Meat feeds more climate change than food miles

With all the fuss over fuel miles affecting New Zealand's meat exports to Europe I was intrigued when I found this interesting report in New Scientist magazine's environment section.

"That locally-produced, free-range, organic hamburger might not be as green as you think.

"An analysis of the environmental toll of food production concludes that transportation is a mere drop in the carbon bucket. Foods such as beef and dairy make a far deeper impression on a consumer's carbon footprint.

"If you have a certain type of diet that’s indicative of the American average, you're not going to do that much for climate while eating locally,"

Of course as we're exporting meat, this doesn't directly help New Zealand's case, but when you couple this with the way we grow beef and lamb: free-range in paddocks eating grass and not grain, our cattle are a lot closer to carbon neutral than the factory farmed beasts in the northern hemisphere.

Let's hope someone can get the message out to the world and remember "Red meat isn't bad for you, green fuzzy meat is bad for you".