In an oft-used quote, Milton Friedman was said to declare that it is the sole responsibility of business to increase profit. This is inaccurate. Here is Friedman, in a NY Times editorial published in 1970, quoting his own words from his book, "Capitalism and Freedom:"
... “there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception fraud.”
Most people who quote Friedman leave off the last part - about "open & free competition," and "without deception fraud." But even Friedman, the biggest pro-profit bogeyman in recent history, recognized the need to play fair in a capitalist system.
Keep shining the light on the fraud. Hopefully when enough people see it, they'll hold the collective corporate feet to the fires so that consumers can make informed decisions before jumping on the "climate friendly" bandwagon.
May 25, 2023Liked by Emily Atkin, Arielle Samuelson
Sounds like brazen greenwashing and numerous conflicts of interest. I’d submit Freedom of Information requests for conversations between the ag committee in Congress and Tyson and see where it takes you. Of course a lot of decisions are actually made in bars in DC and not emails or meeting minutes but USDA has to provide answers if they have them.
Thanks for this work. Greenwashing is bad enough already without our tax dollars paying for it.
I took a look at the grant source behind this. https://www.usda.gov/climate-solutions/climate-smart-commodities. $3.1 billion for USDA climate initiatives, many of which, like this one, are brazen greenwashing. It's pretty clear that low-carbon beef is, um, just pork. I guess that's just how low-carbon all-beef franks are made.
Even worse, if it's possible, is the greenwashing gold rush in funding for carbon capture and storage. There's an insane amount of money available right now to keep this show on the road. Some very powerful people really want us to believe that CCS is going to work and that we can therefore just keep burning fossil fuels as normal.
I wish I had a whole 'nother lifetime to spend taking this down, but my core topic of water is consuming all my time in what's left of this one.
Really like this format and the discussion itself, and the intersection of climate friendly marketing claims and government verification of it is super interesting. Don't know if it is something you plan to repeat in the future, but I would like to see it again.
This is all confusing, and like what was said, this raises more questions than answers. But from what I can tell there are a few things happening.
The first is that the USDA awarded Tyson and some other partners a grant to help develop a method to reduce emissions from the production of beef, like mentioned. Out of that grew Tyson's own "Climate-Smart Beef Program" which is a system of accounting for emissions across the entire supply chain of beef production. It is just a model to estimate emissions as far as I can tell, and that allows them to change specific practices which can reduce emissions.
This "Where Food Comes From" group are the people actually collecting the data and give the data to Tyson to run the model? Or maybe run the model themselves. Either way if, the model and data are accurate, it will give a final emissions number across the entire supply chain and show which practices are better to reduce emissions.
Then it appears Tyson, maybe from just testing the model or however, could somehow get a final beef product that ultimately emits 10% less than the average or normal final beef product. They are selling that as "Brazen Beef".
And back in 2021 the USDA awarded a verification company called Low Carbon Beef the ability to market beef as low carbon or I assume "climate friendly". I don't know if that is related to Brazen Beef being sold as climate friendly, or if Tyson has their own certification.
So my understanding of the questions Arielle asks at the end are, at least 10% reduction in emissions to qualify for "climate friendly" by either that Low Carbon Beef verification company or Tyson's own certification with the USDA.
The data or proof of reduced emissions would be verifying that practices that reduce emissions are used I think. It would be verification of whether or not beef producers are using the "climate friendly" practices. Because if this Smart-Beef Project is just a model, it doesn't mean anything if practices don't change right?
But that also requires the model to be accurate, and the data collected for the model to be accurate to show that climate friendly practices are actually reducing emissions. And I don't know if this is an area where there are well known climate friendly practices that beef producers just aren't using, but could switch to with better data or incentives.
And I think it is 10% lower emissions than the current average amount of emissions from beef production. I don't know if that is good enough for "climate friendly" for the marketing concerns listed and beef producers can reach more substantial emissions reductions. Or if 10% is actually an ambitious number, and really the only way to reduce emissions from beef is to stop eating it.
That is what I think is happening and I'm really curious as to what the USDA says in terms of its verification. But this is an interesting topic even beyond beef. Making sure that the regulators have the right information to even verify that sustainable practices are actually more sustainable in the first place.
