When we cannot see everything, we see nothing
We usually hear about veal or beef being the most environmentally damaging meats, but it's actually lamb!
The environmental footprint of lamb is about 3 times higher than beef, 9 times higher than chicken and 10 times higher than pork.
There are two main reasons for these differences:
- The amount of inedible meat/organs (e.g.intestines) varies between different types of animals. Lamb is one of the animals that generates the highest amount of non-edible matter.
- Ruminants emit more GHG and methane than any other animals. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 28 times more impactful than carbon dioxide (CO2).
The conclusions of Glimpact's analysis, according to the PEF method (adopted by the EC), are based on average data observed on French farms. However, some exploitations can act, through specific breeding practices to considerably reduce the environmental impact of their production.
Beef is generally seen as the most impactful meat. It turns out that it is lamb.
According to the PEF method adopted by the EC, the environmental impact should take into account 16 impact categories. It is defined by a score that aggregates the different results obtained for each impact by normalisation and weighting. This score is expressed in points (Pt) on a continuous scale, it allows products to be compared with each other.
Almost 10 times more impactful than pork, lamb is by far the meat with the highest environmental footprint.
First of all, this ranking can be explained by the physiological differences between these animals. Indeed, depending on the species, the animal will produce more or less meat given the amount of food ingested and the care required throughout its breeding cycle.
However, the two biggest impact factors are the meat production yield and methane emissions :
For meat, the slaughter yield or carcass yield can be used to highlight losses. This yield corresponds to the ratio between the weight of the living animal and the mass of its carcass before splitting all the consumable parts. A comparison of these yields as defined above shows the amount of loss per animal.
The slaughter yield of lamb is much lower than for pork or chicken. Thus, for the same amount of commercialized meat, lamb will generate more losses than pork or chicken and will therefore require more production.
Furthermore, lamb belongs to the ruminants. Ruminants' digestion generates methane, agas 28 times more impactful than CO2 on climate change (over a 100 year time period). Greenhouse gas emissions account for nearly 30% of the environmental impact of lamb meat with nearly 13 kg CO2 equivalents. Lamb's CO2 emissions are almost twice as high as for beef, and 12 times higher than for pork.
However, some studies suggest diets (high grain content, oilseed supplements or linseed) to reduce ruminants' GHG emissions. For beef, these studies point to reductions of 10 to 30% in methane emissions.
In conclusion, the environmental impact of lamb meat is clearly higher than for other meat varieties. Several levers exist for lamb farmers to significantly reduce the overall environmental impact of their farms.
The environmental impact calculated does not take into account the use phase(refrigerated storage of the consumer, cooking, washing of utensils and dishes required for preparation). The results were reported per kilogram of boneless meat without taking into account nutritional issues.
