Ethanol and E Coli

New reports are emerging around a concern that the increase in ethanol production is fueling an increase in E. coli contamination. The connection is distiller's grain, a byproduct of ethanol production, that is becoming a cheap source of food for cattle.

As reported in the Des Moines Register on Jan 27, 2008: "Studies at two universities suggest that feeding cattle a byproduct of ethanol production known as distillers grains may increase levels of a deadly form of E. coli bacteria.

"Concerned about those findings, U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists have recently put 300 cattle on a diet of distillers grains and are testing them regularly for the bacteria. Results won't be known until later this year."1

The article continues to say that "Researchers at Kansas State University noticed the possible E. coli connection to distillers grains in 2005. A second study found a twofold increase in E. coli levels in cattle fed the product compared with those that ate only corn. Research at the University of Nebraska showed mixed results. Cattle fed a diet comprising 10 percent to 30 percent distillers grains actually had lower rates of E. coli than cattle on a diet of all corn. But cattle fed 40 percent to 50 percent distillers grains showed higher E. coli rates.

"That would suggest that there was something about these distillers grains diets that influenced the ability of these cattle to shed E. coli," said David Smith, one of the scientists who worked on the Nebraska research."2

Richard Raymond, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's undersecretary for food safety, was referenced as saying "the government had no intention of restricting the use of distillers grains even if the E. coli link is confirmed, and would instead leave it to the industry to decide how to address the issue. One possibility, he said, is to vaccinate cattle."3

This is an ironic twist to progressive policy solutions and shows that we are indeed in a new world needing new solutions for new problems. By increasing biofuels we are increasing the economics of 'factory farms'. "Closing the loop", or turning a waste in to a product, has meant that in ethanol production wet grain mash is being reused as a feed supply for cattle, thereby lowering the production costs of cattle and increasing the economic returns of Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs, a.k.a factory farms). As well, a wet grain is more energy efficient since you do not use additional energy to dry the grain after ethanol production, which means the net energy balance of corn based ethanol is better with wet distillers grain than dried grain.

As well, recent federal legislation encourages the expansion of ethanol production. This will mean an increase in distiller's grain. Will it mean an increase in E. coli as well?

Makes the stomach turn just thinking about it.

Sources:
1) Philip Brasher, "Scientists study possible link between ethanol byproduct and E. coli", Des Moines Register, January 27, 2008, http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080127/NEWS/801270330
2) Ibid.
3) A quote from same article, not exact quote from Raymond.

Food's enviro impact as great as transportation and housing

In May 2006 the European Commission released the results of research in to the Environmental Impact of Products (EIPRO). Using life cycle analysis and some input/output methods they concluded that products in three sectors had the greatest environmental impact: food and drink, private transport, and housing. The report did not rank these three but says that " together they are responsible for 70 to 80% of the environmental impact of consumption, and account for some 60% of consumption expenditure." Also from the report:

Food and drink cause 20 to 30% of the various environmental impacts of private consumption, and this increases to more than 50% for eutrophication. This includes the full food production and distribution chain ‘from farm to fork’. Within this consumption area, meat and meat products are the most important, followed by dairy products. Food and drink were covered by only some of the studies so the results for that area should be treated with more caution. However, the general conclusions can be taken with a reasonably high level of confidence.

The report continues to say that passenger transport has a total impact range of 15-35%, and housing (including furnishings and appliances) has a range of 20-35%.

The next step in this work is to study the environmental improvements of products (IMPRO). how to lessen the impact of meat and dairy is to be researched with initial results due late in 2007.

Source: "Environmental Impact of Products - Analysis of the life cycle environmental impact related to the final consumption of the EU-25", European Commission Joint Research Centre, May 2006, http://ec.europa.eu/environment/ipp/pdf/eipro_report.pdf

Potential GHG reduction for regionally-directed food purchasing

A team of University of Washington students and professor(s) recently released a comprehensive report on the local food system entitled the "Seattle Food System Enhancement Project". Within this work is their Greenhouse Gas Report that compares the ghg emissions of a local plate of food to a comparable global plate. The team used a life cycle assessment approach using the ISO 14040 definition. Their methods are an attempt to create "A benchmark for examining the greenhouse gas impact of cultivating and transporting specific items of food into the city of Seattle."