"Climate friendly beef" is achievable -- and being achieved by many producers in the US and elsewhere -- but it'll be a cold day in Hell when I'll trust it coming from Tyson! For those curious about how beef, widely reviled for the methane they generate, can actually contribute to climate health, here's one of many examples of a scientific study illustrating how this is being achieved in practice: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2020.544984/full
I'd like to suggest to Arielle and Emily that instead of doing the "dead simple" thing in painting Tyson with all the scorn they deserve, it would be more constructive to look to those who are actually doing the work of generating climate-positive beef.
Note: you won't find them in Tyson's program! You'll find them with documented practices that store away in the earth more atmospheric CO2 than is accounted for by the methane they generate. A 10% reduction is indeed too little. We should be asking for 100% reduction in climate harm, and even actual climate benefit.
G Mamlet, with respect, do you dispute that pastured meat production represents by leaps and bounds the largest carbon opportunity cost of any food production system (yes, including industrial soybeans, assuming anybody other than a cow would want to eat them)? If so, on what solid grounds? Please present your peer-reviewed evidence and I'll certainly consider it.
The one article you've cited, when read carefully, merely shows that pastured animals are not in themselves incompatible with economically successful, picturesque, delightfully green farms. Sure: Keep stocking densities small and sell the animals to nearby urban specialty buyers at high prices, and you may have a workable business model -- we've all heard of Joel Salatin.
The "rocky, hilly or dry" land that you describe, for example, is best used to support forests and wildlife. Our societies can afford this "wasted" use of land if more of us become vegetarians. The math is implacable.
I submit to you that expensive specialty meat is such a far cry from "climate-friendly beef" on a scale commensurate with total societal demand for animal products that the very term is an abuse of language. Celebrating the Salatins and Savorys as climate saviours just encourages people to believe in an impossible dream.
Peter, I don't have time to argue with polemicists, which your response here indicates you are. You cite the polemics of George Monbiot and then proceed to wave your own data-free overgeneralizations about, such as that "rocky, hilly or dry" land is best used to support forests and wildlife. Surely this would be news to many of the people living in such lands, including those whose ancestors have been living there, herding their livestock for millennia. Such statements do not enlighten, merely inflame.
The paper I cited examines the comparative lifecycle cost in terms of greenhouse gas production for two different systems of producing beef, and demonstrates a significant net reduction with the pasture rotation system. You ask for peer-reviewed research, ignoring the fact that this paper is published in a peer-reviewed journal. You casually dismiss it but present no real reason for doing so -- again, polemics.
I am heartened by anyone who takes the time and energy to question what they're putting in their mouth and why, where it comes from, how it's produced, and what the effect is of all that activity on our world. In that vein, I would encourage you to keep questioning, especially some of the "truths" that you've apparently swallowed whole without taking the time to think or examine.
G, that's a lot of research to assimilate and I plan to do it justice as soon as I can. At a glance, most of it appears to be similar in nature to what you've already presented, showing how grazing can be greened to various extents. Please trust that if my reading turns up something more dramatically beneficial to people, climate and other species, I'll let you know.
G Mamlet, “[cattle-grazing projects] are one of our better hopes for feeding a growing world population” is a whale of an unsupported statement, and an environmentally catastrophic one. If it’s polemical to call you out on it, then ok, I’m a polemicist.
I’ve respectfully engaged with the study you’ve presented in support of this statement, which shows merely that the carbon sequestration potential of pastured beef can be improved by changing how it is produced. But note that the study also states concerns about the land base required for pastured meat to be a viable food alternative, while ignoring plant-based diets altogether.
Meanwhile, I’ve presented abundant science indicating that reducing our foodprints – leaving more land to feed the human population, capture carbon, and let other species live – entails radically (we can quantify that word) decreasing our meat consumption. I’ve invited you to refute this and you’ve declined.
That’s all I can do for the moment, unless you have further evidence to present.
Peter, see the peer-reviewed research supporting the beneficial effects of certain types of cattle grazing collected here: https://tinyurl.com/mry9b4jw.
The FAO says we have fewer than 60 annual harvests left before the current food system collapses. The regenerative grazing techniques described in this research shows how we can counter the risks the FAO is pointing to, while addressing the climate crisis and reviving habitat for other grassland species (addressing the global biodiversity crisis).
