2. Plant-Forward Alternatives

More than one-third of all calories consumed in the United States (before the COVID-19 pandemic) were from foods prepared away from home.⁴⁴ Studies show that people tend to consume more calories and meat when eating out.⁴⁵ Given this environment, consumers are unlikely to choose climate-friendly meals unless they are easy to find, attractive, and inexpensive.

The average restaurant menu, whether fast-food or sit-down, principally offers carbonintensive meat options for entrees.⁴⁶ Restaurants should offer an expanded range of climate-friendly options, helping to make climate-friendly diets more convenient and affordable.⁴⁷ In response to the detriments of “commodity-based diets” high in corn, wheat, soy, and animal products,⁴⁸ local governments, through their own purchasing, advertising, or public support, should encourage a wider range of whole or minimally processed plant-based options at restaurants. Doing so would support restaurants that market more vegetarian options, as well as other climate-friendly options such as meat and dairy products from integrated crop-livestock systems with demonstrated climate benefi s.

A shift to a minimally processed plant-focused diet not only benefits public health, but also has enormous environmental and climate benefits. There is a growing interest in plant-based meat products, which mimic the taste and feel of conventional meat, and “cultured meat” products, which are produced from cellular agriculture and are molecularly identical to conventional meat.

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Already numerous companies are marketing plant-based meat products, the most well-known in 2020 being the Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger, and many cell-based alternative meats are claimed to be close to market. Although more research is needed, initial studies have found lower life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, land use requirements, and water use for these alternatives, and so there could be significant beneficial impacts from a shift from livestock meat to these alternatives.⁴⁹

Such a shift to more plant-forward consumption would reduce methane emissions from cattle and manure, nitrous oxide emissions from animal feed production, and deforestation and grassland conversion for cattle pasture and animal feed cropland.

A 2018 large meta-analysis looking at a wide range of indicators found that “meat, aquaculture, eggs, and dairy use ~83% of the world’s farmland and contribute 56 to 58% of food’s different emissions, despite providing only 37% of our protein and 18% of our calories.”⁵⁰ It further found that the “impacts of the lowest-impact animal products typically exceed those of vegetable substitutes” and provides “new evidence for the importance of dietary change.”⁵¹ In addition to urging a wide range of approaches to reduce production impacts, such as those discussed earlier in this book, the study found that “[c]ommunicating average product impacts to consumers enables dietary change and should be pursued.”⁵²

Notably, with the market for these meat alternatives at almost one billion dollars in 2020 and growing fast, the conventional meat industry is seeking to impose barriers to such products. For example, in 2018, the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association petitioned USDA to redefine “beef” and “meat” to exclude any product that is not from “animals born, raised, and harvested in the traditional manner.”⁵³ Also in 2018, Missouri became the first state to enact a general prohibition on the use of “meat” to describe products not derived from slaughtered animals,⁵⁴ and by 2019, fourteen other states followed suit.⁵⁵ In addition, federal legislators introduced in 2019 a bill that would require plant-based and cell-cultured meat products to carry the word

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“imitation” immediately before or after the name of the food, alongside a disclaimer that indicates the food is not derived from, and does not contain meat.⁵⁶ While many of these laws are likely vulnerable to legal challenges based on the First Amendment,⁵⁷ they still impede the growth of this more climate-friendly opportunity and policymakers should oppose the imposition of such market barriers.

*****

What we eat directly affects what we grow, which in turn has enormous environmental and climate consequences.

Thus, any effort to reduce agriculture’s carbon footprint should consider these strategies to influence consumer choice and to incentivize a shift to healthier, more sustainable food purchases. Our ability to meet our climate change goals depends on it.

Key Recommendations

• Food choice and diet offer important opportunities to reduce the climate change impact of agriculture and the food sector. Federal and state policies and procurement actions shape people’s dietary choices far more than realized, now often promoting high-climate-change-impact foods.

• The dietary guidelines’ enabling statute gives USDA and HHS the authority to consider sustainability as a factor in the guidelines.

• U.S. dietary guidelines should follow the scientific consensus on nutrition and sustainable food systems and encourage a healthy diet focused on minimally processed foods and reduced consumption of greenhouse gas-intensive meat.

