By Jessica Yun
On the other side of Meat and Livestock Australia’s boardroom wall is a kitchen, where corporate executive chef Sam Burke can be heard preparing a lunch of lamb cooked two ways.
The slow-cooked lamb shoulder and the grilled lamb chops Burke serves are a nod to Australia’s sheep industry that is already climate neutral, meaning it has managed to decrease emissions to the point it is not contributing any further to global warming.
MLA corporate executive chef Sam Burke cooks up climate-neutral lamb at the Meat and Livestock Association’s North Sydney offices.Credit: Brook Mitchell
It’s not quite a carbon-neutral steak – but that’s the goal. Inside the boardroom, meanwhile, Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) managing director Jason Strong is detailing the complexity involved in delivering the lofty goal of carbon neutrality by the $67.7 billion red meat industry. This would mean Australian beef, goat and lamb production – including feeding, meat processing, fuel and energy use– contributes net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Meat and Livestock Australia’s head honcho is keenly aware this will be a hard slog.
“It absolutely scares the pants off me ... but that’s the sort of ambition that we should have,” said Strong. “We’re going to set ambitious targets, and they should frighten us a bit. We [didn’t know] how we were going to get there four years ago, but we’ve got a much better idea now.”
The red meat and livestock industry has already made great strides in showing it is serious about meeting this target. As of 2019, greenhouse gas emissions from the sector have more than halved (down 57.6 per cent) since 2005 levels. It now takes 65 per cent less water to produce a kilo of beef.
MLA corporate executive chef Sam Burke cooks up climate-neutral lamb at the Meat and Livestock Association’s North Sydney offices.Credit: Brook Mitchell
But the industry still contributes about 10 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gases, two-thirds of which comes from methane, a natural emission as a result of a cow’s digestion system (that is, cow burps and farts). Almost all of the 58 per cent emission reduction so far has come from carbon storage through vegetation; the focus now is on reducing methane itself.
What cattle eat has a significant impact on their emissions, so one solution the industry is exploring is additives to livestock feed and even water that helps reduce methane. Other technologies are being developed to advance carbon sequestration methods, assessing pastures and shrubs, and to look at methane-reducing supplements such as salt and mineral “lick blocks” and even how dung beetles can increase carbon storage.
But even as the MLA invests a further $150 million (on top of $200 million invested since 2017) on research and development to reduce emissions, it also has to navigate an arguably bigger, more sensitive task: perception.
Global food and agriculture production (driven by human consumption) contributes 26 per cent to total global greenhouse gas emissions; roughly 80 per cent of the world’s agricultural land is dedicated to feeding livestock, not people.
Australian lamb is climate neutral.Credit: Brook Mitchell
It doesn’t help that the red meat industry intends to grow in the next eight years, separately setting a goal to double the value of red meat sales by 2030, the same timeframe it hopes to neutralise its carbon emissions.
How can it possibly do both at the same time? Strong notes that doubling red meat sales value doesn’t have to mean doubling herd size (though he acknowledged it will have to increase to some degree); it’s also about increasing prices and getting more out of each cow.
“We’re rebuilding the herd at the same time as we’re increasing our turn-off [slaughter], but at the same time we’re increasing production. So we’re producing more kilos from the animals that we have ... so all of these three things point back to an increase in productivity,” he said.
The red meat industry is also battling long-held views about land clearing that Strong says is out of date. “The statements about Australia being a deforestation hotspot are terrible. They’re so inaccurate and don’t reflect what’s going on,” he said.
“There’s more forest, more greenery, more woody vegetation, than there was – millions of hectares – since 2005. Yet we’re still having conversations about deforestation by agriculture.”
MLA also faces challenges from within the industry it serves in the form of resistance from some cattle producers who are yet to come on board the 2030 goal. It has also faced criticism for not doing a better job at communicating the difference between methane and carbon (methane traps more heat than carbon dioxide but only hangs around for about 10-12 years, compared with carbon dioxide which sticks around for up to 2000 years).
And then there is the rise of the plant-based industry, as consumers explore meat alternatives. Are they worried about that taking away consumer share?
Not really: Australians are some of the most carnivorous people on earth, and rank in the top three countries in global meat consumption at about 89.6 kilograms per person per year. And with the global population set to balloon to 10 billion by 2050, the world will need all the protein it can get.
Either way, the red meat industry must be part of the solution, MLA insists.
“We’ve got really good at being consumers. We’ve got really good at using resources, at short-termism,” said Strong.
“We’re not going to solve this with a one-liner, or one solution or conversation. This is a problem that’s been created over thousands of years.
“It’s going to take a really sophisticated solution.”
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