Study Clarifies U.S. Beef's Resource Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

WASHINGTON, DC, March 11, 2019—A fuller picture is emerging of the environmental footprint of beef in the United States.

An Agricultural Research Service (ARS)-led team has completed a comprehensive life-cycle analysis quantifying the resource use and various environmental emissions of beef cattle production in the United States. The aim is to establish baseline measures that the U.S. beef industry can use to explore ways of reducing its environmental footprint and improve sustainability.

“The environmental footprint of producing beef has long been debated. One challenge is that the impacts ex...