Since I write this kind of stuff for work, I had a look at their methodology and it's a tad dodgy - either they made an error in the report, or they used the wrong Global Warming Potentials for methane and nitrous oxide, making animal rearing far worse by using the nitrous oxide GWP value for methane and vice versa. They don't include soil carbon changes from land use management and change (this is my research field) and their conclusion about US meat production not driving deforestation and environmental damage in other countries is out of date - vast swathes of Brazil are being converted to soybean production for the US market, causing major soil erosion as well as deforestation. US agriculture isn't a good proxy for the UK either -their agriculture is much more intensive than ours especially for beef production, leading to much higher emissions from manure, which I'm not sure are balanced out by the higher meat production.
It is true that meat and dairy have a bigger carbon footprint than veg products but I'm unconvinced that they haven't under-estimated the impact of tofu - soil emissions are a major part of the impact of soya production. And don't even get me started about palm oil - ripping up tropical rainforest all over SE Asia to grow that stuff is far worse than eating the odd burger.
Yeah, the stuff about feed production causing emissions seems very wrong to me as well - all the sheep and dairy farms I know (and I used to live in the middle of Cheshire, surrounded by them) have the animals just eating grass. And with lamb, especially, a lot of lamb comes from sheep grazing on scrubland and hills which couldn't be used for crop growth. On the other hand, rice and peanuts have to be imported (I think - I've certainly never heard of anyone growing them over here) and so would be relatively more carbon-heavy than the table shows.
Dairy farms are increasingly using imported feeds as they get more intensive but sheep rearing is still low impact in this country. But yeah, as I commented below, this analyis is based on US agriculture which is very different to ours (although we do import a lot of lamb from New Zealand, which has a higher impact).
Actually I stand corrected on the lamb issue - as the commenter below points out, the report I found for the UK does indeed show our lamb production has higher emissions than the world average. I suspect because our low intensity production means much lower yields.
double thanks for this, have you got a better graph with the weightings you suggest or will i just estimate.
also - has anyone done research on organic soya to see if it can be traced back to the rain-forest clearances, my understanding is that most of the Brazilian soya was destined to be animal feed, or an abstract ingredient in more common foods. though i reached this conclusion due to the disproportionate amount grown vs actual number of foody uses which are mostly restricted to vegans.
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It is true that meat and dairy have a bigger carbon footprint than veg products but I'm unconvinced that they haven't under-estimated the impact of tofu - soil emissions are a major part of the impact of soya production. And don't even get me started about palm oil - ripping up tropical rainforest all over SE Asia to grow that stuff is far worse than eating the odd burger.
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also - has anyone done research on organic soya to see if it can be traced back to the rain-forest clearances, my understanding is that most of the Brazilian soya was destined to be animal feed, or an abstract ingredient in more common foods. though i reached this conclusion due to the disproportionate amount grown vs actual number of foody uses which are mostly restricted to vegans.