It’s not the approximately 140 oil refineries around the United States, it’s not the 15.5 million trucks that travel an estimated 430 billion miles every year, but it’s the cattle industry, yes the cattle industry, that’s being targeted as one of the United States’ biggest producers of greenhouse gas emissions by those outside the agriculture and livestock sectors.

There have been various numbers released to how much the livestock industry contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, some ranging up into the 18 percent area, but are these numbers fact or myth?

Here is the truth: cattle are not the major cause of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States as some have suggested. Additionally, according to statistics released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the industry’s contribution is much less than previously suggested.

According to a 2011 EPA study, agriculture can be credited with 6.9 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions; livestock at 3.1 percent; methane from livestock at 2.8 percent; and methane from beef cattle at 1.5 percent.

In comparison to other industries, electricity generation across the country is responsible for 33 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions; transportation at 26 percent; industrial use at 11 percent; with residential and commercial use coming in at 8 percent.

While it’s no secret agriculture and the livestock industry have and most likely will continue to leave it’s footprint on the environment, by no means are they operating with a blind eye toward how important the environment is to their day-to-day operations.

The beef community, cattlemen and women alike, agree that taking care of the environment is of the upmost importance, and it is their belief that beef and the environment can exist together without damaging the latter.

The beef industry recently completed a first-of-its-kind life cycle assessment (LCA), a tool certified by NSF International designed to play an important role in helping the meat industry measure and improve its environmental performance, to provide benchmarks on economic, environmental and social contributions in the United States and a roadmap to a future toward sustainable beef production.

To date, the beef industry is on the right path, demonstrating a 7 percent improvement in environmental and social sustainability from 2005 to 2011, after two years of data collection and research involved with the LCA. In that time greenhouse gas emissions decreased 2 percent during that span.

A common corrective action that has been suggested by those who operate under the assumption that the beef industry is majorly responsible for the increase in greenhouse gas emissions is for grain-fed cattle should be switched to a grass-fed diet. This action would suggest that a grass-fed diet would lead to a lesser amount of greenhouse gas emissions being released than a grain-fed diet, but that is in fact untrue as well.

Judith Capper, a Washington State University researcher, found that grain-fed cattle produce a third less methane than grass-fed cattle because of how they digest different feeds. Her research was later validated by a similar study out of Australia.

It’s no secret that greenhouse gas emissions are an issue on a global level and are something that must be addressed, but for someone driving a two-hour commute to work each day in their eight-cylinder SUV to point the finger at agriculture for environmental issues, that’s a bunch of bull. Maybe it’s something to discuss over a nice rib eye dinner?

Source: Farm & Ranch Guide