ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
Land, irrigation water, greenhouse gas, and reactive nitrogen burdens of meat, eggs, and dairy production in the United States.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 106 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
106 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Systematic Review of Dietary Patterns and Sustainability in the United States.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2020Pooled it
- A scientometric review of the research on the impacts of climate change on water quality during 1998-2018.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2020Pooled it
- Egg consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease: three large prospective US cohort studies, systematic review, and updated meta-analysis.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2020Pooled it
- A Systematic Review of the Measurement of Sustainable Diets.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2016Pooled it
- Developing health and environmental warning messages about red meat: An online experiment.PloS one · 2022Trial
- True ileal digestibility of legumes determined by dual-isotope tracer method in Indian adults.The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2019Trial
- Cattle production, water resources, and sustainability: a review of current knowledge and future directions.Animal frontiers : the review magazine of animal agriculture · 2026Article
- The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans are associated with higher land, water and nitrogen use, and greenhouse gas emissions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Article
- Sustainability Views and Intentions to Reduce Beef Consumption: An International Web-Based Survey.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- US grass-fed beef is as carbon intensive as industrial beef and ≈10-fold more intensive than common protein-dense alternatives.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- A survey of Australian dairy farmers' attitudes to their business, its challenges and transitioning to alternative enterprises.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Dietary assessment at the confluence of public and planetary health: introduction of the DIEM (Dietary Impacts on Environmental Measures) scoring system.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
- CRISPR-edited, cell-based future-proof meat and seafood to enhance global food security and nutrition.Cytotechnology · 2024Review
- Greenhouse gas emissions in US beef production can be reduced by up to 30% with the adoption of selected mitigation measures.Nature food · 2024Article
- Mitigation potential of methane emissions in China's livestock sector can reach one-third by 2030 at low cost.Nature food · 2024Article
- Dietary fat and carbohydrate-balancing the lactation performance and methane emissions in the dairy cow industry: A meta-analysis.Animal nutrition (Zhongguo xu mu shou yi xue hui) · 2024Article
- Environmental sustainability of food production and consumption in the Nordic and Baltic region - a scoping review for Nordic Nutrition Recommendations 2023.Food & nutrition research · 2024Article
- Sustainability initiatives in inpatient psychiatry: tackling food waste.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Cultivated meat manufacturing: Technology, trends, and challenges.Engineering in life sciences · 2023Review
46 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Livestock production impacts air and water quality, ocean health, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on regional to global scales and it is the largest use of land globally. Quantifying the environmental impacts of the various livestock categories, mostly arising from feed production, is thus a grand challenge of sustainability science. Here, we quantify land, irrigation water, and reactive nitrogen (Nr) impacts due to feed production, and recast published full life cycle GHG emission estimates, for each of the major animal-based categories in the US diet. Our calculations reveal that the environmental costs per consumed calorie of dairy, poultry, pork, and eggs are mutually comparable (to within a factor of 2), but strikingly lower than the impacts of beef. Beef production requires 28, 11, 5, and 6 times more land, irrigation water, GHG, and Nr, respectively, than the average of the other livestock categories. Preliminary analysis of three staple plant foods shows two- to sixfold lower land, GHG, and Nr requirements than those of the nonbeef animal-derived calories, whereas irrigation requirements are comparable. Our analysis is based on the best data currently available, but follow-up studies are necessary to improve parameter estimates and fill remaining knowledge gaps. Data imperfections notwithstanding, the key conclusion--that beef production demands about 1 order of magnitude more resources than alternative livestock categories--is robust under existing uncertainties. The study thus elucidates the multiple environmental benefits of potential, easy-to-implement dietary changes, and highlights the uniquely high resource demands of beef.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.