Can Eating Chicken Save the Planet?

It’s an awesome responsibility, saving the planet. But apparently, it’s also simple. And many people have an answer. Opt for eating chicken instead of beef. We can go vegan, vegetarian, or to a warmer, fuzzier “plant-based” diet. Beyond Meat is doing quite well by serving up pea protein in Beyond Burgers.

Without a doubt, we have no shortage of easy answers to the melting polar ice caps and calamitous weather.

Can Chicken Cut Carbon in Half?

One of the more sensational press releases from Nutrition 2019 made this claim. Eat chicken instead of beef and you’ll cut your carbon footprint in half. It’s great clickbait backed by some reasonable modeling and research. Diego Rose and colleagues used NHANES data to model the carbon emissions that result from different dietary patterns. They found the highest impact from beef. In their model, simply substituting poultry yielded a 54 percent reduction in carbon emissions.

Kumar Venkat of CleanMetrics does this kind of work for a living, but had nothing to do with the research. Nonetheless, he agrees with its findings:

No question chicken is a fraction of beef’s carbon emissions and it likely has the lowest carbon footprint of any animal protein.

That’s because our feathered friends are actually very efficient little protein factories. So they require less land, fertilizer, and energy to make a gram of protein.

Many Options, Many Interests at Stake

Needless to say, the beef industry is aware of this problem. Apart from denial, its solution is to look for more sustainable ways to operate. For example, the Australian beef industry is supporting a sustainability framework that aims to reduce the carbon emissions from beef by 56 percent. They’ve recently issued their first annual report. You might say the cows are guarding the henhouse.

Biotech also wants to help with pea protein and lab-grown meat. Walter Willett is pushing the conclusions of the EAT-Lancet Commision: simply eat more plants and less meat. You’ll get a healthier planet and a healthier you.

With a healthy dose of motivated reasoning, it’s all very simple. We have plenty of good ideas in play and that is definitely a good thing. Mix in some critical thinking along with scientific curiosity, and we might actually find strategies that work. Fingers crossed.

Click here for the press release from Nutrition 2019, here for the study abstract, and here  for reporting from National Geographic. For some thinking about how agriculture can help solve some of our climate problems, click here.

Chicken Surprise, photograph © Apionid / flickr

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June 15, 2019