Off The Shelf #5: Meat Me Halfway
A barbecue chef writing a sustainable food newsletter. Probably about time we addressed the elephant in the room.
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When I launched my barbecue stall last year, I was envisioning a picture-perfect Texas-style spread: ribs, pulled pork, beans, slaw, and the mighty beef brisket, which I would slice into juicy, tender strips. But I quickly realised that in order to do a ‘proper’ US-style brisket, I’d be best off using meat imported from the States. Grain and corn-fed cows like those raised on ranches on the other side of the pond are the ones, I was told, which tend to produce the particular muscles that make such good briskets. Grass-fed cows like those we have over here just don’t develop those huge, hulking chest muscles.
Plus, as the legendary Texas pitmaster Aaron Franklin says himself in his Meat Smoking Manifesto, “a grass-fed steak can be a rewarding eating experience. A grass-fed brisket cannot… the long, slow cooking of a huge, fatty piece of grass-fed muscle brings out too much of that funky, herbaceaous, beastly flavor. It’s not an enjoyable meal”. So with those cutting words from the king of Texas barbecue ringing in my ears, I was despondent, faced with the prospect of buying imported beef if I was to make my dream of becoming Rickmansworth’s premier pitmaster come true.
But instead, I imported something else from America: the old US Marine Corps adage, “improvise, adapt, overcome”. Why don’t I find a different cut, I thought, which I know from past experience turns out amazingly every time, and which I can source right here in Blighty? Enter the humble beef cheek. Looking a bit like a mini-brisket themselves, these smaller cuts will eventually break down into impossibly tender flakes of goodness, and they take on smoke like the best of them. All I’d need to do was dress them up like a brisket, and cook away.
They turned out well, with rave reviews during the first two sell-out events, and I was satisfied that I’d managed to keep things local while keeping the spirit of low and slow barbecue alive.
I suppose I knew intuitively at the time that buying British, grass-fed beef was likely a more sustainable option than imported, grain-fed beef. Which means, really, I knew that beef – in fact, meat in general – has some issues when it comes to sustainability. But I’d never really dug into why.
So that’s what I’m doing in this week’s edition.
To summarise: meat production is bad for the planet. And beef is particularly troublesome. But it’s not the same across the board, and some ways of farming meat are more sustainable than others. I think there’s a palatable middle ground to be found, and tangible actions that can be taken to consume meat in a way that’s less harmful to the planet.
In a bid to learn more about the topic, I fell down a rabbit hole this week (not looking for food, I hasten to add) and started playing around with the vast datasets available on Our World In Data. This is a fantastic site, full of credible data and research, and it allows you to manipulate charts and tables according to what you’re looking for, as well as offers succinct summaries of key themes. Here’s what I found.
Food production accounts for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. These gases trap heat in the atmosphere and warm the planet. And meat production accounts for almost half of these emissions from food production. That’s not counting the processing, transportation and packaging of meat after animals have been slaughtered. So, livestock farming causes almost an eighth of global emissions.
How?
There are two major drivers: the animals themselves (two thirds of the problem), and the land used to raise them (one third). The animals themselves are emitting methane through a process known as enteric fermentation – ruminant animals such as cows farting and burping, to put it less delicately. And in terms of land use, emissions come about because natural land is being cleared to make way for farming: deforestation, leading ultimately to less biodiversity and less wilderness, which means fewer places where carbon can be sequestered (absorbed back into the ground).
This is sounding pretty depressing to somebody who loves a barbecue. Global meat production is clearly a big problem, and growing: the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation projects that growth in global consumption of meat proteins is projected to increase by 14% by 2030.
Digging into the data a bit more confirms beef is the main culprit, by a surprisingly long stretch. For every kilogram of beef produced, almost 100 kilos of greenhouse gases are produced. That's roughly the same as a car journey from London to Newcastle for the sake of a family Sunday roast. But what really surprised me is that emissions from beef are more than double the emissions from lamb, and 8 times more than pork. Check out the chart at the end of this section for more details.
Yet many of us love eating beef. It's nutritious, providing us with iron, zinc and B vitamins, and it's delicious (if you don’t believe me, come along to our next pop-up and try my smoked salt and pepper beef cheeks - always the first item to sell out). Beef is ingrained into many food cultures the world over. The humble cheeseburger, the Sunday roast – it’s a tall order to expect these to be cut out altogether from diets. Happily, I don’t think we have to.
Because the good news is, not all beef is created equal. There are places – the United Kingdom being a shining example – where the global average numbers I mentioned above (and in the chart below) simply don’t apply. According to the UK Government’s Committee on Climate Change, the greenhouse gas intensity of British beef herds is around half the global average.
