Can you have your grass-fed beef and eat it?

Grass-fed beef just came off the North London dinner party menu. A report by the Food Climate Research Network at the University of Oxford dismissed claims by Prince Charles and others that grazing animals on permanent pasture can reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The old argument was that the carbon dioxide absorbed by growing grass outweighed the greenhouse gas emissions generated from the stomachs of the cows. But a comprehensive study by FCRN found that this is only the case in a very small number of well-managed farms. In most cases the amount of methane in a cow’s burps far outweighs the carbon stored in the soil through allowing grass to grow.

Dr Tara Garnett, lead author of the study, says that no-one is getting a ‘climate change free lunch’.

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‘Ultimately, if high consuming individuals and countries want to do something positive for the climate, maintaining their current consumption levels but simply switching to grass-fed beef is not a solution,’ she says.