Dear Editor,
Re: Going beyond meat? Alberta residents give tips on how to go meatless, July 8
The Western Wheel recently published an article that vilified the animal agricultural sector, responsible for much of the economic prosperity of Foothills County and the towns that lie within it.
I will take this opportunity to refute some of the claims and add some context to the data presented. It is every person's individual liberty to consume whatsoever they wish and there is no intent here to belittle freedom of dietary choice.
The article claimed that 12 per cent of global GHG is associated with animal agriculture, according to the FAO - that statistic is indisputable when all forms of cropping, processing, feeding, harvesting, refrigeration, logistics, and at-home cooking are taken into account (a life-cycle analysis, or LCA).
What the author left out, however, is the massive differences in efficiency of production between, for example, beef raised in Foothills County and beef raised in South America. According to Canada Beef, Canada produced 1.61 billion kg of beef in 2021 (https://canadabeef.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Canada-Beef-Fast-Fact-Sheet-2022.pdf).
Emissions associated with carcass weight were 17.5 kg carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) (https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/full/10.1139/cjas-2023-0077, Table 3), which means that the entire Canadian beef production system from calf to carcass accounted for a total of 28 megatonnes of GHG.
Canada's national GHG production in 2021 was 670 megatonnes of CO2e (excluding the GHG associated with forest fires), which means that beef production accounted for less than 4.2 per cent of all emissions in Canada.
Methane from rumination accounts for about 60 per cent of the total beef LCA emissions, meaning that methane from burping cows is about two per cent of Canadian emissions. Compare that to the 31 per cent of total national emissions coming from the oil and gas sector, or the 22 per cent resulting from transportation, and you quickly see that livestock production is a very small fish in a very big pond (https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/environmental-indicators/greenhouse-gas-emissions.html#oil-gas).
Finally, livestock form a part of the natural cycling of carbon in the atmosphere (https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/biogenic-carbon-cycle-and-cattle#:~:text=The%20biogenic%20carbon%20cycle%20centers,released%20back%20into%20the%20atmosphere). Grazing cattle and cattle on feed consume plant matter, which grows due to the absorption of carbon from the atmosphere. The cattle digest the plant material and release some of the carbon back to the atmosphere, and keep some within their body for metabolic use.
Thus, cattle consuming plant matter are net-zero -- they neither add to nor subtract from the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
If you are concerned about the environment, consider limiting activities that make a net contribution to GHG production. I suggest cutting out the burning of fossil fuels altogether, which accounts for more than 50 per cent of Canadian emissions. Walking is great exercise, and freezing in the wintertime accelerates your metabolism much faster than eliminating meat from your diet.
Cameron A. Olson, PhD
Okotoks