• Agencies should leverage their purchasing power to procure healthier and more sustainable food choices throughout federal programs and facilities.

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• The private sector should create certification systems for sustainable agricultural practices and adopt climate-friendly practices in their supply chains.

• Restaurants should offer an expanded range of climate-friendly options, helping to make climate-friendly diets more convenient and affordable.

• Policymakers should oppose the imposition of market barriers to meat or dairy alternatives, such as labeling restrictions or mandates.

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1. Michael A. Clark et al., Global Food System Emissions Could Preclude Achieving the 1.5° and 2°C Climate Change Targets, 370 Science 705-08 (2020) (“[R]educing [greenhouse gas] emissions from the global food system will likely be essential to meeting the 1.5° or 2°C target.”); ROBERT LEMPERT ET AL., CENTER FOR CLIMATE AND ENERGY SOLUTIONS, PATHWAYS TO 2050: ALTERNATIVE SCENARIOS FOR DECARBONIZING THE U.S. ECONOMY 6 tbl.1, 21, & 30 tbl.AB-1 (2019) (Dietary changes such as lower meat and dairy consumption are capable of achieving a dramatic drop in net agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.).

2. See 7 U.S.C. §5341(a)(1) (“Each such report … shall be promoted by each Federal agency in carrying out any Federal food, nutrition, or health program.”).

3. USDA & HHS, DIETARY GUIDELINES FOR AMERICANS: 2010, at 57 (2010).

4. The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is a group of medical and scientific experts that issues a detailed report to HHS and USDA on the latest scientific evidence regarding health and nutrition prior to each iteration of the dietary guidelines.

5. USDA & HHS, SCIENTIFIC REPORT OF THE 2015 DIETARY GUIDELINES ADVISORY COMMITTEE pt. D ch. 5 (2015).

6. Tom Vilsack & Sylvia Burwell, 2015 Dietary Guidelines: Giving You the Tools You Need to Make Healthy Choices, USDA BLOG, Feb. 11, 2017, https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2015/10/6/2015-dietary-guidelines-giving-you-tools-you-need-make-healthy-choices.

7. USDA & HHS, DIETARY GUIDELINES FOR AMERICANS: 2020 (2020).

8. 7 U.S.C. §5341(a)(2). E.g., MICHELE SIMON, MY PLATE, MY PLANET: FOOD FOR A SUSTAINABLE NATION—STATUTORY AUTHORITY FOR SUSTAINABILITY IN THE DIETARY GUIDELINES FOR AMERICANS: LEGAL ANALYSIS (2015).

9. 7 U.S.C. §5302.

10. MINISTRY OF HEALTH OF BRAZIL, DIETARY GUIDELINES FOR THE BRAZILIAN POPULATION 18-19, 31-32 (2d ed. 2014); Megha Cherian, Sustainability: A Growing Factor in Dietary Guidelines?, GLOBAL CITIZEN, May 11, 2016, https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/sustainabilitygrowingfactor-in-dietary-guidelines/.

11. USDA & HHS, supra note 5.

12. Id. at 1-2.

13. MINISTRY OF HEALTH OF BRAZIL, supra note 10, at 31-32.

14. Walter Willett et al., Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets From Sustainable Food Systems, 393 THE LANCET 447-92 (2019) (“Improved production practices are less effective than a shift to healthy diets in abating food-related greenhouse-gas emissions because most emissions are associated with production of animal source foods whose characteristics, such as enteric fermentation in ruminants, have little potential for change. Increasing shift toward more plant-based diets will enable food production to stay within the climate change boundary.”); INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, GLOBAL WARMING OF 1.5°C.

