I've been talking about the high carbon cost of meat lately, but one element of that that I've probably not explained well enough is that not all meat is created equal. Beef is by far the worst. A pound of steak requires much more grain than a pound of chicken, or fish. Indeed, it's apparently far worse than a pound of pork. Michael links to a New Scientist article that shows the ratios. Sadly, it's behind a paywall. But he reports that "producing a kilogram of a cow requires about 6 kilos of grain. A kilo of a chicken requires about 2 kilos of grain, as does a kilo of dairy products. Producing a kilo of a pig only takes a little over 1 kilo of grain, making pork by far the best food bargain in terms of resource usage." That finding for pork seems a bit unintuitive to me, but since I can't read the article, I can't dig into the specifics. Still, the overall point stands: It's better for the environment to try and cut meat out of your diet, but you can do a lot to reduce energy usage on the margins by simply switching from high-carbon meats like beef to lower carbon alternatives. Indeed, a recent study out of Carnegie-Mellon concluded that, for the average American family, shifting to an entirely local diet would have about the same energy impact as replacing one day per week's meat with chicken, fish, or vegetables. Update: I got a look at the New Scientist article, and here's the deal: We're talking live animal weight. Which is to say, skin, bones, eyes, teeth, and all other sorts of things we don't eat. So whatever the relative differences between the animals, these numbers are making their production look considerably more efficient than it actually is. Two kilos of feed may make for one pound of chicken, but they don't make for one pound of chicken breast. As for the relative efficiency of pork, the article doesn't explain why it's so much cleaner a feed-to-flesh conversion than beef or any other animal. As this is the first time I've seen that argued, I'd take it with a bit of skepticism, but New Scientist is a good source, and I have no reason to mistrust their analysis.
