THERE ARE MANY ways to label a hunk of beef. Take a stroll down the meat aisle of a grocery store in the US and you'll be presented with a smorgasbord of descriptors: rib eye, Angus, antibiotic-free, hormone-free, grass-fed, vegetarian-fed. But soon you might see yet another designation: low-carbon. In November, the US Department of Agriculture approved a first-of-its-kind program that will allow beef producers to market their meat as "low-carbon" if they can show that their cattle are raised in a way that emits 10 percent less greenhouse gases than an industry baseline. On first glance, the plan sounds like a step in the right direction. But some scientists worry that the labels might mislead consumers by dramatically understating the climate effects of raising cattle.
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