Reducing meat consumption will not solve the climate problem. That is the conclusion of a new review calling for a move beyond a narrow and ideological perspective described as “Carbon Tunnel Vision.”

Livestock farming is often portrayed as a major driver of greenhouse gas emissions, with reducing meat and other animal-based food consumption proposed as the primary solution to the environmental crisis. In reality, the issue is far more complex and deserves to be addressed without oversimplifications. This is reaffirmed by a new review published in Food Science of Animal Resources, which encourages a more scientifically grounded discussion of these topics. The authors, including Professor Frédéric Leroy, criticise what they call “Carbon Tunnel Vision“, a perspective that reduces food sustainability solely to greenhouse gas emissions while ignoring many other relevant aspects.

The real contribution of livestock to global emissions

One of the article’s key points concerns the gap between public perception and actual data. The environmental impact of livestock is often greatly exaggerated. Some campaigns claim that animal farming accounts for more than 50% of global emissions, while the most recent estimates put the sector’s share at around 12% of anthropogenic emissions.

Livestock systems in Western countries reportedly account for only 2.6% of total global emissions, while those in the European Union contribute roughly 1%. The authors also highlight major differences between production systems: beef produced in Europe or North America generates far lower emissions than beef produced in some regions of Sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia. For this reason, speaking generically about “meat” or “livestock” is scientifically misleading.

Reducing meat consumption has a limited impact on individual carbon footprints

The paper notes that, in Western countries, reducing meat consumption lowers an individual’s carbon footprint by only about 1–6% on average. In comparison, a fully vegan diet in the United States would reduce national emissions by less than 3%. Most personal emissions come from transportation, housing, and energy use rather than food consumption.

The authors also point out that food substitutions are not environmentally neutral and may require increased fertiliser use or land-use changes. Actions such as giving up a car or avoiding an intercontinental flight have a far greater climate impact than eliminating meat from the diet. Therefore, climate policies focused almost exclusively on dietary change risk being ineffective without broader interventions in energy and transportation.

“Alternative proteins” are not better

The review argues that many environmental assessments of food focus only on calories or protein content, while ignoring bioavailability and nutritional quality. Animal-source foods provide highly bioavailable essential nutrients, whereas highly restrictive diets may increase the risk of nutrient deficiencies, especially among vulnerable populations. Furthermore, many industrial plant-based alternatives are ultra-processed foods with poorer nutritional profiles.

The so-called “alternative proteins“, including plant-based burgers, mock meats, and cultivated meat produced in laboratories (also known as synthetic or lab-grown meat), are not automatically sustainable either. They rely on complex and energy-intensive industrial processes whose environmental impacts are often underestimated.

Cultivated meat could have a greater environmental impact than livestock

The review is particularly critical of lab-grown meat. Some models suggest that, if produced using energy systems that are not fully decarbonised, cultivated meat could generate emissions comparable to, or even higher than, those of certain conventional livestock systems. The estimates cited range from approximately 3–25 kg CO₂e/kg, values that often overlap with poultry and pork production.

One study referenced in the review further suggests that, when all industrial processes required for large-scale production are considered, artificial meat could emit between four and twenty-five times more greenhouse gases than conventional beef production.

The role of grasslands and carbon sequestration

Many environmental analyses focus on animal emissions while overlooking the role of grasslands in carbon sequestration. Grasslands cover nearly 50% of the Earth’s surface and store approximately 10–30% of global soil organic carbon.

Several studies cited in the review indicate that well-managed grazing systems, including rotational and regenerative grazing, can sequester approximately 0.1–0.6 tons of carbon per hectare per year on average, reaching 2–3 tons in adaptive grazing systems and up to 8 tons when restoring degraded land. Some regenerative practices may also increase livestock carrying capacity by 30–50%.

Methane from cattle is not the same as CO₂ from cars

Methane from ruminants behaves differently from fossil CO₂: it does not accumulate in the atmosphere for centuries and has a much shorter atmospheric lifespan. For this reason, the review discusses alternative metrics such as GWP*, arguing that the traditional GWP100 metric tends to overestimate the impact of livestock farming.

According to the authors, an annual reduction of 0.3% in methane emissions could stabilise the climate contribution of livestock systems. Some studies also show that, when considering GWP* and carbon sequestration from grasslands, certain sheep farming systems in Australia and New Zealand appear close to climate neutrality, or even carbon negative, absorbing more greenhouse gases than they emit. As is well known, similar considerations also apply to parts of Italian livestock production.

In conclusion, the authors argue that food sustainability cannot be addressed through drastic anti-livestock measures that risk increasing emissions through “carbon leakage.” Instead, they advocate a pragmatic approach grounded in production efficiency, technological innovation, agroecological integration, and waste reduction.