Intensively farmed meat may have a lower climate impact than free range, but there are ethical and health reasons for choosing high welfare, organic meat.
In general organically produced meat requires higher levels of animal welfare than non-organic.
Use the money you save avoiding beef and lamb to choose high welfare, local pork and poultry. The emissions you save by not eating beef and lamb vastly outweigh any potential additional emissions from choosing free range pork and poultry.
If you can’t go the whole hog and want to have an occasional meal of beef or lamb, make it high welfare and organic. Intensively farmed beef requires lower land use and involves feed which causes lower emissions. On the other hand the Soil Association suggests that organically farmed grasslands could not only improve soil condition and water retention but also store carbon and counterbalance some of the methane impacts of beef and lamb farming. Eating less meat enables you to make the ethical choice while caring for the climate.
