The case for retaining meat based diets

A May 2026 published review of the role livestock production has in western diets, co-products and retaining environmental balance highlights the consequences of lowering the world’s livestock population in favour of increased cropping for grains as a means of reducing methane emissions. The detailed paper ‘Carbon tunnel vision and sustainable meat production in the West: A disproportionate focus on dietary greenhouse gas emissions?’ by Frederic Lefroy et al is summerised here:

“Livestock systems represent a considerable environmental challenge. In response, various scientists, non-governmental organisations, and policy makers claim that Western populations in particular need to sharply reduce meat consumption. Given people’s attachment to meat, many of these actors favour hard policy interventions based on a range of systemic financial and legal reforms that would go beyond mere nudging and the formulation of recommendations, including the top-down imposition of meat taxes and bans, as well as herd size reductions, which would lead to sharply higher prices.

“However, arguments in support of such policies tend to oversimplify the issue, ignoring regional variations, mitigation potential, and broader ecological and nutritional contexts. The focus of this article is on dietary greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a main target for environmental policymaking, with all livestock production in the West contributing 2.6% of total anthropogenic GHG emissions globally.

‘From a consumption perspective, reductions in meat eating represent a saving of 1–6% on the total individual carbon (C) footprint of an average Westerner, depending on dietary restrictiveness. However, such estimates need to account for differences in nutritional value when comparing animal and plant-based foods, as well as to factor in co-product benefits, C sequestration in grazing systems, natural baselines in rewilding scenarios, constraints on afforestation, the potential risk of “carbon leakage”, and distinct evaluation metrics for biogenic (enteric) methane versus fossil-fuel derived carbon dioxide.

‘Carbon tunnel vision, hyperbolic narratives, and misguided policies risk compromising pathways to reasonable reform of existing meat industries, which are desirable and urgent.”

Information provided in the review highlight that agendas other than livestock methane emissions are in play when some governments and NGOs advocate for removing livestock from western diets.

• Carbon footprint reduction strategies on farm fall into four focused areas, involving: (1) the animals – focus on performance via genetics, health, and methane-reducing feed supplements; (2) inputs – focus on embedded C via feed, fertilizer, fuel, medication, etc.; (3) land – focus on C capture via soil health, plant biomass, etc.; and (4) green energy – focus on reducing fossil fuel use via manure valo­rization, solar, wind, etc. These four areas will have to be applied at different extents dependent on the livestock enter­prise, to both lower emissions and improve C capture, at both sides of the equation. Of course, different GHG gases (carbon dioxide: CO2, methane: CH4, and nitrous oxide: N2O) will be targeted across different interventions, and it is important to recognize the difference between biogenic and thermogenic (fossil-fuel) derived emissions, as achieving zero emissions from agriculture is not possible, nor the aim (which is to balance C emissions with capture).

Figure: Ruminant livestock farming involves a host of strategies that depending on management adopted can more than offset animals methane emissions.

• Shifts to flexitarian, vegetarian, and vegan diets need to be assessed based on actual dietary patterns, saving 0.2, 0.5, or 0.8 t CO2e, respectively, on a Western annual dietary footprint of 1.5-2.0 t CO2e/person. Importantly, this reduction may appear as substantial within a dietary C budget but leads to a minor difference when contextualized within the total annual C footprints of most Western individuals (9–15 t CO2e/per­son; with Europe and North America being at the lower and higher ends, respectively). In contrast to what is often assumed, diet is therefore not the dominant climate lever in the West. Carbon-intensive footprints in the West are mostly shaped by housing, transport habits and tourism, consumer goods and fashion, and – increasingly – digital infrastructure and data centres.

Figure: Diet change in western countries has little impact on an individual’s CO2 emissions profile where transport and electricity dominate emissions. This data does not include individuals proportion of aviation and shipping emissions.

Figure: When the emissions profile of a regional population is identified in Western countries, diet contributes a tiny percentage compared with electricity, housing and transport, yet meat diets are given a disproportionate  blame for climate change. With a population of approximately 53,000 in 2023, emissions per person in the example shire are around 9.7tCO2e/yr, with 45% associated with household emissions.

