Also reduced water requirements and longer term perishability for supply chains are huge. These foods are often also affordable by a wider set of the population, further improving supply chain efficiency. Finally, the aggregated benefits in terms of reduced diet-based diseases or chronic conditions that require waste in a variety of ways to systematically treat.
Cows are not bad for the environment. In fact cows can be fed waste products from cereal production (straw), or can graze on land not used for agriculture (sheep are even better for that), which make them useful to squeeze food out of land.
Intensive breeding at larger scale has an environmental impact, same as all human activities at large scale. And eating too much meat may not be great for health.
Are they? The study left out fish, so I didn’t see that conclusion in there. Also, the title is pretty much the conclusion of the study: eating vegetarian has a greater environmental impact than eating local.
So why are they generalizing their claims when they have left out whole category of foods? And they consider dairy as not vegetarian that’s not accurate either.