Is "buying local" sustainable, with reference to food made from animals?

Question

No doubt vegetables, fruits and salads produced locally in most cases provide local jobs and usually best fresh quality. On the other hand a lot of animal food (soy, corn, and others) are shipped around the world to feed animals close to those locations where they are later slaughtered, sold and consumed. The marketing slogan in those cases is also "buy local".

However wouldn't it be more sustainable and less energy consuming to feed the animals where their food is being produced and ship after slaughter just only those (animal) products being for final consumption?

Answer 1

A good question, but one for which the answer will differ for different locations around the world. Here in New Zealand, for example, very little feed is brought in from outside of the farm upon which the animals are being raised (for cattle and sheep). Livestock are grass fed and the norm is for each farm to produce enough hay/silage to get them through each winter. Naturally, unforeseeable weather events can impact upon this. Abattoirs are also generally located close to farming centers. So for this location, 'buy local' does hold true for livestock.

Answer 2

There are a few chapters of a good book that come to mind about the state of Confined Animal Feeding Operations or CAFO's. The book is called "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan

Much of the corn and soy in the united states is subsidized by our government for use in feeding at CAFO's which are not at all local, feeding corn to ruminants like cows also creates huge problems for the animals which is why so much commercial animals are given antibiotics.

Corn and soy are not normal animal food. New Zealand is an excellent model for sustainable agricultural practices relating to producing meat and fowl. There are other practices such as rotational grazing and recycling food waste as animal feed, pigs are great at eating our food waste, and we already generate tons of food waste. There are some great documentaries about this, notably "Wasted" link is to a trailer.

Answer 3

Our World in Data recently put together an interesting chart on this topic. From the article "You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local":

The article provides a specific (extreme) example for someone in the UK getting beef from their neighbor, vs a ranch in Central America:

Transporting food by boat emits 23 grams of CO₂eq per tonne of product per kilometer. To transport the 9000 kilometers from Central America to the UK therefore emits 0.207 kilograms CO₂eq [9000km * 23g per tonne-kilometer / 1000 / 1000 = 0.207 kg CO₂eq per kg]. This is equivalent to 0.35% of the total footprint of the 60 kilograms of CO₂eq per kilogram of beef.

If you buy from your local farmer – let’s assume you walk there, and have zero transport emissions – your beef footprint is 59.8 kilograms CO₂eq per kilogram [we calculate this as 60kg – 0.2kg]. It makes almost no difference.

Beef is the extreme example. For other animal products, here's the total emissions per kg, and the share that transport makes up:

Product           kg CO2eq emissions per kg      Transport share
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Beef (beef herd)            59.6                       0.5%
Lamb & Mutton               24.5                       2.0%
Cheese                      21.2                       0.5%
Beef (dairy herd)           21.1                       1.9%
Shrimps (farmed)            11.8                       1.7%
Pig Meat                     7.2                       4.2%
Poultry Meat                 6.1                       4.9%
Fish (farmed)                5.1                       2.0%
Eggs                         4.5                       2.2%