Recently I have been hearing so much about 'Veganuary' - the idea to attempt to become a vegan for the whole of January. I mean, for me, this is not particularly appealing as I think I would probably fail on the first day. However it has given me the inspiration to research into the impacts of the dairy industry on climate change and whether it is beneficial to reduce or even completely avoid dairy products. Additionally this is one of the areas associated with cattle that I have not explored. To my surprise, statistics reported in The Guardian (2014) stated that beef and dairy make up approximately 65% of all livestock emissions; whats more is that dairy consumption is projected to rise globally by 65% by 2050. In this post I have examined two different studies, both of which are investigating the environmental benefits of reductions of dairy among other greenhouse gas (GHG) polluting products.
The authors within this study aimed to find out what the effects of replacing meat, dairy and eggs with plant-based food would be on both the environment and human health; here I have just focused on the consequences on the environment. The study explored six alternative diets (however only five were actually presented in the main body of the study) which are shown in this table:
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| Figure 1 | Table of the five alternative diets.
(After Westhoeck et al., 2014)
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The main findings of this study were that the alternative diets where a 50% reduction was observed lead to great reductions in GHG emissions and reactive nitrogen, 25-40% and approximately 40% respectively. This certainly highlights the benefits from reducing meat, dairy and eggs. Although one point I would make was that it is difficult to observe the individual contribution of reducing dairy consumption on these emissions as they are grouped together. Nevertheless it is clear dairy products are prominent contributors to climatic changes. One point that the study does bring to our attention is the questioning over whether these dramatic behavioural changes are actually realistic. Even I can admit that giving up all meat and dairy products is too challenging for me and many other people I have spoken to would not be able to do so.
2. Steer (2015)
Alternatively to the previous study, Steer (2015) examines solely the impacts of dairy products on the environment which certainly makes exploring its individual contribution to climatic change easier. This study specifically examines whether switching from conventional dairy systems to an alternative production of dairy that uses 'non-bovine pathways' (YDM). This alternative involves producing milk proteins by the combination of yeast and vegetable oil, rather than dairy cows. The study found that this alternative had a significant reduction in many environmental impact categories, shown in this table:
As shown, the efficiency savings of using this alternative are great. However the ranges for some categories, particularly energy, are very large which suggests some uncertainties in the results. Another criticism of the study is when compiling the values for YDM, for the four categories, for sunflower oil, sucrose, transport and YDM synthesis, numerous studies were utilised to assemble these values. This inconsistency could raise questions about the validity of the concluding remarks.
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| Figure 2 | Modelled land, water and energy requirements, plus GWP, of producing 1 L YDM compared to data for conventional dairy productions.
(After Steer, 2015)
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Perhaps this is the new way forward - rather than changing behaviour, change the product? However it is seriously important to consider whether anyone would actually buy this product. But, it could be argued that there has been a great increase in the purchasing of milk alternatives, for example soy and coconut milk, as projections reported in The Guardian (2016) stated that the milk alternative industry is expected to be worth more than $10bn by 2019. Therefore investing in YDM could be a plausible solution - please comment below your thoughts!
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