AN IPCC SPECIAL REPORT ON THE IMPACTS OF GLOBAL WARMING OF 1.5°C ABOVE PRE-INDUSTRIAL LEVELS AND RELATED GLOBAL GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSION PATHWAYS, IN THE CONTEXT OF STRENGTHENING THE GLOBAL RESPONSE TO THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, AND EFFORTS TO ERADICATE POVERTY 327 (Valerie Masson-Delmotte et al. eds., 2018) (“dietary shifts could contribute one-fifth of the mitigation needed to hold warming below 2°C, with one-quarter of low-cost options”); Tim Searchinger et al., Creating a Sustainable Food Future: A Menu of Solutions to Feed Nearly 10 Billion People by 2050, in CREATING A SUSTAINABLE FOOD FUTURE 2 (World Resources Institute 2018) (“Closing the land and GHG mitigation gaps requires that, by 2050, the 20 percent of the world’s population who would otherwise be high ruminant-meat consumers reduce their average consumption by 40 percent relative to their consumption in 2010.”); LAURA WELLESLEY ET AL., CHATHAM HOUSE, THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, CHANGING CLIMATE, CHANGING DIETS: PATHWAYS TO LOWER MEAT CONSUMPTION viii (2015) (“we cannot avoid dangerous climate change unless consumption trends change”).

15. INTERNATIONAL FOOD INFORMATION COUNCIL FOUNDATION, 2017 FOOD AND HEALTH SURVEY (2020).

16. FOOD AND NUTRITION SERVICE, USDA, SUMMARY OF ANNUAL DATA, FY 2015-2019, https://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/overview (last updated July 10, 2020).

17. For example, the federal government provides schools only $0.33 for paid lunches and $3.41 for free lunches through the National School Lunch Program. School Nutrition Association, School MealTrends & Stats, https://schoolnutrition.org/AboutSchoolMeals/SchoolMealTrendsStats/ (last visited Nov. 30, 2020). Schools are eligible for additional funding of up to $0.08 per meal under certain conditions. Id. See also Emily Welker et al., The School Food Environment and Obesity Prevention: Progress Over the Last Decade, 5 CURRENT OBESITY REP. 145 (2016) (noting that schools in the National School Lunch Program generally have insufficient funding for the kitchen equipment, training, technical assistance, and labor needed to meet nutritional standards).

18. Jennifer Poti et al., Is the Degree of Food Processing and Convenience Linked With the Nutritional Quality of Foods Purchased by US Households, 101 AM. J. CLINICAL NUTRITION 1251 (2015); David Ludwig, Commentary, Technology, Diet, and the Burden of Chronic Disease, 305 JAMA 1352 (2011).

19. Anaïs Rico-Campà et al., Association Between Consumption of UItra-Processed Foods and All Cause Mortality: SUN Prospective Cohort Study, 365 BRIT. MED. J. 1, 6 tbl.1 (2019).

20. See Nathan A. Rosenberg & Nevin Cohen, Let Th Eat Kale: Th Misplaced Narrative of Food Access, 45 FORDHAM URB. L.J. 1091, 1113-20 (2018) (discussing the upstream causes of unhealthy food consumption).

21. PATRICIA M. ANDERSON & KRISTIN F. BUTCHER, CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES, THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG SNAP BENEFITS, GROCERY SPENDING, DIET QUALITY, AND THE ADEQUACY OF LOW-INCOME FAMILIES’ RESOURCES 1, 3, 5-14 (2016).

22. Hunt Allcott et al., Food Deserts and the Causes of Nutritional Inequality, 134 Q.J. ECON. 1793 (2019).

23. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AN ANCILLARY REPORT ON THE FOOD SERVICE GUIDELINES FOR FEDERAL FACILITIES 4 (2017).

24. Id. at 4-5.

25. Id. at 8.

26. Id. at 9, 21.

27. Federal Acquisition Regulations Part 23.

28. Id.

29. EPA, About the Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Program, https://www.epa.gov/greenerproducts/about-environmentally-preferable-purchasing-program (last visited Jan. 23, 2021).

30. Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, Pub. L. No. 110-234, §1102, 122 Stat. 923, 1125-26.

31. Geographic Preference Option for the Procurement of Unprocessed Agricultural Products in Child Nutrition Programs, 76 Fed. Reg. 22603 (Apr. 22, 2011) (codified at 7 C.F.R. pts. 210, 215, 220, 225-226).

32. MASS. GEN. LAWS ANN. Ch. 7, §23B (West 2012).

33. Maryland HB 317, Sec. 14-410.1 (2021). Similar bills have been introduced in New York and Washington, D.C. See Sen. Bill S740 (2021 New York), Bill 24-0018 (2021 Washington, D.C.).