Please point me to the peer-reviewed research that supports the approach you advocate for addressing the crises in climate, food production, and biodiversity.
The abstract indicates the system will take more land (which is currently scarce) and conflates producing meat with making proteins for human consumption (that can also come from plants). If the system was to be adopted we would either need a lot more land (which has its own problems) or accept a lower meat output at higher prices. It's hard to see why we should pursure carbon negative meat with a higher land use footprint when we can just eat a lot less meat and then manage the freed land for maximum carbon uptake.
Land is not all the same. Nor is all protein the same. Over 60% of agricultural land is too rocky, hilly, or dry to be farmed for crops. The best use of that land is for herbivores such as cattle or pigs or sheep to eat plants grown there which humans can't eat (our stomachs can't digest grass) and upcycle those calories into foods that humans can eat, such as milk or meat.
In fact, to generate a single pound of plant-based protein, we generate another four pounds of fibrous vegetable matter that's indigestible for humans. Feeding that to cattle so they can turn it into human food seems like a pretty good idea to me!
Globally, there's not a shortage of agricultural land; however, there's a dire shortage of agricultural land which can be highly productive for growing crops. The UN FAO says we have fewer than 60 annual harvests left before our food system collapses completely. Consider that while you're advocating for more reliance on industrial ag-produced vegetable crops.
One of the best methods we have for turning desertified wasteland back into productive agricultural land is the use of cattle to restore health to the soil. There are many such projects ongoing around the world. They are one of our better hopes for feeding a growing world population.
Oh, and to get the same amount of protein you can get from just 160 calories of beef, you'd need to eat 600 calories of rice and beans (or even more of other forms of vegetable-based protein) -- and you'd still be short of essential nutrients to boot.
Sounds like just the ticket for addressing world hunger and diabetes at the same time -- quadruple the amount of calories we need to eat!
My guess is that Tyson is working with producers to introduce some of the concepts of Grass Fed Beef (GFB) into a greater percentage of their producers, which I would think could have the potential to reduce the amount of GHG by that percent, at least potentially. GFB is a movement that has grown considerably despite opposition from many of the mainstream suppliers and producers, where to varying degrees, beef are left on the pastures to eat grass for a longer percentage of their lives instead of being shipped to a feedlot and "finished" by feeding them lots of corn to "marbleize" the meat, i.e. add more fat. The economics of our surplus agriculture being what it is, the fattening of the beef is cheaper than feeding them for a longer time on grass, or hay if it is not the growing season/there is a drought, plus the producer is paid by the pound and a fat heifer sells for a higher price. Corn is a very intensive crop to grow with lots of fossil fuel fertilizer, herbicides and water, so no doubt reducing the corn has the potential to reduce the carbon footprint, though it's tricky due to the fact that there is less cow to sell. Plus consumers like the taste of corn fed beef better than GFB, although that may be changing. Some of these things are explored in a Journal of Animal Science article https://academic.oup.com/jas/article-abstract/100/2/skab374/6479671 that is worth checking out.
But I don't know if this is what Tyson is up to. Maybe they are using seaweed to feed livestock to reduce methane emissions, or any number of other things. This kind of research used to be done by Land Grant Universities instead of corporations, which made it much easier to track, and while corporations have some responsibility for transparency with public funds, they will no doubt try to privatize their insights into some kind of proprietary process. Seems like there should be some reports on their grant that would be publicly available if you can track down the grant. Good luck and great start!
Climate Friendly Beef = Clean Coal. But - regarding your methane vs coal statement, my own calculations indicate that methan produces almost three times the enerrgy per unit CO2 emitted than coal. If you can help me figure how to embed a Jupyter Notebook or a .pdf into a Substack comment I'd be glad to share the (simple) calculation. NB not claiming that methane is green.
I have a question for the beef industry: how high a wind speed does it take before cattle fall over? Possibly that's when we will see a shift away from animal protein.
I loved this format! Really great to follow along with your process and see how you build the questions and journalism behind the story.
Side note: I switched to shopping only regeneratively farmed animal protein (I go through a company called Crowd Cow) - I wonder if that falls into "climate-friendly" meat or if I'm just greenwashing myself.
