Burgers are bad

These cute little guys burp out 250 to 500 Liters of methane per day. (Photo: Pixabay)

Environmentalists and vegans have been saying it for years: Meat is bad for the environment, and we should really stop eating it. 

And yet, it’s at the center of almost every table at almost every occasion. A roast chicken at Christmas, lechon at a fiesta, your favorite Kare-Kare on your birthday, or Chickenjoy on a weeknight. For a lot of people, meat is just a part of their lives, so normal that it’s easy to forget just how much of it we consume. I know I don’t think about my meat consumption on a daily basis.

But in what ways do our meat-eating habits actually affect the environment?

Too many burps

Let’s start with something simple: a McDonald’s burger. I’ve had many in my life, and I’m sure you have, too.

McDonald’s, the biggest fast food chain in the world, has served an estimated 300 billion hamburgers since its founding, and even that is just a rough count, because the company officially stopped counting sometime in 1994. Some estimate that the chain sells 50 million burgers a day worldwide.

With that many hamburgers produced by one fast food chain alone, it’s a little disheartening to hear that beef burgers have the most greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram among a list of other popular food items. Producing a single Big Mac creates 2.35kg of CO2, which is the equivalent of driving an average petrol car 7.88 miles. According to McDonald’s themselves, beef is responsible for 29% of its carbon footprint. In comparison, their vegan burger produces a carbon footprint of 0.29kg.
 

CO2 emissions per kilogram of food product. (Source: carbonbrief.org)

Meat and dairy producers in general create 7.1 gigatons of greenhouse gases each year, making up 14.5% of total man-made emissions.

The supply chain is a huge contributor to a food item’s carbon footprint, especially with meat. This includes processes such as converting land to grazing areas for livestock, farming, animal feed, transportation, and packaging costs. 

Across all foods, land use and farm stages make up 80% of greenhouse gas emissions. Beef is by far the worst offender, creating 60 kilograms of emissions per kilogram, which is more than twice the emissions of the second largest carbon-emitting food, lamb. 

Cows burp out (that’s right, contrary to popular belief, they don’t fart it out) 250 to 500 liters of methane as a byproduct of their digestive process, and methane is up to 34 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. 

The process of converting land into grazing areas for cattle herds is also environmentally destructive. In the US, beef production alone accounts for 40% of total livestock-related land use. The farming of cattle is so bad for the environment that it has destroyed important ecological hallmarks like the Amazon rainforest, among many others.

No more Big Macs

The environment is in a really, really bad place right now, and experts say it can only get worse in the coming decades. Given how bad eating meat is for the environment, scientists agree that a dietary shift is necessary but it’s pretty clear that meat consumption is still as high as ever.

A survey from 2018 found that 73% of the world’s population was omnivorous, meaning they eat both animal and non-animal products. And only 8% are vegetarian or vegan. 

While income and cost are an obvious leading factor, there are plenty of other factors that contribute to whether or not people eat meat, such as religion, economic empowerment, urbanization, culture. Plus, meat is just tasty. These factors are often overlooked, and they must be part of the conversation if we really want to effectively adjust our dietary habits. 

So, should we cut down on burgers? Yes, absolutely. But that conversation shouldn’t just be about demonizing people who eat beef. We also need to talk about regulating meat producers and making plant-based options more appealing, affordable and accessible.

I think it’s okay to have a Big Mac. But it wouldn’t hurt to opt for plant-based options every now and then, or as often as is feasible for you and your lifestyle. Every purchase and every decision to go plant-based can help curb the demand, and at least let McDonald’s know that they can maybe slow down and, I don’t know, not produce 50 million burgers per day?