Organic Beef Comes With a Higher Climate Cost Than Feedlot Beef

Organic. Grass-fed. Sustainable.

Those labels can make beef sound like a greener version of the same product.

But when researchers compared organic, grass-fed beef with conventional, grain-fed production found something awkward: organic beef produced 95% more carbon emissions for every kilogram of live cattle body weight gained. It also performed worse for water use, reactive nitrogen loss and fossil fuel use. That does not suddenly make feedlots environmentally friendly. It exposes a much bigger problem with “sustainable beef”.

Organic Does Not Automatically Mean Lower Carbon

Researchers used 25 years of data from the New Mexico State University Clayton Livestock Research Center to simulate conventional and organic beef production. Conventional systems were more “productive”. More animals could be kept in the same space and brought to slaughter weight using fewer resources per kilogram of body weight produced. Organic systems used more land and produced less beef from it.

Organic farming can produce fewer emissions per unit of land while still producing more emissions per unit of flesh because considerably more land is required to produce the same amount.

And land has its own climate cost.

Expanding cattle production can mean replacing forests and other ecosystems that otherwise store carbon.

Neither system escapes methane either. Cows produce methane through digestion, while farming also generates emissions through feed production, soil, manure, machinery and fuel.

So perhaps the question should not be:

Which beef is best for the climate?

Perhaps it should be:

Why are we so determined to keep cow corpses in the equation?

When “Efficiency” Means More Exploitation

There is another problem with celebrating conventional beef because it produces less carbon per kilogram.

Modern animal agriculture has spent generations breeding animals to produce more flesh, milk and eggs in less time. A UK Animal Welfare Committee report warned this year that breeding animals for higher productivity and lower emissions can leave them more vulnerable to pain, disease and physical dysfunction.

Cattle in the US have increased in average weight by around 45% since 1975. Those increases have been associated with problems including difficulty walking, heat stress, liver abscesses and congestive heart failure.

The climate calculation can still call that progress. Why? Because if an animal reaches a heavier weight more quickly, fewer resources may be used for every kilogram of their body eventually sold. The suffering disappears into the denominator. This is what happens when animals are treated as units of production.

The Industry Has Been Fighting a Different Solution for Decades

There is, of course, another way to reduce emissions from beef.

Produce less beef.

Research examining campaigns between 1989 and 2023 found that US animal agriculture groups repeatedly opposed efforts encouraging people to reduce meat consumption for climate reasons. The researchers documented industry-funded research, public relations campaigns and political pressure aimed at challenging or weakening those messages. The beef industry had already recognised climate change as a threat to its interests by 1989. An internal National Cattlemen’s Association strategic plan discussed global warming, influencing lawmakers, media and environmental organisations, and monitoring environmental groups. Later campaigns encouraging people to eat less beef were met with organised industry opposition.

Then came the remarkable contradiction. The same industry that has spent decades challenging the idea that eating less meat can help the climate now markets “climate-friendly” and “low-emission” animal products.

If reducing beef consumption is supposedly insignificant, why spend decades fighting campaigns asking people to do exactly that? And why work so hard to invent greener beef?

There Is No Good Version of Beef

Organic farming may offer advantages in some areas. Conventional farming may produce fewer emissions per kilogram in others. Neither changes what happens to the cow. One system spreads animals across more land. Another packs more bodies into less space and calls the resulting productivity an environmental efficiency. The climate does not need a more efficient way to exploit cows. And cows do not need a lower-carbon route to slaughter. The problem is not choosing the “right” beef.

The problem is beef.