Food Animals' GHGs

Meat Society: Number 6 in a series exploring issues related to curbing demand for animal products, an important climate change solution for individuals and nations alike, especially in Western states where meat and diary consumption dwarfs other regions.

Excerpt from Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages ISBN: 0692641157 http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC

The agriculture sector is responsible for at least 22 percent of total global manmade greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution, 80 percent of which comes from livestock production.(60) Despite the oversized footprint, animal products account for only one-third of global human protein consumption.

Eating local food makes environmental sense when we buy seasonal fruit and vegetables from local farmers. But the tendency is to overemphasize food miles and underemphasize other impacts. There is no support for claims that local food is universally superior to non-local food in terms of its impact on the climate or the health of consumers.(61)

On average, transport accounts for just 11 percent of the GHG pollution caused by the food industry. So beans and pulses shipped from the other side of the world can cause far lower impacts than locally produced animal carcass, cow's milk, and chicken eggs. In the UK, GHG releases per item of food would probably be greater under self-sufficiency than under the current food system.

There are many factors that add up to making animal-based agribusiness one of the largest GHG emitter, and driver of deforestation and ocean acidification. In essence, the sector is a major component of all three major sources of GHGs – carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O). Both CH4 and N2O are especially dangerous because they are potent shorter-lived climate forcers that cause accelerated heating. These gases can push the climate to dangerous thresholds, or tipping points, for habitability.

The GHGs generated from a full life cycle of animal products adds up to an extraordinary volume of climate-altering gases. And, since livestock production is the main cause of deforestation, and thereby a reduction of earth's CO2 sequestration capacity, the sector's impact is far greater than its direct releases of GHGs.

This article argues that animal-based agribusiness is responsible for at least 30 percent of all GHGs. For example, in regards to CO2 releases, the food animal sector consumes most of the world’s grain and water, and produces the most waste, and is the main cause of the 26 percent that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) 2014 Emissions Gap Report attributed to agriculture (11 percent), forestry (11 percent) and waste (4 percent).(62)

In addition, the livestock sector adds some part of the 39 percent of CO2 that UNEP attributed to industry (18 percent), transport (13 percent), and buildings (8 percent). In addition, there are CO2 releases from respiration, pollution, illness, and other aspects of the lifecycle of animals and their by-products.

For methane (CH4) discharges, livestock waste and digestive process are a major part of UNEP's 2014 estimate of 16 percent of the total manmade GHGs attributed to this gas. Methane is released from livestock production and fracking by the fossil fuel industry. And, in regards to nitrous oxide (N2O), the fertilizer used for animal feed is the main source of UNEP's 2014 estimate of 6 percent attributable to this gas. 

Most of the food animal sector's CH4 and N2O outflows come from manure and fertilizers used to produce feed for the animals. In addition, CH4 is produced from enteric fermentation, a digestive process that causes animals to release methane by exhaling, belching, or excreting gas.

Animal products, both flesh and cow's milk, require extra resources and cause additional GHG pollution compared to plant-based alternatives. Animal production entails colossal energy losses since only 4 percent of crops grown for livestock turn into edible carcass.(63) And 1 kg (2.2 lb) of animal protein requires 6 Kg (13.2 lb) of plant protein.(64) In a comparison of GHGs, protein from cows generates 40 times the global warming of beans, and 10 times that of chickens.(65)

It takes, on average, 28 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of meat protein for human consumption. In comparison, it takes only 3.3 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce 1 calorie of protein from grain for human consumption.(66)

Nitrous oxide from fields and methane from livestock are projected to rise from 7.1 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) in 2000 to 13 GTCO2e in 2070. This is greater than all human activities combined can safely produce without exceeding 2°C of planetary heating. And, land use modifications and the carbon footprint from animal-feed were not even incorporated in these calculations. So dietary transformations are crucial for meeting the 2°C target.(67)

Both CH4 and N2O are rising faster than CO2, and livestock is a main source for each potent GHG. Global agricultural non-CO2 releases will climb significantly until 2055 if food energy consumption and food preferences remain constant at the level of 1995. Non-CO2 GHGs will climb quicker with enhanced incomes, due to its link to greater food energy consumption and dietary preferences towards higher value foods, like animal flesh and cow's milk.(68)

Yet, if the demand for livestock products is reduced by 25 percent each decade from 2015 to 2055, this will lead to lower non-CO2 emissions even compared to 1995. Notably, reduced animal consumption was determined to be of greater effectiveness than technological mitigation options.

