just not eating meat, as just to do so entirely could be argued to have an adverse effect on our environment. 

The question is not whether to eat meat or not. The key consideration must be where the livestock was farmed and the environmental and welfare standards of where it was produced. (Source: NFU climate friendly farming August 2020)

For more information on client friendly farming from the NFU Click here

Options for reducing methane also include alternative feeds for cattle, reducing food loss and waste. And as the NFU points out, Greenhouse gas emissions from UK beef are half the global average.