Grains and Growth Hormones-Produced Beef 40% Give off Less Greenhouse Gas

On Monday, the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues announced that a new "Beef Eco-Report" has concluded that, pound-for-pound, beef produced with grains and growth hormones generates 40% fewer greenhouse gas emissions and conserves two-thirds more land than does grass-fed beef.

The Center utilized beef production models from Iowa State University's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture and greenhouse gas emissions estimates from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC).

With over 95% of beef produced in the United States raised on grain-based diets in feedlots and utilizing supplemental growth hormones, both natural and synthetic, the report studied the details of the extensive human and environmental safety requirements for the use of supplemental hormones on feedlots. The growing body of environmental monitoring studies shows no significant negative impacts from their use.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Health Canada, the World Health Organization, the Codex Alimentarius Committee of the World Trade Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and a conference of expert toxicologists established by the European Agriculture Commission have all deemed supplemental hormonal use in beef production to be safe.

These results come in the wake of a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization report published last summer which estimated that beef and dairy production are responsible for 18% of all human greenhouse gas emissions.

However, the report also comes at a time when, in the wake of a surge by the IPCC to ramp up the world's governments' attention to AGW-that is, "man-made global warming"-other dissident voices are growing ever more angry at the notion of a "consensus" about the concept's veracity.

These same critics also point out that in science a "consensus" means next to nothing. They say that a scientific "consensus" is as hollow as the idea of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", since in the realm of science there is nothing extraordinary, but only what is there and what is not there.

Their contention is that, along with the fact that in reality there is no universal "consensus" about AGW, the myth that there is one is being perpetuated for the sake of a hidden agenda.

These dissidents are angered by facts such as these: the environmentalist arm of the Chronicle of Philanthropy raised over $6 billion in charitable gifts in 2006 alone, while major corporations are seeking and receiving huge federal government subsidies to produce energy from "alternative fuel" sources, including biofuels, the production of which could have devastating economic as well as environmental ramifications.

AGW poster boy Al Gore has been taken to task for the fact that he recently announced that he will be joining a global warming-solutions venture capital firm-for profit. This comes in the wake of the fact that the High Court of England has in recent times declared that Gore's assertions are mixed up with no less than nine pieces of misinformation so outlandish that they even fly in the face of the environmentally-conservative U.N.'s claims. His critics wonder if he hasn't been in it just for the money the entire time.

"Environmentally conscious consumers who have been told that grass-raised beef is more environmentally sensitive and sustainable should rethink their beef purchases in light of our findings," says lead author Alex Avery, director of research at the Center and author of The Truth about Organic Foods.

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