This is partly because around two thirds of all land available for farming in the UK is unsuitable for growing anything except grass. This means we already have the perfect habitat for livestock, and we don’t need to destroy anything to create more. This effectively neutralises one of the two big drivers of livestock-related emissions we covered at the start - land use.
Nevertheless, there’s no escaping the fact that eating even British grass-fed beef has a carbon footprint – as do countless other human activities. And there’s much we can do to improve the sustainability of meat farming, here in the UK and across the world – many books have been written on the subject. But on an individual level, these are the takeaways I’ve come up with to eat meat more responsibly.
✂️ Eat less. Whether you’re a hardcore carnivore and you decide to drop meat from your diet for one day a week, or you’re already a once-a-week beefeater and you switch to once-a-fortnight, making small changes can add up to a significant difference. I’ve started making ragu with lentils sometimes (Italians close your eyes) when I would have used beef mince in the past.
🐖 Don’t default to beef. Other meats like pork and chicken are more sustainable, and they’re still packed full of flavour and possibilities. Chicken shawarma or pulled pork tacos, for example.
🇬🇧 Look for quality, and buy British. As we’ve seen, the UK has some of the world’s most sustainable meat – why would you import from abroad? Go to your local butcher and ask where the meat’s coming from – you might be surprised at what you learn.
What’s your position? Diehard meat maniac or evangelical vegan? Somewhere in between? Let me know where you stand by commenting below.
MORSELS
🍼 The US baby formula shortage hasn’t gone away, with the blame game in full swing
🏢 Scientists in Japan are making concrete from cabbage
🍕 Someone has made a compilation of all the food in the Sopranos
ENTERPRISE SPOTLIGHT – THE ETHICAL BUTCHER
As names go, this one is pretty functional. Full disclosure: I have made a small investment in this company, because I love the idea behind it. Founded by a meat industry veteran and an ex-vegetarian, The Ethical Butcher is an online retailer of high-quality meat that has been produced using regenerative farming methods. The company insists that at a minimum, its suppliers are members of the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association certification, or are farming to these methods and values. Animal welfare is also key, with suppliers expected to conform to high industry standards.
This is not going to be your go-to for cheap meat, but that in itself is reassuring. The focus is on provenance and quality, and I think this is the direction we need to take. Their product range is impressive – beef, pork, lamb and poultry – and each supplier is listed in a separate section on the website, with images and write-ups for each. This is exactly the kind of thing that I was struggling to find when I launched Slothy Chef – traceability and accountability. I’m excited to see how these guys progress.
HOW CAN WE STAY IN TOUCH?
📸 I’m on Instagram where I chronicle my cooking @slothychef
👤 Same deal for Facebook Slothy Chef
📧 Drop me a note at info@slothychef.co.uk
GROWING OUR COMMUNITY
I’ve got big ideas about building a community around this subject. I hope you can get involved. It would mean so much to me if you could share across your networks using the button below. ❤️ It also helps massively if you could give me a sign that you like this!
UNTIL NEXT SATURDAY…. SLOTHY OUT
🦥 👋🏻🎤
Hi Liam, this was a great Sunday morning read, with a great topic to talk and debate about. People have become so un attached to what the food they are eating.
With British farming leading in global agriculture, it is important that we must also explain why farmers farm the way they see fit for there land. From the graph you have stated in your write up I couldn’t tell if that’s just the total greenhouse gasses excreted from those animals or is that the balance left over after they have taken out carbon dioxide through the grazing techniques such as mob grazing (obviously this would be for grass fed or predominantly pasture fed), where it keeps the grass growing practically all the time, subsequent constantly sucking carbon from our atmosphere. Another great topic for this would be what genetics British farmer use, most modern British farmer know what type of system they have. By understanding what farming system you have you can choose the best genetics for there system, using our Sussex cattle for example there are a relatively small gene pool compared to the now most commonly known Angus. Some of the Sussex genetics are very old and dated (in my opinion). They are extremely slow growing taking up to 3+ years to finish and be ready for slaughter. Where as some of the more modern genetics some cattle could have grown naturally on pasture and be ready for slaughter at 15 months, this would be without constantly pumping them full of concentrate feed. Just choosing the best types of pasture for them to graze/feed. So that in itself would have a massive impact on how much methane they would produce over there lifetime. This in mind, feed lot cattle in places in the states where they are grain fed those Cattle can’t off set any of there methane because they are not out at pasture. There is so much to debate, discuss and educate with topics like this.
#buybritish
#buylocal