Grass-Fed Lies

The grass-fed beef myth needs to be buried for good.

For years, the idea has been marketed like gospel: that grass-fed beef is the sustainable, ethical alternative to factory farming. Slower, smaller, and supposedly greener. But now, the data is in, and it’s damning.

A study in PNAS has confirmed what many of us have been saying all along - grass-fed beef is not the climate saviour it’s made out to be. Even under the most optimistic scenarios, it is still up to 40 times more carbon-intensive than plant-based options. Even more than industrial beef. That’s not a win for sustainability. That’s a marketing lie.

Yes, some people claim that grazing cows can help sequester carbon in the soil. The study found no conclusive evidence for this. And even if it were true, the carbon offset would be so insignificant it wouldn’t come close to balancing the emissions cows pump into the atmosphere with every belch.

Worse still, because grass-fed cows take longer to fatten and yield less flesh per animal, more land is needed to churn out the same amount of flesh. That land often comes at the cost of wild habitats. Forests destroyed. Carbon sinks gone. All to prop up the illusion that your fancy burger isn’t torching the planet.

It doesn’t stop there. A separate paper has revealed that the beef industry has known about its environmental impact since at least 1989. Instead of taking responsibility, they copied the tobacco playbook - deny, distract, and downplay. Internal documents from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) show they not only acknowledged the threat of global warming but actively strategised how to manipulate the public narrative.

They targeted influencers, lobbied politicians, tracked environmentalists, and even pressured media outlets not to run stories about the climate impact of cow flesh. They funded academics to churn out friendly research and insisted that what individuals eat doesn’t matter. All while knowing full well that reducing beef consumption could make a massive dent in emissions.

This campaign of confusion has worked. Polling in 2023 showed that 74% of US adults believe eating less meat won’t impact the climate. That’s not public apathy. That’s the result of decades of PR spin and disinformation.

And yet, independent research bodies like the World Resources Institute, and EAT-Lancet are unanimous: shifting away from animal agriculture - especially cows - is essential for tackling climate breakdown.

The numbers speak for themselves. A report by Boston Consulting Group found that if alternative proteins captured just 50% of the global market, agricultural emissions could be slashed by a third by 2050. That’s five gigatons of CO2 every year - like taking half of all fossil-fuelled cars off the road.

And there’s more. Replacing just half of all animal products with plant-based alternatives could spare 653 million hectares of agricultural land. That’s land that could be rewilded, reforested, and restored. Biodiversity loss would slow. Entire ecosystems could begin to recover.

But you won’t hear that from the beef lobby. They’ve spent decades making sure you don’t.

The NCBA clings to a figure claiming beef contributes just 2.3% of US emissions. Technically true, but totally misleading. Per capita, that’s the same as all emissions from a typical person in sub-Saharan Africa. And Americans eat three times more beef than the global average.

Grass-fed or not, cow flesh is a climate disaster. The emissions, the deforestation, the water use, the methane - it’s a perfect storm. And we’ve known it for decades.

So the next time someone tells you their grass-fed steak is good for the planet, remind them: cow flesh isn’t just unsustainable. It’s been a lie, bought and sold by those with a vested interest in keeping you in the dark.

This isn’t just about carbon footprints. It’s about exposing an industry that has done everything in its power to hide the truth. We owe it to ourselves - and everyone else still living on this planet - to stop buying it.