Two things come to mind: for one there's a court case against Danish Crown in Denmark for marketing essensially the same scheme, with a bunch of climate and vegetatarian NGOs suing them for it being misleading marketing. The label was dropped by all major supermarkets pretty quickly after it came out so now the court case is mostly about setting precedent.
The other thing is how much this underscores how epic of a failure the entire corporate net zero concept has been. It seems like the entire purpose of it is to seek some kind of license to pump as much climate gas into the atmosphere for the next 27 years as long as they fund all kinds of climate initiatives that fall well short of just stopping what they're doing. There's really no reason we should eat as much meat as we do and finding ways to reduce meat consumption (mostly by just having more alternative options) is a lot better than paying consultants to ever so slightly optimise some aspect of meat production ...
$61 Million to Tyson. In addition to untold millions or billions in indirect subsidies via corn and soy "supports" to farmers for their feed over the years. OY! Presumably the mentions of soil sequestration and verification in the link are the first steps toward more agri-industry subsidies for doing something a bit less bad. Hopefully. CSU has shown much more carbon sequestration in pastures grazed by cattle that are not treated with regular antibiotics for growth. Banning those is good first step, but I doubt that will be a result of this.
As I read this, I wondered why is it that these major agri-business producers are the ones to get the mega-million Federal grants, rather than the actual organic, best-practice producers? It’s infuriating. This is pure BS, just like “clean” coal and “natural” gas. And does the USDA have a “climate-friendly” process or not? It’s pretty binary. Thanks for following this important topic.
Calling it "Brazen Beef" feels a little on the nose given the unverifiability of these climate-friendly claims.
In an oft-used quote, Milton Friedman was said to declare that it is the sole responsibility of business to increase profit. This is inaccurate. Here is Friedman, in a NY Times editorial published in 1970, quoting his own words from his book, "Capitalism and Freedom:"
... “there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception fraud.”
Most people who quote Friedman leave off the last part - about "open & free competition," and "without deception fraud." But even Friedman, the biggest pro-profit bogeyman in recent history, recognized the need to play fair in a capitalist system.
Keep shining the light on the fraud. Hopefully when enough people see it, they'll hold the collective corporate feet to the fires so that consumers can make informed decisions before jumping on the "climate friendly" bandwagon.
Sounds like brazen greenwashing and numerous conflicts of interest. I’d submit Freedom of Information requests for conversations between the ag committee in Congress and Tyson and see where it takes you. Of course a lot of decisions are actually made in bars in DC and not emails or meeting minutes but USDA has to provide answers if they have them.
Thanks for this work. Greenwashing is bad enough already without our tax dollars paying for it.
For a deep dive into how much Tyson knows about what its ranchers are doing, check out this podcast from NPR https://www.ghostherd.org
I took a look at the grant source behind this. https://www.usda.gov/climate-solutions/climate-smart-commodities. $3.1 billion for USDA climate initiatives, many of which, like this one, are brazen greenwashing. It's pretty clear that low-carbon beef is, um, just pork. I guess that's just how low-carbon all-beef franks are made.
Even worse, if it's possible, is the greenwashing gold rush in funding for carbon capture and storage. There's an insane amount of money available right now to keep this show on the road. Some very powerful people really want us to believe that CCS is going to work and that we can therefore just keep burning fossil fuels as normal.
I wish I had a whole 'nother lifetime to spend taking this down, but my core topic of water is consuming all my time in what's left of this one.
More on the intersection of beef and water here: https://johnlovie.substack.com/p/surf-or-turf
This. This is why I love what you are doing. Thank you for asking the good questions and for being transparent about your process.
Great reporting. Like your new column “Wormhole”.
Really like this format and the discussion itself, and the intersection of climate friendly marketing claims and government verification of it is super interesting. Don't know if it is something you plan to repeat in the future, but I would like to see it again.
This is all confusing, and like what was said, this raises more questions than answers. But from what I can tell there are a few things happening.
The first is that the USDA awarded Tyson and some other partners a grant to help develop a method to reduce emissions from the production of beef, like mentioned. Out of that grew Tyson's own "Climate-Smart Beef Program" which is a system of accounting for emissions across the entire supply chain of beef production. It is just a model to estimate emissions as far as I can tell, and that allows them to change specific practices which can reduce emissions.