• Overstating effects from dietary choices risks distracting from the more impactful emissions related to the reliance on fossil fuels. For instance, living car-free yields annual savings of 1.0–5.3 t CO2e per person, while a single round-trip long-haul flight gener­ates 0.7–2.8 t CO2e per person, thereby offsetting years of dietary mitigation based on the restriction of meat. Based on the above, the eventual C saving for a meat-reducing Westerner would be limited to a few percentages only, in the order of 1–6% on total C footprint estimates (depending on dietary restrictiveness, with flexitarian-style meat reduction being at the lower end). For New Zealand, reductions in consumption-based emis­sions have been estimated at a mere 2–4% for meat-substi­tuted diets, calculated on a lifetime basis.

Figure: Deciding not to fly has a huge impact on and individuals CO₂ budget, more so than most other sustainable choices. By skipping one London-NY flight, an individual can save four times more climate heating emissions than by eating vegan and 14 times more than by recycling for a whole year. Source: Stay-grounded.org

• Studies have shown that typically a minimum of half of all protein intake should be from animal sources to facilitate the achievement of an adequate intake of all micronutrients or, alternatively, about one-fourth to one-third of the caloric intake.. Furthermore, diets containing a variety of protein sources are more likely to achieve recommended nutrient intakes. In Australia, diets containing more red meat were also associated with higher vegetable intake, which is relevant because many Western diets fall far below the recommended intake of vegetables. Therefore, taking a total diet approach is most important. Conceptual dietary recommendations that do not align with customary meal and food combinations are unlikely to achieve much adoption.

Figure: Meat based meals are often well balanced with vegetables.

• Most plant based and fungi-based alternatives do not only tend to be low in bioavailable protein and essential amino acids, they also usually deliver inferior amounts of certain vitamins and minerals that are typically higher in meat and other foods from animal origin (in particular iron, zinc, and vitamin B12.

• The pharmaceutical sec­tor’s emissions exceed those of the automotive industry in intensity, whereas the impact of the health care sector in the US has been estimated at 10% of total national GHG emissions. By increasing long-term demand for healthcare ser­vices, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, poor diets act as indirect C multipliers through repeated and energy-inten­sive medical interventions.

• The assessment of public health-related C costs is highly relevant for evaluating livestock supply chains. Neglecting this in sustainability assessments may lead to an overestimation of the climate benefits of dietary substitutions that rely heavily on nutritionally poor or ultra processed food (UPF) like alternative proteins, while underestimating the potential indirect C costs associated with deteriorating pub­lic health outcomes.

• LCAs of ruminant systems should not uncriti­cally portray the sector as a major emitter without ade­quately accounting for the fact that livestock farmers are the custodians of vast carbon-rich reservoirs within their grazing lands and that emissions can be (at least partially) offset, especially in regions where grasslands dominate the landscape and favourable grazing management is in place. Practically, soil organic C stocks can be enhanced based on wildlife-mimicking methods (adaptive rotational grazing), with high offsetting potential in biome-dominant areas based on complex interactions involving herbivory, animal excreta (saliva, dung, urine), root exudates, and soil microbial communities.

• Framing livestock removal as a prerequisite for C sequestration tends to ignore the poten­tial for integrated C-farming strategies such as silvopas­ture, in which grazing systems contribute simultaneously to food production, C storage, and ecosystem services, allow­ing sequestration to function as a complementary revenue stream rather than as a substitute for agricultural activity. Moreover, the capacity of managed grasslands to deliver measurable soil C gains under appropriate grazing regimes may even come at lower cost and with fewer ecological trade-offs than large-scale afforestation or rewilding.

Figure: The science is clear that appropriate ecosystem management involving ruminant livestock can offset methane and NO2 emissions while boosting nature repair and it wide range of benefits including enhanced above and below soil surface biodiversity, improved water quality, improved landscape amenity and improved climate change impact resilience.

