Beef (from dairy cows) vs Lamb: carbon footprint
Beef (from dairy cows)33.3kg CO₂e / kg
vs
Lamb39.72kg CO₂e / kg
Beef (from dairy cows) or Lamb? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Beef (from dairy cows) runs about 33.3 kg CO₂e a kilo. Lamb runs 39.72.
It's close. Beef (from dairy cows) and Lamb land in roughly the same place.
Cows and sheep burp methane and need a lot of land and feed, which is why red meat towers over everything else here.
Per-kilo numbers skip portion size and how the food was farmed, so take them as the shape of things, not the last word.
More match-ups
Figures from OWID / Poore & Nemecek 2018, licensed CC-BY 4.0.
How we get these numbers: Methodology.