Some months ago I wrote about an American study of the “food miles” issue which concluded that food production (especially meat) contributes far more to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than food transport. The authors suggested that foregoing red meat one day a week would reduce our carbon footprint far more than buying local.

Fast-forward to the recent statement by Dr Rajendra Pachauri, of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He gave the same one-day target, though he also made it clear that that should just be the beginning.

Hear, hear. But as usual in the Green Kitchen, there are shades of grey in any message. Having spent a sizeable chunk of the past week reading a study of meat production and GHG by Tara Garnett of the Centre for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey, I know that this is a deeply complicated subject.

One striking feature of Garnett’s paper is that it shows how much higher GHG emissions are for beef and lamb than for other meats. Both create around 2.5 times more CO2e (CO2 equivalent) emissions per tonne of meat than pork.

That’s an argument in favour of shedding the assumption that beef and lamb are somehow more “special” than pork. A chef of my acquaintance told me that if he had a beef dish and a pork dish on his menu, he’d sell ten times more beef. We should follow the example of China, where pork is regarded as the crown prince of the dinner table.

Of course, GHG league tables can’t decide every gastronomic choice. Chicken is a low cause of emissions, and Tara Garnett points out that emissions from intensively produced chickens are lower than those from free-range birds. But no one buying those unhappy creatures is a welcome guest in the Green Kitchen. Not in mine, anyway.

greenkitchen@thetimes.co.uk

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