The foods compared, and their ghg emissions:

• Regional plate
• WA apple, asparagus, potato; Alaska wild salmon
  
• GHG emissions = 2,102 grams CO2e
  

• Global plate
• New Zealand apple, Peruvian asparagus, Idaho potato, Norway farmed salmon
• GHG emissions = 3,083 grams CO2e
  

Net savings for local plate: 981 grams CO2e

I decided to start playing with this number and try to calculate potential ghg reductions if this was applied to a segment of the whole state population for part of the year.

There are about 6.4 million people in WA state. The major assumptions for my calculations are that 20% of the population would eat a comparable plate of lower carbon food for half the year (182 days). These assumptions are further tied to carbon savings that are comparable with this plate of food. Why such variables? Well, the research is just not there to elaborate on this pressing issue. We absolutely have to do more of these calculations to understand where ghg reductions can occur, but in the meantime I am going to work with such estimates. I also understand that people are not going to eat this same meal for half the year, but I will assume that 20% of the people could eat a plate of food, or total food for the day, that has a comparable ghg savings.

From these parameters comes the notion that if 20% of WA state residents ate a similar plate of lower carbon food for half the year we could reduce our food carbon footprint by 228,534 Metric Tons CO2e per year (.23 MMT CO2e/yr).

Here is a screenshot of my spreadsheet (click for larger image):

These types of savings are no small potatoes. I am a member of the Agriculture Technical Working Group for WA State's Climate Advisory Team. A medium reduction goal is 0.1 to 1.0 MMTCO2e per year by 2020.

Items for further research:

1. What are the ghg reductions for other regional products?
2. What are the economic impacts of such a change in purchasing?
1. Local multiplier work shows a strong positive gain.
2. Impacts on this trade-dependent state less clear.

Source: " Seattle Food System Enhancement Project", Program on the Environment Certificate in Environmental Management Keystone Project, 2006-2007, p.79, http://courses.washington.edu/emksp06/SeattleFoodSystem/Index.shtml

Carbon footprint: vegan diet vs. Chevy Suburban

The paper Diet, Energy and Global Warming compares the carbon footprint of plant and animal-based first to each other, and then to the carbon footprint of a Toyota Prius and Camry Solara, and Chevy Suburban. From the paper:

Narrative description
" The greenhouse gas emissions of various diets varies by as much as the difference between owning an average sedan versus a Sport Utility Vehicle under typical driving conditions."

Scientific description
" While for personal transportation the average American uses 1.7 × 107 – 6.8 × 107 BTU yr−1 , for food the average American uses roughly 4 × 107 BTU yr−1 . Thus there exists an order of magnitude parity in fossil energy consumption between dietary and personal transportation choices." The key number here is the 1.7 and 4 comparison since the exponent is the same.

Source: Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin, Diet, Energy and Global Warming, Earth Interactions, May 2005, http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~gidon/papers/nutri/nutri3.pdf

Obesity costs greater than Iraq costs

Personal research in to comparing the costs of obesity to the costs of the Iraq war has revealed this sobering statistic: Obesity costs U.S. taxpayers more than the war in Iraq.

Here are the facts:

Obesity: $117 Billion per year, $9.75 Billion per month, $13,348,545 per hour.
" Overweight and obesity as major public health problems (are) costing U.S. society as much as $117 billion a year."1

Iraq: $108 Billion per year, $9 Billion per month, $12,321,734 per hour.
" Specific appropriations, which averaged about $93 billion a year from 2003 through 2005, have risen to $120 billion in 2006 and $170 billion in 2007... The Defense Department is currently obligating an average of almost $11 billion a month for expenses related to its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and for other activities related to the war on terrorism. Most of that sum (more than $9 billion per month) is related to operations in Iraq."

