Impact of recommended red meat consumption in Canada on the carbon footprint of Canadian livestock production

Abstract

The recommendation in the 2019 Canada Food Guide to diversify protein sources in the human diet could lead to less red meat consumption by Canadians. The main goal of this paper was to assess the potential impact of the reduction in red meat consumption on the carbon footprint of Canadian livestock production. Beef, pork and broilers were used to represent Canadian carcass based food commodities. Three scenarios for allowable red meat (beef and pork) consumption were tested based on medical recommendations of 15.9, 23.7 and 27.6 kg (boneless weight) per capita per year. Maintaining national dietary protein intake at 0.39 Mt was the main boundary condition for the projected reduction of red meat. A spreadsheet model was used to interpolate published Greenhouse Gas emission estimates from 1981 to 2006 for beef, pork and broiler production to 2017. This model accounted for the life cycles, age-gender categories, and supporting crop complexes of each livestock type. Three production scenarios based on two different apportionments of allowable red meat to beef and pork, and two alternative beef diets, were combined with the three medical scenarios to formulate nine projected consumption recommendations. These projections generated the slaughter animal live weights, Greenhouse Gas emissions from their production, and their protein contents. All nine scenarios required a major expansion of broiler production to satisfy the required national protein intake. The amounts by which the nine scenarios reduced Greenhouse Gas emissions ranged from 0% to 31% of the 32.6 Mt of total national CO2e emissions for the production of these three commodities in 2017.