So we can just never eat meat again? Is that what all the science is telling us? Before you start gagging down fake bacon or eating your al pastor tacos behind a garbage bin on the other side of town out of sustainable food shame, let’s talk about the real problem.

Yes, beef is a hog when it comes to energy. And the Science News report correctly points out that it takes more energy input to output one pound of pasture-raised beef than it does a pound of feedlot CAFO Schwarzen-burger. Yes, the developing world is getting a taste for the cow, like blue jeans or Michael Jackson before, which could catapult the problem.

Don’t get hysterical! I just can’t blame those adorable sad-eyed critters. It isn’t the cow we need to nix. It is our centralized, monolithic, soulless food system. Sure, it takes a larger patch of earth and more calories to raise an animal on pasture. However, there are some benefits to many grass-fed operations that are more long-term, like biodiversity and sustainability. I know many ranchers that don’t fertilize with anything besides good old, nutrient rich poop.

The real energy suck in the beef industry is transportation, processing and packaging. If you want to save some carbon, help develop a local food system where animals travel relatively short distances to slaughter and then to butcher and then to consumer. Start a meat CSA! Buy a whole animal and start a garden and don’t drive to the grocery store so much, where you’ll be tempted to purchase other carbon-licious snacks.

And another thing: there ARE other animals to eat. As Science News mentioned, pigs are more efficient on feed and in breeding. They also yield more edible meat from the carcass. Eat some lardo, save the ozone. But there are also lambs and goats and chickens. According the USDA, Americans ate 28.1 billion pounds of beef in 2007.We eat about 100^th of that amount of lamb every year. If we diversify our meat choices, we would choose animals that are naturally less energy intensive and destructive than the Almighty Cow.

When I worry about the Third World being as gluttonous as us, it isn’t ribeyes that dance in my mind, it is factory farms and processing plants the size of small cities. The ‘blanding’ of our taste away from meat with any flavor is part of the institutionalization of a food system where everything comes from some other place. A place where styrofoam gently encases every machine-cut morsel.

Of course, it is crucial that everyone, from policy makers to home cooks, thinks about the implications of our food choices. That is a bedrock of the sustainability movement. And I encourage the discussion of whether, on a commercial scale, grass-fed beef is viable.

In the end, though, I think we tend to worry so much that a good idea isn’t perfect, in the meantime continuing to do something we know is bad. On my ethical calculator, I end up with the following equation: buy local from someone you trust who treats their animal with respect + cook all parts of the animal to value it’s contribution to your well-being = a hell of a lot better choice than anything from a feedlot.

Diversity is health, in living things and in solutions. Grass fed practices may not be the only right solution for a hungry world, but are one part of a better world.