Cattle industry's environmental impacts spark academics' call to eat less beef

Australian's love their beef but is it time to cut back to save the planet? (Supplied: Stanbroke)

Academics who have reviewed the impact of agriculture on the planet are calling on Australians to cut most beef from their diets. 

However, their views have been described as outdated and "lazy" by the meat industry.

In a new book called Food in a Planetary Emergency, authors Diana Bogueva and Dora Marinova say food production is responsible for more than a third of the world's greenhouse gases and for the extinction of a large number of wildlife species due to land clearing.

Dr Bogueva, from the University of Sydney's Centre for Advanced Food Engineering, said farming was putting enormous strain on the environment through a loss of biodiversity, deforestation, loss of savanna, plastics pollution, exhaustion of the planet's soils, overuse of freshwater and exploitation of species.

The book has summarised the findings of hundreds of peer-reviewed studies and meta-analyses on the link between food and environmental impact.

It calls for change in areas ranging from food waste and packaging pollution to meat consumption, circular agriculture and flexitarianism, which is a mostly plant-based diet that allows for the occasional meat dish.

The researchers suggest consumers should turn away from beef to reduce the environmental impacts of the industry. (ABC Illawarra: Justin Huntsdale/File)

Agriculture's impact on biodiversity

Professor Marinova said two-thirds of the planet's wildlife had become extinct in the past 50 years, according to a study by the World Wildlife Fund in 2020.

Dora Marinova is co-author of Food In A Global Emergency. (Supplied.)

She said clearing land for livestock production or to produce food for livestock didn't make sense because cattle needed 38 calories of feed to produce one calorie of beef for human consumption.

"That's a very inefficient and I would say irrational way of feeding the population because rather than growing the grain or the food we need for human consumption we are growing the grain for the animals and then eating them," Professor Marinova said.

She said a cut in meat consumption would mean less land would be needed for livestock production.

Agriculture takes up more than a quarter of the planet's land. (Supplied)

Addicted to meat

The authors cited a report by EAT-Lancet which suggested consumers should cut meat consumption by 80 to 90 per cent.

Diana Bogueva says farming is putting pressure on biodiversity.  (Supplied)

They said going flexitarian would drastically reduce greenhouse emissions and decrease the impact of farming on the environment.

Professor Marinova said making the switch to vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts and fruits could be difficult because Australians were "addicted to meat" but she said Generation Z, people born after 1995, were changing their habits.

"They are quite keen to increase their consumption of traditional plant-based food such as fruit and vegetables, legumes, tubers, but they are more hesitant to go to alternative proteins despite this industry essentially booming," Professor Marinova said.

Meat and Livestock Australia says the authors have misrepresented the food production system. (Supplied: Wilmot Cattle Company/File)

Meat boss blasts claims

Meat and Livestock Australia managing director Jason Strong described the book as "lazy and outdated".

He said the rapid loss of wildlife was worrying but the beef industry had a plan to be carbon neutral by 2030 and farmers were trialling methods of increasing biodiversity. 

"Agriculture is conscious of the need to be long term sustainable [and] is responding faster than anybody else," he said.

No need to reduce beef consumption

Mr Strong rejected the EAT-Lancet report recommendation to reduce meat consumption, saying it was biased and largely discredited.

Jason Strong says the beef industry is working to become carbon neutral by 2030. (ABC News: Chris Gillette)

He said the authors had misrepresented the food production system and they were wrong about calorie conversion rates, cattle emissions and land clearing. 

He was frustrated by the criticisms and said the problem was more complex than the researchers' book portrayed.

"We're going to have 2.2 billion more people by 2050 and we're going to need all the sustainable food production we can get," Mr Strong said.

"We're not going to be able to do it by people selectively sniping at different parts of the supply chain."

He said farmers were custodians of the land.

DISCLOSURE:

Diana Bogueva has researched consumer behaviour, alternative proteins, food processing technologies and food sustainability.

The centre in which she researches, the Centre for Advanced Food Engineering, has previously partnered with plant-based meat alternative Buds Burgers.

She has no competing interests to declare.

Professor Dora Marinova is an expert in sustainability at the Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute.