Americans living in cities eat more meat than the entire UK, but there are simple ways to reduce it.

Meat consumed in U.S. cities is equivalent to 363 million metric tons (329 million tons) of carbon emissions per year, a new study finds.

This is more than the UK’s total annual carbon emissions of 336 million tonnes (305 million tonnes).

Although city dwellers are estimated to eat about the same amount of meat per person on average across the United States, the “carbon footprint,” or greenhouse gas emissions, from consumption of beef, pork, and chicken varies widely depending on where and how the animals are raised and processed, according to a study published Monday (October 20) in the journal Nature Climate Change.

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By tracing the paths of animals from where their feed is produced to where their meat is ultimately eaten, researchers found that the largest hoofprints per person in Richmond, Missouri, were more than three times as large as the smallest hoofprints per person in Houghton, Michigan.

The amount of greenhouse gases emitted varies greatly from city to city due to different sourcing regions. [there are] There are different production practices in place across the country,” study co-author Benjamin Goldstein, assistant professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, told Live Science.

Scientists already had a good idea of ​​greenhouse gas emissions from meat at the local and national level, but information at the city level is needed to combat these emissions, the researchers said in the study.

To fill this gap, scientists, with some funding from organizations in the livestock and food retail sectors, developed a model that maps the meat supply chain of 3,531 cities in the continental United States, covering 93% of the U.S. population.

The research team used county-level data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and the 2017 U.S. Census to estimate per capita meat consumption in each city. Second, we rebuilt the connections between 3,143 counties and all urban areas involved in animal feed production, livestock production, and meat processing.

They found that 5.1 million metric tons (4.6 million metric tons) of chicken, 4.1 million metric tons (3.7 million metric tons) of beef, and 3 million metric tons (2.7 million metric tons) of pork are eaten by residents of U.S. cities each year, creating a carbon footprint equivalent to 362 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. This equates to 368 million tons (334 million tons) of carbon emissions from fossil fuel use in the United States.

Beef production averages 73% of the footprint, but its contribution varies by city depending on whether the cattle are on pasture or in feedlots. The greenhouse gas emission intensity of beef varies by a factor of 4.3 between cities, compared to 4.9 times for chicken and 15 times for pork.

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The main reason for this variation is differences in feed production, including nitrogen fertilizer application rates and resulting nitrous oxide emissions, the researchers said in their paper.

Reducing or eliminating beef consumption is already recognized as important for the health of the planet. The new study found that cutting edible food waste in half, eating chicken instead of beef and having one meat-free day a week could reduce a city’s carbon footprint by 51%. This is an “important” contribution to aligning diets with the requirements of the 2015 Paris Agreement, Goldstein said.

While the study uncovered the relationships that connect rural food producers and urban consumers, “I would say the broad outlines of what we need to do haven’t changed,” Goldstein added. “There is no such thing as a low-carbon cow yet.”

Anu Ramaswamy, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University who was not involved in the study, said the model the researchers developed in the study was well-developed and that revealing the variation in hoofprints between cities was “very new and insightful.”

While the conclusion that beef production is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions is not new, this study emphasizes that individuals do not need to become vegan or vegetarian to have a meaningful impact on carbon footprints, she told Live Science in an email. The proposed transition from beef to other meats is a “more viable” dietary intervention than eliminating meat completely, Ramaswamy added.