Is there really such a thing as low carb beef?

there is one Lots of ways to describe a chunk of beef. Wander through the meat section of a US grocery store and you’ll come across a slew of meat descriptions detailing how your dinner grew up: Angus, antibiotic-free, hormone-free, grass-fed, vegetarian-fed, and more. But soon you might see another, more confusing description on the label: low carb.

In November, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved a program This will open the way for beef producers to sell their meat in a low-carbon way. Producers who can demonstrate that their cattle are raised in a way that emits 10 percent less greenhouse gases than the industry baseline are eligible for a certification program run by a private company called Low Carb Beef.

This is the first time the U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved this beef certification, which will make it easier for manufacturers to finally show that their products are more environmentally friendly than those of their competitors. “If you go to the meat aisle, you can’t really tell if one pound of burger produces more emissions than another,” said former rancher and low-carb beef founder Colin Beer. Bill said some small producers have been certified by his company, although applications to label beef low-carb must go through a separate USDA approval process. A USDA official said the agency has not received any such applications.

But some scientists worry that the labels could mislead shoppers by dramatically underestimating the climate impact of raising cattle. Beef has one of the largest carbon footprints in food. In 2018, climate scientists Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek released their global Greenhouse Gas Analysis Emissions involved in the production of 40 common food products. Beef comes out on top: For every gram of protein, beef emits about 9 times as much as poultry, 6 and a half times as much as pork, 25 several times that of soybeans. Even lamb, which ranks second in Poore and Nemecek’s analysis, produces less than half the carbon emissions per gram of protein as beef.

Steak marked as low-carb can produce many times more emissions than other foods a shopper might choose, says Matthew Hayek, an environmental scientist at New York University. “The point of a label is to convey exactly something to the consumer,” he said. The low carb label “means it’s low carb than anything else they can get out there.” Most of the time, with beef, that’s simply not true.

There’s also the question of where do you set the benchmark for low-carb beef. Producers who want to be certified must provide detailed data on how their cows are raised, which Beal’s company uses to estimate the carbon footprint of those cows from birth to slaughter. If the assessment finds that these emissions are at least 10 percent lower than the low-carb beef benchmark, the beef can be shown to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Producers can then use the certification to support marketing claims on their labels, which must be approved by the USDA. The agency uses a similar process to regulate most of the wording that appears on meat labels.

In order to be certified, low-carb beef requires that the meat contains at least 10% CO2 equivalent per kilogram of carcass weight – a way of expressing greenhouse gas emissions that takes into account the different warming effects of the gas, such as Methane. But that might be a bit high :A Learning in 2019 A study of beef production in the United States found an average of 21.3 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per kg of carcass weight.

Karen Beauchemin, a cattle nutrition expert at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, also said Bill’s benchmark seemed a bit too high: In Canada, the average pre-slaughter carbon footprint is about 19 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilogram of cattle. Carcass weight. A higher benchmark means more producers automatically find themselves within the 10 percent threshold for low-carb beef, potentially reducing farmers’ incentives to cut carbon emissions further.