Tuesday, August 07, 2007

"Food that travels well"

The following Lincoln University research is being quoted in the New York Times. Interesting.

* Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand's clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed.

* In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.


The only thing is English lamb is nicer than NZ lamb. I buy for flavour and tenderness.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you can get high quality export grade lamb ours is way better. Much of what is in the supermarket however only barely qualifies as lamb. Some of it seems to have been from sheep taht have died of old age and mislabelled.

Brian Smaller

Oswald Bastable said...

Mutton is only a poor substitute foe beef.

mojo said...

I grew up on mutton, Oswald ... all the lamb at the time was exported ...& a fine strapping fellow I am.
Carbon footprints indeed.

Anonymous said...

The NZ lamb we buy here (Hampshire, England) is delicious - my brother (In Tauranga) also says that most of the best NZ lamb goes for export.
I only wish Mac's beer was as easy to find as NZ lamb and wine!