This "Where Food Comes From" group are the people actually collecting the data and give the data to Tyson to run the model? Or maybe run the model themselves. Either way if, the model and data are accurate, it will give a final emissions number across the entire supply chain and show which practices are better to reduce emissions.
Then it appears Tyson, maybe from just testing the model or however, could somehow get a final beef product that ultimately emits 10% less than the average or normal final beef product. They are selling that as "Brazen Beef".
And back in 2021 the USDA awarded a verification company called Low Carbon Beef the ability to market beef as low carbon or I assume "climate friendly". I don't know if that is related to Brazen Beef being sold as climate friendly, or if Tyson has their own certification.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/low-carbon-beef-approved-as-a-usda-process-verified-program-service-provider-301438951.html
So my understanding of the questions Arielle asks at the end are, at least 10% reduction in emissions to qualify for "climate friendly" by either that Low Carbon Beef verification company or Tyson's own certification with the USDA.
The data or proof of reduced emissions would be verifying that practices that reduce emissions are used I think. It would be verification of whether or not beef producers are using the "climate friendly" practices. Because if this Smart-Beef Project is just a model, it doesn't mean anything if practices don't change right?
But that also requires the model to be accurate, and the data collected for the model to be accurate to show that climate friendly practices are actually reducing emissions. And I don't know if this is an area where there are well known climate friendly practices that beef producers just aren't using, but could switch to with better data or incentives.
And I think it is 10% lower emissions than the current average amount of emissions from beef production. I don't know if that is good enough for "climate friendly" for the marketing concerns listed and beef producers can reach more substantial emissions reductions. Or if 10% is actually an ambitious number, and really the only way to reduce emissions from beef is to stop eating it.
That is what I think is happening and I'm really curious as to what the USDA says in terms of its verification. But this is an interesting topic even beyond beef. Making sure that the regulators have the right information to even verify that sustainable practices are actually more sustainable in the first place.
Thank you for looking into this!
"Climate friendly beef" is achievable -- and being achieved by many producers in the US and elsewhere -- but it'll be a cold day in Hell when I'll trust it coming from Tyson! For those curious about how beef, widely reviled for the methane they generate, can actually contribute to climate health, here's one of many examples of a scientific study illustrating how this is being achieved in practice: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2020.544984/full
I'd like to suggest to Arielle and Emily that instead of doing the "dead simple" thing in painting Tyson with all the scorn they deserve, it would be more constructive to look to those who are actually doing the work of generating climate-positive beef.
Note: you won't find them in Tyson's program! You'll find them with documented practices that store away in the earth more atmospheric CO2 than is accounted for by the methane they generate. A 10% reduction is indeed too little. We should be asking for 100% reduction in climate harm, and even actual climate benefit.
Thank you for this info!!
G Mamlet, with respect, do you dispute that pastured meat production represents by leaps and bounds the largest carbon opportunity cost of any food production system (yes, including industrial soybeans, assuming anybody other than a cow would want to eat them)? If so, on what solid grounds? Please present your peer-reviewed evidence and I'll certainly consider it.
The one article you've cited, when read carefully, merely shows that pastured animals are not in themselves incompatible with economically successful, picturesque, delightfully green farms. Sure: Keep stocking densities small and sell the animals to nearby urban specialty buyers at high prices, and you may have a workable business model -- we've all heard of Joel Salatin.
But we can, with vegetarian and other diets, capture much more carbon and preserve far more biodiversity while still feeding the world's population. This is uncontroversially supported by a large and growing body of evidence; see, for a summary, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/16/most-damaging-farm-products-organic-pasture-fed-beef-lamb, with its numerous and valuable links.
The "rocky, hilly or dry" land that you describe, for example, is best used to support forests and wildlife. Our societies can afford this "wasted" use of land if more of us become vegetarians. The math is implacable.
I submit to you that expensive specialty meat is such a far cry from "climate-friendly beef" on a scale commensurate with total societal demand for animal products that the very term is an abuse of language. Celebrating the Salatins and Savorys as climate saviours just encourages people to believe in an impossible dream.