Over the past 50 years, the global food system has become heavily dependent on cheap water and energy, nitrate fertilizers, chemical herbicides, pharmaceutical drugs, and so on. At the same time, production, trade, and processing are progressively being controlled by a smaller handful of transnational food corporations (TFCs).

In a global corporate-controlled food system, governments and regulations are co-opted, and profits come before people and planet. The industry is the recipient of massive state subsidies and support and has vast influence over media, national and international agencies.

From local to global, livestock is one of the top contributors of serious environmental problems.(69) Despite this, there are few cases of the industry being held responsible for any of the problems it creates. Case in point, the USDA estimates that 89 percent of US cow carcass ground into patties contains traces of the deadly E. coli strain.(70) Yet, the animal-based agribusinesses are not held accountable for illness or treatment for the life-threatening diseases they cause.

Alarmingly, many of the world’s recent pollution problems and health pandemics have stemmed from corporate-controlled factory farms. As a ramification of livestock production, there have been decades of deforestation, land degradation, biodiversity loss and extinction, rural conflict and displacement, herbicide and waste pollution, water shortage, air pollution, dead zones, chronic diseases, global warming, and so on.

In spite of its multiple hazards, uncertainties over GHGs from animal-based agribusiness relates to the fact that while most of fossil fuel emissions are measured and accounted for, this is not the case with the livestock sector. And while eating tofu dogs will not correct everything that is wrong with the atmosphere and planet, ignoring livestock's GHG pollution and effects will make a monstrous problem much worse.

from Chapter 2: MEAT THE FUTURE, pages 18-19

Food's Footprint

Meat Society: Number 5 in a series exploring issues related to curbing demand for animal products, an important climate change solution for individuals and nations alike, especially in Western states where meat and diary consumption dwarfs other regions.

Excerpt from Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages ISBN: 0692641157)http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC

Animal agriculture has an enormous greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint, and is the second main source of climate-altering gases. In the EU, for instance, 29 percent of all consumption-derived GHG emissions are food related. This almost 1/3 figure does not include discharges from goods produced within the EU and exported.(50)

There is overwhelming evidence that animal-based diets cause greater planetary heating than plant-based foods, but there are differences in GHG production. The environmental costs per calorie of dairy, chickens, pigs, and eggs are strikingly lower than the impacts of cows - the production of which requires 28, 11, 5, and 6 times the sum of land, irrigation water, GHG, and nitrogen, respectively, than the other livestock categories. On top of that, plant foods use two to six-fold lower land, GHG, and nitrogen than even those of the non-cow animal-derived calories.(51)

Greater trade liberalization, like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), will lead to higher economic benefits for some, and come at the expense of the poor, the environment and the climate if no other regulations and safeguards are put in place. In addition, mounting demand for agricultural goods will intensify the pressure on global water resources over the coming decades.(52)

Deforestation, mainly in Latin America, leads to remarkable amounts of additional carbon pollution due to trade liberalization. In the future, non-CO2 outflows will mostly shift to China due to comparative advantages in livestock production and rising demand for animal products in the region.(53)

Eliminating all CO2 pollution from the energy and transportation sectors is not enough to stop global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that agriculture, land use, land-use modification, and forestry total around 23 percent of total manmade GHGs. This means that powerful GHGs from food and agriculture - mainly nitrous oxide (N2O) from agricultural soils, and methane (CH4) from livestock - will continue to cause planetary heating.(54) 

Excessive nutrient flows cause eutrophication, worsens biodiversity loss, and exacerbates transformation of the climate. Eutrophication is the ecosystem's response to the addition of inorganic plant nutrients, especially phosphates and nitrates, through detergents, fertilizers, or sewage. One example, is the "bloom", or great increase, of phytoplankton in a water body. Negative environmental effects include hypoxia, the depletion of oxygen in the water, which may cause death to aquatic animals. 