34. CENTER FOR GOOD FOOD PURCHASING, About the Program, https://goodfoodpurchasing.org/programoverview/ (last visited Jan. 23, 2021).

35. See ERIC TOENSMEIER, THE CARBON FARMING SOLUTION 369 (Brianne Goodspeed & Laura Jorstad eds., 2016).

36. USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), Organic Market Overview, https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/natural-resources-environment/organic-agriculture/organic-market-overview/ (last updated Sept. 10, 2020).

37. A publicly administered national certification system would have several advantages; however, the federal government is unlikely to develop one without prior successful private initiatives. The first organic certification agency in the United States, California Certified Organic Farmers, was created in 1973, 17 years before Congress established a national organic certification system with the passage of the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990.

38. Project Profile: Sustainable Climate-friendly Coffee (CO₂ Coffee), RAINFOREST ALLIANCE, July 31, 2016, http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/work/climate/projects/oaxaca-carbon-coffee; Every Cup of Nespresso Coffee Will Be Carbon Neutral by 2022, Nespresso, Sept. 17, 2020, https://nestle-nespresso.com/news/every-cup-of-nespresso-coffee-will-be-carbon-neutral-by-2022.

39. JENNIFER O’CONNOR, GUIDELIGHT STRATEGIES, BARRIERS FOR FARMERS & RANCHERS TO ADOPT REGENERATIVE AG PRACTICES IN THE US 122 (2020).

40. Id.

41. It remains to be seen whether environmental concerns will motivate consumers to purchase certified products. Research indicates that organic food consumers are largely motivated by health and taste. Renee Hughner et al., Who Are Organic Consumers? A Compilation and Review of Why People Purchase Organic Food, 6 J. CONSUMER BEHAV. 94, 101-03 (2007).

42. Id.

43. Id. at 86.

44. MICHELLE J. SAKSENA ET AL., USDA ECONOMIC RESEARCH SERVICE AMERICA’S EATING HABITS: FOOD AWAY FROM HOME 5 (2018) (EIB-196).

45. JESSICA E. TODD ET AL., USDA, THE IMPACT OF FOOD AWAY FROM HOME ON ADULT DIET QUALITY 7-8 (Economic Research Report No. 90, 2010), https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/46352/8170_err90_1_.pdf.

46. In fact, “entree” was generally used to refer to a “substantial meat course” in the United States until the Second World War. DAN JURAFSKY, THE LANGUAGE OF FOOD: A LINGUIST READS THE MENU 30 (2014).

47. Such a development would likely require significant consumer demand and pressure. See Karen Ganz et al., How Major Restaurant Chains Plan Their Menus: The Role of Profit, Demand, and Health, 32 AM. J. PREVENTATIVE MED. 383 (2007).

48. See Ludwig, supra note 18.

49. Peter Newton & Daniel Blaustein-Rejto, Social and Economic Opportunities and Challenges of Plant-Based and Cultured Meat for Rural Producers in the US, 5 FRONTIERS SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYS. (2021).

50. Joseph Poore & Thomas Nemecek, Reducing Food’s Environmental Impacts Through Producers and Consumers, 360 SCIENCE 987, 990 (2018).

51. Id. at 990-91.

52. Id. at 991.

53. Petition for the Imposition of Beef and Meat Labeling Requirements: To Exclude Products Not Directly Derived From Animals Raised and Slaughtered From the Definition of “Beef” and “Meat,’ U.S. Cattleman’s Association (USCA), Feb. 9, 2018.

54. Mo. Rev. Stat. §265.494(7).

55. Environmental Health State Bill Tracking Database, National Conference of State Legislatures (Dec. 8, 2020), https://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resources/environmental-healthlegislation-database.aspx#map.

56. H.R.4881-The Real Meat Act of 2019.

57. See, e.g., Turtle Island Foods, SPC v. Richardson, 425 F. Supp. 3d 1131 (W.D. Mo. 2019).

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Source: Lehner Peter. Farming for Our Future: The Science, Law and Policy of Climate-Neutral Agriculture. Environmental Law Institute,2021. — 255 p.. 2021

2. Plant-Forward Alternatives

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