Peter, I don't have time to argue with polemicists, which your response here indicates you are. You cite the polemics of George Monbiot and then proceed to wave your own data-free overgeneralizations about, such as that "rocky, hilly or dry" land is best used to support forests and wildlife. Surely this would be news to many of the people living in such lands, including those whose ancestors have been living there, herding their livestock for millennia. Such statements do not enlighten, merely inflame.
The paper I cited examines the comparative lifecycle cost in terms of greenhouse gas production for two different systems of producing beef, and demonstrates a significant net reduction with the pasture rotation system. You ask for peer-reviewed research, ignoring the fact that this paper is published in a peer-reviewed journal. You casually dismiss it but present no real reason for doing so -- again, polemics.
I am heartened by anyone who takes the time and energy to question what they're putting in their mouth and why, where it comes from, how it's produced, and what the effect is of all that activity on our world. In that vein, I would encourage you to keep questioning, especially some of the "truths" that you've apparently swallowed whole without taking the time to think or examine.
G, that's a lot of research to assimilate and I plan to do it justice as soon as I can. At a glance, most of it appears to be similar in nature to what you've already presented, showing how grazing can be greened to various extents. Please trust that if my reading turns up something more dramatically beneficial to people, climate and other species, I'll let you know.
G Mamlet, “[cattle-grazing projects] are one of our better hopes for feeding a growing world population” is a whale of an unsupported statement, and an environmentally catastrophic one. If it’s polemical to call you out on it, then ok, I’m a polemicist.
I’ve respectfully engaged with the study you’ve presented in support of this statement, which shows merely that the carbon sequestration potential of pastured beef can be improved by changing how it is produced. But note that the study also states concerns about the land base required for pastured meat to be a viable food alternative, while ignoring plant-based diets altogether.
Meanwhile, I’ve presented abundant science indicating that reducing our foodprints – leaving more land to feed the human population, capture carbon, and let other species live – entails radically (we can quantify that word) decreasing our meat consumption. I’ve invited you to refute this and you’ve declined.
That’s all I can do for the moment, unless you have further evidence to present.
Peter, see the peer-reviewed research supporting the beneficial effects of certain types of cattle grazing collected here: https://tinyurl.com/mry9b4jw.
The FAO says we have fewer than 60 annual harvests left before the current food system collapses. The regenerative grazing techniques described in this research shows how we can counter the risks the FAO is pointing to, while addressing the climate crisis and reviving habitat for other grassland species (addressing the global biodiversity crisis).
Please point me to the peer-reviewed research that supports the approach you advocate for addressing the crises in climate, food production, and biodiversity.
The abstract indicates the system will take more land (which is currently scarce) and conflates producing meat with making proteins for human consumption (that can also come from plants). If the system was to be adopted we would either need a lot more land (which has its own problems) or accept a lower meat output at higher prices. It's hard to see why we should pursure carbon negative meat with a higher land use footprint when we can just eat a lot less meat and then manage the freed land for maximum carbon uptake.
Land is not all the same. Nor is all protein the same. Over 60% of agricultural land is too rocky, hilly, or dry to be farmed for crops. The best use of that land is for herbivores such as cattle or pigs or sheep to eat plants grown there which humans can't eat (our stomachs can't digest grass) and upcycle those calories into foods that humans can eat, such as milk or meat.
In fact, to generate a single pound of plant-based protein, we generate another four pounds of fibrous vegetable matter that's indigestible for humans. Feeding that to cattle so they can turn it into human food seems like a pretty good idea to me!
Globally, there's not a shortage of agricultural land; however, there's a dire shortage of agricultural land which can be highly productive for growing crops. The UN FAO says we have fewer than 60 annual harvests left before our food system collapses completely. Consider that while you're advocating for more reliance on industrial ag-produced vegetable crops.
One of the best methods we have for turning desertified wasteland back into productive agricultural land is the use of cattle to restore health to the soil. There are many such projects ongoing around the world. They are one of our better hopes for feeding a growing world population.
Oh, and to get the same amount of protein you can get from just 160 calories of beef, you'd need to eat 600 calories of rice and beans (or even more of other forms of vegetable-based protein) -- and you'd still be short of essential nutrients to boot.