• Carbon opportunity-cost modelling is not only naïve about real-world land-use conversion, while under­valuing the C storage capacity of managed grasslands by assuming that all pastureland can be converted to high-C forests without considering local ecological constraints, it also overlooks the fact that rewilding and afforestation can have their own perverse effects and that silvopasture based systems often offer both food production as well as C stor­age potential.

• Natural herbivore baselines have been systematically under­estimated and their effect often overlooked. In “open” eco­systems, including vast areas in North America and parts of the European temperate forest biome, ecological herbivory has long been a natural feature. Domes­tic herbivores should therefore be viewed, at least in part, as functional replacements for extinct or extirpated wild popu­lations. This challenges the com­mon attribution of all livestock-related emissions as purely anthropogenic, as part of that budget would be filled in by natural emissions, especially in extensive pastoral systems which are now unfairly stigmatized as “inefficient” and, therefore, polluting.

• Deforestation driven by livestock expansion contributes to climate change, with emissions from conversion to pasture being concentrated primarily in South America (around 70%) and East/Southeast Asia (around 20%). Where ecologically appropriate, targeted reforesta­tion is warranted. Nevertheless, calls for ambitious global afforestation programs through C-credit incentives, predi­cated on high theoretical sequestration potentials, must be tempered by practical and ecological realities.

• Well-managed grazing systems can sequester C at rates comparable or superior to early-stage afforestation (0.5 t C/ha/year during the first two decades) (European Commission, 2020), doing so at greater soil depths (> 1 m) due to extensive root systems, in contrast to surface-oriented accumulation in secondary forests. (NOT THE AUSTRALIAN AGROFORESTRY EXPERIENCE WITH POTENTIAL, DEPENDING ON RAINFALL AND SOIL TYPE, OF 5 – 20t CO2/ha/yr FOR 30 YEARS UNTIL CO2 ABATEMENT EQUILIBRIUM IS REACHED ref LOOC-C)

• To be clear, the argument is not one against afforestation as such, but against inappropriate tree-centric policies. Rather than pursuing the wholesale displacement of livestock through afforestation, a more resilient approach involves the strategic integration of woody vegetation within farming systems through agroforestry and silvopastoralism. As such, meaningful C sequestration can be obtained without eliminating grazing animals, while creating ecological co-benefits.

• Assessments of ruminant CH4 are usually based on the con­ventional 100-year Global Warming Potential (GWP100) metric, which must be interpreted with caution given the fundamental differences in atmospheric kinetics between CH4 and CO2. Conventional GWP100 treats pulses of both gasses using the same framework, equating their potential warming effects over a future 100-year horizon, although the former is a short-lived flow climate pollutant and the lat­ter functions as a long-lived stock pollutant that accumulates over centuries. This distinction has prompted the develop­ment of GWP*, an alternative metric that better reflects the dynamic, time-dependent warming impacts of short-lived gases and aligns more closely with climate model projec­tions when viewed within a common cumulative emission framework.

Figure: Many ruminant livestock farms with stable animal populations are climate neutral as methane is not adding to atmospheric CO2 stocks, the CO2 generated returns to plants through photosynthesis and into soil through organic matter breakdown and plant liquid carbon pathways.

Figure: Enteric methane is often assumed to be contributing to atmospheric CO2 stock despite the fact that it is a flow gas not a stock gas such as fossil fuels.

• A New Zealand study found that, when incorporating C sequestration and applying GWP* over the period 1998–2018, sheepmeat appeared climate-neutral (understood as a situation in which human activities cause no additional increase or decrease of the global aver­age surface temperature;), while beef pro­duction was trending toward neutrality, contrasting sharply with higher footprints under GWP100. Similarly, in Australia, sheepmeat production was reported to have a negative GHG footprint when assessed using GWP*, a finding equivalent to CO2 removal.

Figure: When lobby groups promote removing red meat from diets they fail to recognise ecosystem functions above and below ground which appropriate ruminant grazing supports to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.

Source: ‘Carbon tunnel vision and sustainable meat production in the West: A disproportionate focus on dietary greenhouse gas emissions?’ by Frederic Lefroy et al, Food Science of Animal Resources (2026) 46:69