Nitrous oxide is the third biggest contributor to manmade climate warming, and although there is far less in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, it is a salient greenhouse gas for three reasons. First, it is very efficient at absorbing energy; second, it stays in the atmosphere for a long time; and third, it is the most significant ozone-depleting substance in the atmosphere. Once emitted, nitrous oxide stays in the atmosphere for about 120 years. Nitrous oxide (N2O) lasts a long time, and for over 100 years, each molecule has a warming impact almost 300 times that of carbon dioxide (CO2), and around 9 times greater than methane (CH4). And, N2O outflows could double by 2050.(55)

A 2013 Worldwatch Institute report estimated that global greenhouse gas pollution from the agricultural sector totaled 4.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) in 2010, up 13 percent over 1990.(56) A 2006 report from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) showed that the global livestock sector is growing faster than any other agricultural sub-sector.

The world’s livestock population is expected to increase 76 percent by 2050, with a 65 percent surge in demand for cow's milk. And, remarkably, 80 percent of growth in the sector comes from industrial production systems. Currently, mirroring their fossil fuel releases, the world’s largest food animal consumers are China, EU, US and Brazil.(57)

The FAO's 2013 follow-up livestock report reiterated that livestock is the fastest growing agricultural sub-sector. The food agency's newer assessment was limited to direct farm discharges, but it still estimated that the animal food industry produce 14.5 percent of total anthropogenic climate-altering gases, which is in excess of all forms of transportation.(58)

The FAO figure still places the animal food industry at second place, after energy production, in terms of global manmade GHG pollution. A 2010 UNEP report likewise showed that animal products caused greater damage than producing construction minerals, such as sand or cement, plastics or metals.

In 2009, one of the World Bank's most distinguished environmental assessment experts, Dr. Robert Goodland, wrote a thought-provoking research paper estimating that the lifecycle and supply chain of animal-based meats, egg products, and dairy products accounted for at least 51 percent of manmade global GHGs.(59) One of the main reasons for the difference between the FAO and Goodland's GHG figures is that the FAO's 15 percent estimate is a partial assessment that only takes into account GHG discharges from the farming part of animal-based agriculture.

In fact, all of the lower 11 to 18 percent GHG estimates do not represent a full life-cycle GHG analysis of the animal food industry. These lower assessments end at the farm-gate and, therefore, exclude downstream GHGs from transportation, food processing, packaging, and sale of food animal products. Goodland's 51 percent estimate encompass these post-farm emissions, which are critical to assessing the total contributions of the animal food industry to global warming.

While the pathways between anthropogenic climate-altering gases and planetary heating are complex, and emissions are not equivalent to warming, there is still a strong correlation between livestock GHG releases and planetary heating. After energy production, animal-based agribusiness is the second, and possibly the main source of manmade climate warming pollution. The evidence for this is presented in Parts II and III of the book, Meat Climate Change.

In contrast, if we limit human activity and livestock production in the tropical forests of the world, this could play a valuable role in helping to curb the rise in carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. Preventing further losses of carbon from our tropical forests must remain a high priority.

From Chapter 2: MEAT THE FUTURE, pages 16-17

'Race' and 'Whiteness' in Academia

As I write this article at the end of August 2020, socially defined “minority” communities across the country are protesting yet another police shooting of an African American, that of 29-year old Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Earlier in the year, there were weeks of activism over the strangulation of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man in Minneapolis, Minnesota; the shooting of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African American female emergency medical technician in Louisville, Kentucky; the killing of Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old African American man in Atlanta, Georgia; the strangulation of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old African American massage therapist in Aurora, Colorado; and the death of many others at the hands of the police.

Although it is not readily apparent, discrimination against “minorities” is relevant to critical animal studies, and there are many ways in which “race” and “whiteness” intersect in the field. I saw this first-hand one summer when I attended a protest at a factory farm in Los Angeles. A deep racial division was evident at the demonstration, as most of the animal advocates outside the gates were middle-class European Americans, while the majority of workers inside the slaughterhouse were disadvantaged Latinas/os, African Americans, and Asians. Horrified by the stench of the place, I became even more aghast when the European American activists started calling workers “murderers.” And, when I queried the protesters outside if their pets were plant-based, some grew defensive, arguing that dogs and cats are natural carnivores and have to eat flesh. Ironically, cognitive dissonance allowed European American vegans to scream “murderer” at marginalized meat plant workers while continuing to support factory farms by buying animal flesh for their own pets.

