CONFOUNDING the meat-eating issue even further is the environmental impact — land clearing, degradation of habitat, water use and greenhouse emissions — of cattle and sheep grazing.
Damon Whittock, of Meat and Livestock Australia, points out that his is the only industry to have decreased its carbon emissions in the past 10 years: by 4.7 per cent. Admittedly, that's largely because herd sizes have been reduced because of drought and uncertain global markets.
"But having said that, we're actually producing more meat from fewer animals," Whittock says, "which means less environmental impact."
When it comes to water use — the most alarmist of the figures estimate 100,000 litres of water to produce a kilogram of beef — Whittock says it's not that the numbers are wrong, it's the nature of the calculation.
"The 100,000 litres of water was arrived at by calculating the entire amount of water, i.e. rain, that fell on a property. Now obviously cattle don't use every drop of water that falls on a pasture."
Apart from dams, most Australian graziers don't remove water from the system. Abattoirs are another matter, but there are no good numbers on water use in the longer production chain. The MLA has done its own research, though, and while the findings aren't finalised: "It's nowhere where near 1000 litres per kilo, let along 100,000 litres," Whittock says.
Corey Watts of the Australian Conservation Foundation says grazing practices are improving, including revegetation and a halt to land clearing. "But the industry as a whole still has quite a way to go before it's sustainable. It takes up a lot of land in Australia. And like other forms of agriculture it has caused an awful lot of damage to native habitat."
The big issue, though, is methane emissions, an inescapable part of being a ruminant. Cow and sheep burps produce an extraordinary quantity of greenhouse gas: "About 10 per cent of Australia's pollution load, according to the department of climate change," Watts says. "So it's a very big part of the climate change problem."
No amount of best practice can do much about a cow's digestive system.
"So at the moment we advise consumers that probably the biggest and best thing they can do to reduce their ecological footprint is to moderate their red meat intake."
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