Sources:
1) Fred Kuchler and Nicole Ballenger, " Societal Costs of Obesity: How Can We Assess When Federal Interventions Will Pay?", USDA Economic Research Service, FoodReview, Winter 2002, http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/FoodReview/DEC2002/frvol25i3e.pdf

2) Congressional Budget Office Testimony, Statement of Robert A. Sunshine, Assistant Director for Budget Analysis, "Estimated Costs of U.S. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and of Other Activities Related to the War on Terrorism", before the Committee on the Budget U.S. House of Representatives, July 31, 2007, http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdoc.cfm?index=8497&type=0

UK Food System Energy Use

At the 8th ECEEE conference (June 4-7 2007), Rebecca White of the Environmental Change Insitute presented a paper entitled "Carbon governance from a systems perspective: an investigation of food production and consumption in the UK". The paper discusses the amount of energy used in UK's food system, and the percentage of total UK energy use, 10.8%, is very similar to the amount of energy found to be used in the U.S. food system as I discussed earlier. In the U.S. research shows that between 10-17% of U.S. total energy consumption is in the food system.

From White's report comes this graphic and quote:
"Table 1 shows a sectoral break down of energy use across the UK’s food system... As it stands, this equates to 10.8 % of the UK’s delivered energy consumption, excluding the air freight contribution. Further omissions include: energy used in fishing, in the production of plastic packaging and the off-farm storage of fresh fruit and vegetables, often imported, that can be stored and ripened in temperature controlled environments for considerable periods. Food related waste management has also been excluded. There is also some uncertainty around the numbers, in particular the amount of energy used to store food. Because storage occurs at a number of different points in the food chain, it is often not clear how this is allocated sector-wise. There are also very varying estimates of energy use in the retail sector. The figure used here is taken from the Food Industry Sustainability Strategy (DEFRA 2006), however an estimate from the DEFRA food miles report, published a year earlier, gives an estimate of 97.9 PJ. This alters the percentage of total UK energy use that food is responsible for to 11.8 % and increases the fossil carbon impact from 19.2 MtC to 22.9 MtC. With all figures presented in Table 1 only direct energy use on site and in the production of inputs has been included rather than any embodied energy in machinery or vehicles, which is usually included in food life cycle analyses (LCA)."

Source: Rebecca White, " Carbon governance from a systems perspective: an investigation of food production and consumption in the UK", Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, June 2007, http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/downloads/eceee07/white.pdf

UK Carbon Labelling

The UK is moving forward fast on understanding the amount of energy and carbon in their national food system. The main organizations moving forward on this are the Carbon Trust, The UK Energy Research Center (UKERC), and the Environmental Change Insitute at the Oxford University Centre for the Environment (ECI).

On May 18, 2007, various government, NGO, and private sector organizations met in London to discuss how carbon labelling of products should occur. The ECI weblink contains various documents pertaining to this symposium. This idea, one I have been discussing ever since first seeing the Carbon Trust label work, is gathering energy (pun intended) especially with the announcement by UK supermarket giant Tesco "to develop a carbon footprint labelling measure for all products sold in store, and cut the cost of many energy-efficient goods." Orion magazine reported that Tesco will spend £5 million to research methods for calculating the carbon content of retail goods.

on May 3, 2007, was an earlier Carbon Labelling Roundtable that began the discussions around what a carbon label would actually entail. A lot of work needs to be done to fully understand what is to be measured, the relationships between various segments and sectors of the food industry, and what incentives are needed to encourage low carbon foods.

One thing I want to highlight deals with this basic question: where do we start?

Various report comments touch on the idea of "Just do it" and to start moving on what we do know as we develop what we don't know. Considerations were also made as to "Which products first?". From the May 3rd Rountable report (1) :

" The participants put forward various possible criteria which would help determine which products to begin carbon profiling. The participants identified their priorities and the results are ranked below - those in bold were most strongly supported:

• components of a standard shopping basket (as for the retail price index) (this implies that a standard shopping basket of particular goods could be introduced as a way of comparing the carbon footprint of retailers)
• products where data available
• biggest potential for carbon saving
• where there is supply chain interest / enthusiasm
• simplest to measure
• where greatest GHG variation within category
• organic products
• entire categories rather than products
• highest sales volume
• where consumers most likely to switch
• low food mile products
• non-food vs food
• non-contentious
• most carbon intensive

The report of this meeting to the May 18 roundtable added "Driven by procurement" as another priority area.

Source: (1) Brenda Boardman, "Carbon Labelling: report on roundtable 3rd-4th May 2007, St Anne’s College, University of Oxford", UKERC/ECI