Interestingly, the COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity to bridge this divide between activists and workers. Since the pandemic began, tens of thousands of “minority” and immigrant meat plant employees have become infected with the virus while working on animal slaughtering and disassembly lines. Deemed as “essential workers,” over a hundred meat plant employees have died from COVID-19. As a result, marginalized workers, their families and unions are calling for the closure of meat plants, along with doctors and health advocates. Animal advocates can help by campaigning alongside factory farm workers in resisting the livestock industry. The intersection of “race,” workers in meat plants, and the pandemic, is an important one for critical animal scholars to explore. 

The are other ways in which “race” and “whiteness” intersect with critical animal studies. Educational institutions are not insulated from the effects of structural racism and the power of “whiteness” operating within the larger society. Universities and academic discourses reflect Eurocentrism and fortify structural racism, and scholars should examine how these larger social forces shape our disciplines. Despite claims of scientific objectivity and unbiased inquiry, there are several critical questions that remain largely unexplored in sociology and other disciplines.

For instance, why is there a lack of ethnic diversity in academia, generally, and more particularly, in our field? How does the lack of ethnic diversity in departments, in the academic literature, and in the use of citations, serve to reinforce Eurocentrism in our discipline? What are the consequences for a field of inquiry that is dominated by people with European heritage? Whose voices are included in the standard curriculum and knowledge base, which ones are excluded, and who decides? How do European ethnicity and cultural capital become entrenched as part of the discipline? And, how do European heritage and privilege bear upon the framing of research, the issues that are explored, the inclusion and exclusion of various voices, factors, social contexts, and so on?

There are other theoretical and material issues around “race” and “whiteness” that lack elaboration in critical animal studies. For instance, how does higher consumption of animal-based protein intersect with claims of Eurocentric supremacy and countries with majority European populations? How are over-consumption behaviors, and massive carbon footprints among a small middle-class in the Global North, subsidized by the impoverished masses in the Global South? How does the Western framing of individual “rights” for nonhuman animals conflict and contradict Indigenous notions of the “interconnectedness” of species? How are issues of representation, consent and objectification in the graphic imagery of animals and nature from the Global South, negotiated or ignored in animal studies and by nonhuman animal advocates and environmental organizations in the Global North? How do “conservation” campaigns in the Global North lead to corruption and dispossession in the Global South? And how does the promotion of ecotourism in the Global South for Westerners lead to trafficking, male violence and other problems for local women?

Although important first steps, the deconstruction of “race” and “whiteness” in our field will have limited outcomes if they are not accompanied by a decentering of Eurocentric theory and theorists, along with a centering of the work of socially defined “non-whites” — Indigenous, African American, Latina/o, Asian, and other. It is the responsibility of departments and academic fields to decenter Eurocentrism and increase ethnic diversity among scholars, scholarship, and the curriculum. Objectivity and transparency also oblige individual scholars to acknowledge ethnic privileges and to discuss how racial advantages may have influenced their career and research choices. 

It is equally important for Western scholars to examine how their theoretical framing reflects perspectives in the Global North, and how these may differ from those of “minority” scholars and theories emanating from the Global South. Addressing the social influence of “race” and “whiteness” in our personal lives and careers is an important part of the process of deconstructing and decentering “whiteness” in our own scholarship, and in transforming the discipline in which we operate. The racist violence against Jacob Blake, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, Elijah McClain, and the deaths of hundreds of “minority” meat plant workers from COVID-19, should inspire academics and their departments to do more in the cause of social justice for human and nonhuman animals alike.

Reprinted from:

Seenarine, Moses. 2020. "Intersection of 'Race' and 'Whiteness' in Academia," American Sociological Association (ASA), The Animals & Society Section Newsletter, Fall, pages 7-8.

About The Author

Dr. Moses Seenarine is the father of Jad and longterm ethical vegan. Seenarine immigrated with his family from South America to the USA in the late 1970s, and he is among the first generation to be college educated. His books include Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming (2016); and Cyborgs Versus the Earth Goddess: Men’s Domestication of Women and Animals, and Female Resistance (2017). Seenarine has written dozens of articles on women, race, caste, migration, the environment, animals, and climate change. His work has been cited by the FAO, UNESCO, Human Rights Watch, Anti-Slavery International, the Institute for the Study of Labor, World Council of Churches, and many others.