Before you dive into your Thanksgiving feast, consider this: That turkey leg is the largest serving of climate change on your plate.
Turkey ranks as the sixth largest emitter of carbon dioxide and methane throughout a bird’s life compared with other holiday fare and is the biggest of traditional Thanksgiving dinner foods.
Raising the birds creates a lot of carbon dioxide and methane that many scientists, and the Obama administration, blame for causing manmade climate change, resulting in more severe weather, ocean acidification, glacial ice melting, droughts, flooding and famine.
What that means for Thursday’s feast is that turkey becomes the largest emitter per kilo — just over two pounds of meat consumed — compared with anything else Americans will use to garnish the meal, according to the Environmental Working Group’s “Meat Eater’s Guide.” It’s a chance to be up close and personal with a big emitter.
http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/a-meat-eaters-guide-to-climate-change-health-what-you-eat-matters/climate-and-environmental-impacts/
But the big birds aren’t the biggest culprits when it comes to farming and its role in increasing greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change.
Overall, farming accounted for 13 percent of global emissions in 2011, according to the World Resources Institute. But that will jump substantially in the next 15 years as the population grows, the Washington-based research group says in its latest analysis.
Cheese production, for example, emits far more emissions than turkey. Cheese is the third largest emitter on the “Meat Eater’s Guide.” Even farmed salmon emits more than turkeys, as the fifth largest emitter. But lamb is by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, along with beef, as the number one and two largest emitters per kilo consumed, respectively.
The emissions stem primarily from the methane emissions that the animals produce when being raised, and not so much from transporting them to the supermarket, although that accounts for some of it.
A bit unappetizing, but meat emissions are almost entirely about the animals’ poop. Feeding confined livestock produced 500 million tons of manure per year, the group says, citing Environmental Protection Agency data. That’s “three times the amount of human waste produced by the entire U.S. population,” the group says.
Potatoes, which don many holiday tables, are the 10th largest emitter on the menu. Interesting thing about spuds, most of their emissions come after the harvest. “Ninety percent of potato emissions occur after the crop leaves the farm, primarily from cooking,” the guide says.
In “contrast to meat, most of plant proteins’ emissions are generated after crops leave the farm,” through processing, transport, cooking and waste disposal, the guide says. For example, 65 percent of dry beans’ total emissions are generated after harvest, and 59 percent for lentils, “primarily because of the energy needed to cook them,” the group says. It recommends using a pressure cooker to cut cooking time in half, which “reduces beans’ emissions by 25 percent.”
Turkeys are a bit peculiar in that not that much examination had been done on the pollution that stems from raising them until recently, according to a study by the University of Iowa.
The 2011 study, “Air Emissions from Tom and Hen Turkey Houses in the Midwest,” showed that emissions increased between the “growout” periods, when the birds are being fattened up, and the downtime periods when growth, or breeding, has subsided — presumably after the holidays.
But leading up to the holidays, the study showed higher ammonia emissions, with numerous forms of fine particulate matter.
The Iowa State study didn’t look at carbon dioxide or methane in the context of climate change, but it did show that when turkeys are growing, emissions rise.
As far as the climate change effects, being the sixth most emitting item on the menu doesn’t seem that bad for the big bird, based on the Environmental Working Group’s analysis.
In fact, birds seem to produce lower amounts of methane, which is a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas, than other animal groups. Chickens are the lowest methane emitters among livestock during production, compared to beef and hogs, according to the analysis.
“That’s because pound for pound, chickens require far less feed than hogs and beef or dairy cattle, and chickens generate no methane,” the analysis says. “However, chicken processing is more energy- and water-intensive than other meat processing.”
Compared to chickens, however, turkeys produce just over one-and-a-half times the amount of emissions per kilo of meat consumed. That means that turkeys emit 10.9 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilo eaten, while chickens produce 6.9 kilograms.
Turkeys produce about one kilogram less than farmed salmon. So, a bird may have more in common with a fish than another bird, according the emissions menu.
The lowest emissions from the agriculture sector come from lentils, at 0.9 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per kilo eaten. Turkey produces more than 10 times the emissions of lentils.
So, environmentalists: Cook up some lentils for your Thanksgiving feast if you want to fight climate change.