Sounds like just the ticket for addressing world hunger and diabetes at the same time -- quadruple the amount of calories we need to eat!
Contact the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) -- Office of Communications (https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/) to get you in touch with USDA scientists. ARS is the arm of the USDA that would be most knowledgeable about climate change. For example, see https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2019/study-clarifies-us-beefs-resource-use-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions/.
My guess is that Tyson is working with producers to introduce some of the concepts of Grass Fed Beef (GFB) into a greater percentage of their producers, which I would think could have the potential to reduce the amount of GHG by that percent, at least potentially. GFB is a movement that has grown considerably despite opposition from many of the mainstream suppliers and producers, where to varying degrees, beef are left on the pastures to eat grass for a longer percentage of their lives instead of being shipped to a feedlot and "finished" by feeding them lots of corn to "marbleize" the meat, i.e. add more fat. The economics of our surplus agriculture being what it is, the fattening of the beef is cheaper than feeding them for a longer time on grass, or hay if it is not the growing season/there is a drought, plus the producer is paid by the pound and a fat heifer sells for a higher price. Corn is a very intensive crop to grow with lots of fossil fuel fertilizer, herbicides and water, so no doubt reducing the corn has the potential to reduce the carbon footprint, though it's tricky due to the fact that there is less cow to sell. Plus consumers like the taste of corn fed beef better than GFB, although that may be changing. Some of these things are explored in a Journal of Animal Science article https://academic.oup.com/jas/article-abstract/100/2/skab374/6479671 that is worth checking out.
But I don't know if this is what Tyson is up to. Maybe they are using seaweed to feed livestock to reduce methane emissions, or any number of other things. This kind of research used to be done by Land Grant Universities instead of corporations, which made it much easier to track, and while corporations have some responsibility for transparency with public funds, they will no doubt try to privatize their insights into some kind of proprietary process. Seems like there should be some reports on their grant that would be publicly available if you can track down the grant. Good luck and great start!
Climate Friendly Beef = Clean Coal. But - regarding your methane vs coal statement, my own calculations indicate that methan produces almost three times the enerrgy per unit CO2 emitted than coal. If you can help me figure how to embed a Jupyter Notebook or a .pdf into a Substack comment I'd be glad to share the (simple) calculation. NB not claiming that methane is green.
I have a question for the beef industry: how high a wind speed does it take before cattle fall over? Possibly that's when we will see a shift away from animal protein.
I loved this format! Really great to follow along with your process and see how you build the questions and journalism behind the story.
Side note: I switched to shopping only regeneratively farmed animal protein (I go through a company called Crowd Cow) - I wonder if that falls into "climate-friendly" meat or if I'm just greenwashing myself.
Two things come to mind: for one there's a court case against Danish Crown in Denmark for marketing essensially the same scheme, with a bunch of climate and vegetatarian NGOs suing them for it being misleading marketing. The label was dropped by all major supermarkets pretty quickly after it came out so now the court case is mostly about setting precedent.
The other thing is how much this underscores how epic of a failure the entire corporate net zero concept has been. It seems like the entire purpose of it is to seek some kind of license to pump as much climate gas into the atmosphere for the next 27 years as long as they fund all kinds of climate initiatives that fall well short of just stopping what they're doing. There's really no reason we should eat as much meat as we do and finding ways to reduce meat consumption (mostly by just having more alternative options) is a lot better than paying consultants to ever so slightly optimise some aspect of meat production ...
$61 Million to Tyson. In addition to untold millions or billions in indirect subsidies via corn and soy "supports" to farmers for their feed over the years. OY! Presumably the mentions of soil sequestration and verification in the link are the first steps toward more agri-industry subsidies for doing something a bit less bad. Hopefully. CSU has shown much more carbon sequestration in pastures grazed by cattle that are not treated with regular antibiotics for growth. Banning those is good first step, but I doubt that will be a result of this.
As I read this, I wondered why is it that these major agri-business producers are the ones to get the mega-million Federal grants, rather than the actual organic, best-practice producers? It’s infuriating. This is pure BS, just like “clean” coal and “natural” gas. And does the USDA have a “climate-friendly” process or not? It’s pretty binary. Thanks for following this important topic.