Are you having guests over for a barbecue this weekend? What will you put on the grill? Animal proteins, it’s a safe bet. Even though we know the effects of meat consumption on health and the environment, for many, it is inconceivable to deprive ourselves of it.
How to reduce the ecological footprint of your plate without becoming vegan? This is the question that Simon Lavoie asked us.
In Quebec, our diet represents approximately 20% of our annual individual carbon footprint. According to a study conducted by the International Reference Centre for Life Cycle Assessment and Sustainable Transition (CIRAIG) in 2020, half of this burden is attributable to meat, fish and dairy products. From a strict greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (and animal ethics) perspective, excluding all animal products from your plate therefore has a considerable impact.
But in reality, how many people are willing to take the leap? According to data from Statista, in 2022, only 3% of Canadians declared themselves vegan and 4% vegetarian.
“The simplified speech is to say: if everyone becomes vegan, things will get better, but that is not necessarily what everyone wants to hear and there are other ways to act to reduce significantly the environmental footprint of its food”, illustrates Catherine Houssard, food engineering engineer and analyst at CIRAIG.
Few people know that less radical changes can have a considerable effect, she believes.
“Becoming vegan means no longer consuming animal products. This is draconian, because animal products include meat, fish, shellfish, dairy products and eggs. »
Due to the amount of land required to feed cattle, the use of chemical fertilizers, methane emissions and manure management, beef has a carbon footprint roughly 10 times higher than chicken.
Researchers at McGill University recently studied the consequences of partially replacing red and processed meats and dairy products with plant proteins. Their finding, published in the journal Nature Food earlier this year, shows that the carbon footprint of our diet drops by 25% when we replace half of our consumption of red and processed meats with plant proteins. For dairy products, the reduction is 5%.
“This is not enough to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, but all sectors of the food supply chain must have a role in reducing greenhouse gases linked to the production and processing of food,” says Olivia Auclair, a graduate in nutrition, doctor of animal sciences and principal investigator of the study.
This also highlights the low impact on the nutrition of individuals, in addition to a drop in calcium intake when dairy products are partially substituted. We can even gain between seven and nine months of life expectancy! Significant co-benefits, according to Olivia Auclair, for changing your diet.
Another effective, but less publicized, measure is that of food waste. For Caroline Houssard, it is even the first gesture to make. “Ideally, we should ban waste, but it is extremely difficult. We all have crazy lives and we waste food, not out of bad will, but because we don’t have the time to plan properly. »
Given that the production, distribution and processing of our food accounts for 82% of its carbon footprint, throwing away food, especially meat, has far-reaching consequences. “We associate waste with emissions of organic waste in landfills, but the impact is in the production of food, from its cultivation in the field to its transport, its transformation in factories, its distribution, its refrigeration, explains Ms. Houssard. It impacts the entire life cycle of the food so that it ultimately ends up in the trash. »
If reducing red meat and reducing food waste constitute the two main pillars for reducing the footprint on our plates, many questions remain in the grocery aisles. Local or organic? Mexican strawberries or local greenhouse strawberries? “Not everything is intuitive. We need to develop systems to educate people,” says the woman who is in favor of environmental labeling on food.
