What is the carbon footprint of beef?
About 99.5 kg CO₂e per kilogram for beef from a dedicated beef herd, and 33.3 kg for beef from dairy herds: global averages from Poore and Nemecek (2018). Most comes from the farm, chiefly cattle methane, and from clearing land. Transport is under 1%.
Beef has the largest carbon footprint of any common food, and the gap is not small. A kilogram from a beef herd carries about ten times the emissions of a kilogram of chicken and a hundred times that of peas. The reasons are biological: cattle belch methane as they digest grass and feed, they need a great deal of land, and they turn feed into meat slowly. Where and how the cattle are raised moves the number a long way, so the average hides a wide spread.
The footprint per kilogram
The most widely used figures come from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek’s 2018 study in Science, which combined life-cycle data from about 38,700 farms in 119 countries (see our reference page on the study). The figures are global averages from farm to retail shelf, with methane and nitrous oxide converted to CO₂e by their warming over 100 years.
| Food | kg CO₂e per kg |
|---|---|
| Beef (beef herd) | 99.48 |
| Lamb and mutton | 39.72 |
| Beef (dairy herd) | 33.3 |
| Cheese | 23.88 |
| Pig meat | 12.31 |
| Poultry meat | 9.87 |
| Tofu | 3.16 |
| Peas | 0.98 |
These are the figures behind our CO₂e to kilograms of beef converter and the food lines of the personal carbon footprint calculator. The full set of food factors is on the food product emission factors page.
Per 100 g of protein and per 1,000 kcal
Per kilogram flatters foods that are mostly water and penalises dense ones, so the study also reports emissions per unit of nutrition. Beef stays at the top on both measures.
| Food | kg CO₂e per 100 g protein | kg CO₂e per 1,000 kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Beef (beef herd) | 49.9 | 36.4 |
| Lamb and mutton | 19.9 | 12.5 |
| Beef (dairy herd) | 16.9 | 12.2 |
| Pig meat | 7.6 | 5.2 |
| Poultry meat | 5.7 | 5.3 |
| Tofu | 2.0 | 1.2 |
| Peas | 0.4 | 0.3 |
Average, median and the spread between farms
The study’s central finding is how much the same product varies: “Impact can vary 50-fold among producers of the same product.” For beef from beef herds, per 100 grams of protein:
| Producers | kg CO₂e per 100 g protein |
|---|---|
| Lowest-impact tenth | less than 9 |
| Median producer | 25 |
| Global average | 49.9 |
| Highest-impact tenth | more than 105 |
The average is about twice the median because a minority of very high emitters, often on land recently cleared for pasture, pull it up. Even so, low-impact beef does not catch up with plant protein. At about 9 kg CO₂e per 100 g of protein, the lowest-impact beef is still more than double the highest-impact tofu (3.5 kg) and more than ten times the highest-impact peas (0.8 kg). Against other meats the overlap is real: the lowest-impact beef sits below the highest-impact chicken (12 kg) and pork (14 kg). In the authors’ words, “impacts of the lowest-impact animal products typically exceed those of vegetable substitutes.”
Where the emissions come from
Almost all of beef’s footprint is created before the animal leaves the farm. Breaking the 99.5 kg global average into supply-chain stages:
kg CO₂e per kg of beef from a beef herd, global average. Source: Poore & Nemecek (2018), via Our World in Data. Stages sum to 99.5.
The farm stage is mostly methane from enteric fermentation, the digestion of grass and feed in a cow’s rumen, plus emissions from manure and pasture. Land-use change is the carbon released when forest or grassland is cleared for grazing and feed crops. Transport is under 1%, which is why buying local barely changes beef’s footprint; what matters is how, and on what land, the cattle were raised. Our enteric fermentation calculator estimates a herd’s methane from IPCC factors.
Beef from beef herds and from dairy herds
Beef from dairy herds has about a third of the footprint of beef from beef herds (33.3 kg against 99.5 kg per kilogram). Beef from a dairy herd comes from cows kept mainly for milk and their surplus calves, so most of the herd’s emissions are allocated to the milk. A beef herd exists only to produce meat, so all of its emissions fall on the beef, including those of the breeding cows. A single “beef” figure that blends the two is meaningless without saying which share of each it assumes.
Beef in global emissions
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that livestock agrifood systems emitted 6.2 Gt CO₂e in 2015, “approximately 12 percent of all anthropogenic GHG emissions”, and that cattle account for 62 percent of that (Pathways towards lower emissions, 2023).
Worked example: one serving
| Beef, beef herd | 0.15 kg × 99.5 kg CO₂e/kg = ≈ 14.9 kg CO₂e |
| Beef, dairy herd | 0.15 kg × 33.3 = ≈ 5.0 kg CO₂e |
| Chicken | 0.15 kg × 9.87 = ≈ 1.5 kg CO₂e |
| Tofu | 0.15 kg × 3.16 = ≈ 0.5 kg CO₂e |
Global averages, farm to retail; cooking and waste at home are not included. A single serving of beef from a beef herd carries about ten times the emissions of the same weight of chicken. For your own figure, use the beef converter or the personal carbon footprint calculator; for a product, the food product carbon footprint calculator. Across a whole diet, the carbon footprint of a vegan diet shows how much eating less or no meat saves in a year.
Frequently asked questions
Cattle digest grass and feed by fermentation and belch methane, a strong greenhouse gas; they need large areas of land, some of it cleared from forest; and they convert feed to meat inefficiently. In the global average for beef from beef herds, the farm stage accounts for 56 of the 99.5 kg CO₂e per kilogram and land-use change for 23.
Local beef saves little, because transport is under 1% of beef’s footprint. Production method and land matter much more: per 100 g of protein, the lowest-impact tenth of beef producers emit under 9 kg CO₂e and the highest-impact tenth over 105 kg. Even the lowest-impact beef still emits more than peas or tofu.
On global averages, beef from a beef herd is about 99.5 kg CO₂e per kilogram, against 12.3 kg for pig meat and 9.9 kg for poultry: roughly eight to ten times higher. Per 100 g of protein the gap is similar: 49.9 kg for beef against 7.6 for pork and 5.7 for chicken.
The FAO estimates livestock agrifood systems at 6.2 Gt CO₂e in 2015, about 12% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, with cattle responsible for 62% of that. Cattle are raised for both beef and milk, so the beef-only share is smaller than the cattle total.
About 99.5 kg CO₂e per kilogram for beef from a dedicated beef herd and 33.3 kg for beef from dairy herds, global averages from farm to retail (Poore & Nemecek 2018). Per 100 g of protein, the average is 49.9 kg and the median producer about 25 kg. Most of the footprint is cattle methane and land clearing.