Your grass-fed burger isn’t better for the planet, new study finds

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/03/17/grass-fed-beef-health-emissions/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com

by washingtonpost

7 comments

  1. For years, ranchers and some conservationists have argued that grass-fed beef is better for the planet than conventional cattle.

    But a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences challenges that idea, finding that cattle raised only on pastures do not have a smaller carbon footprint than feedlot cattle, which are quickly fattened on corn and other grains. This held even when the researchers took into account that healthy pastureland can help capture more carbon by pulling it out of the air and storing it in roots and other plant tissues.

    “Until now, with this study, there’s really been no rigorous analysis that combines these two pieces of the puzzle,” said Daniel Blaustein-Rejto, director of food and agriculture at the Breakthrough Institute, a think tank, who was not involved in the study.

    Read more here: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/03/17/grass-fed-beef-health-emissions/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/03/17/grass-fed-beef-health-emissions/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com)

  2. From the study:

    >Beef is more resource intensive per gram of edible protein than most other food items. Yet, grass-fed beef is sometimes promoted as environmentally desirable based on the expectation that cattle grazing may enhance soil carbon sequestration, thus offsetting production emissions. We quantitatively examine this view by integrating empirical observations with a beef herd model that uses standard animal science equations. We find that even under optimistic rangeland sequestration, grass-fed beef is not less carbon intensive than industrial beef and 3 to 40 times as carbon intensive as most plant and animal alternatives.[[1]](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2404329122)

  3. Grass fed beef was always sold to me as healthier, less pesticides, less misery for the animal etc… not about reducing carbon.

  5. The only benefit I ever thought feeding cows grass is that you didn’t have to feed them as much grain, which is itself an energy-intense, agricultural product.

  6. Been saying this for years, but it falls on deaf ears here in the US Mountain West. “Regenerative grazing” is merely an excuse to keep eating burgers.

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