Beef continues to be a major issue for sustainable food systems. This week, the Breakthrough Institute (BTI) published a new report titled "The Clean Cow," examining the practices and technologies that could reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of U.S. beef production. 

Spoiler alert: The BTI hasn’t found any silver bullets. Cows generally remain an inefficient way of producing food, no matter how much we optimize them. 

But there's a problem. Even though beef consumption has peaked in the U.S., it continues to rise across the globe. As such, the report states that methane emissions stemming from cattle digestion are projected to rise by more than 45 percent between 2020 and 2050. U.S. beef production is a lot more efficient — and thus lower carbon — than beef production in other parts of the world. Reducing the amount of beef produced here would likely lead to the growth of higher emission cattle industries elsewhere. 

That’s why the BTI took this deep dive into optimizing U.S. beef production. The report lays out opportunities for emission reductions across all production steps — from rangeland and pasture management, to feeding, animal health and manure management. It examines both the potential of scaling existing practices as well as "breakthrough technologies" that require further research and development — such as feed additives, breeding and manure management — to understand what levels of improvements are possible. 

In short, it describes two scenarios:

• Best case: If both existing practices and breakthrough technologies were fully adopted, beef’s carbon footprint could fall by 48 percent from current levels. 
• Optimistic case: If only existing low-carbon technologies and practices were fully adopted while business-as-usual reductions in emissions intensity continued, emissions could fall by 18 percent in 2030. 

I’m calling the second case "optimistic" instead of "realistic" because of a big caveat that runs through the report. The authors even preview it in the executive summary: 

Achieving even a fraction of this reduction will require overcoming steep technological, scientific, and financial barriers. It will necessitate not just private, but also public sector research and development. It will also be critical to expand programs that help producers adopt sustainable practices, develop new forms of support such as tax incentives, and reform regulations that stymie the development and commercialization of feed additives and genetically modified crops.

Here’s an overview of the improvements existing and breakthrough technologies could achieve, forming the basis of these two scenarios: 

​​​​​A lot needs to happen to even achieve the 18 percent reduction and the report heavily relies on policy support to bring improved practices to life across the country. Yet, given the current pace of change in D.C., I’m not too hopeful for the passage of a big "clean cow" package. Nor is it the climate policy I’d most want to see. 

Instead of facilitating lower-carbon beef, public dollars should be invested in a more transformative shift toward plant-rich diets (something I’ve argued before). The report lays out that even under the best case scenario — a 48 percent emissions reduction — beef will remain "nearly three times as carbon-intensive as pork and four and a half times as carbon-intensive as an Impossible Burger." 

'Clean cow' isn't the same oxymoron as 'clean coal' because beef can be sustainable under specific circumstances.

So even if a shift toward more plant-rich diets might be harder to achieve than making beef production more efficient, it’s the ultimate goal policy-makers should be aiming for. The payback would be immense — not just for the climate but also farm animals, health and myriad environmental co-benefits. 

Diets should primarily be made up of fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds, complemented with alternative meats and a very small amount of regeneratively produced meat and fish. Ideally, we could achieve this transition while also investing in lower-carbon beef production, but given limited public resources, I worry that investment in marginal meat improvements will crowd out advancing this more systemic shift. 

"Clean cow" isn't the same oxymoron as "clean coal" because beef can be sustainable under specific circumstances. Smaller beef herds can and have been sustainably integrated into the country’s native rangelands and on diversified, regenerative farms. But those holistic production systems can’t meet today’s beef consumption, which is why demand reductions are of such fundamental importance. 

There’s also the argument that the meat industry can itself assume responsibility for reducing emissions. As the sweeping adoption of more regenerative farming practices by meat giants such as Cargill and McDonald’s over the past few years has shown, companies are able to change their practices. Consumers’ climate awareness is rising every day. It seems to me that it would be in the industry’s best interest to invest in the practices the BTI has laid out, coming as close to the 48 percent GHG reduction as it possibly can to protect its social license to operate. For that, the report is a fabulous resource.