Right from the outset, we’d like to avoid any confusion: while eating green food is a responsible choice, if your chicken is green, do not eat it. Where did you even manage to get green chicken? Did you leave it out too long? Of course, by green food, we mean eating food that has as small of a carbon footprint as possible; in other words, don’t eat wholesale chicken that is green, eat green wholesale chicken. But how does food—and chicken in particular—have a carbon footprint in the first place? And how do we limit that footprint?

What is a Carbon Footprint?

By now, most people have at least a general understanding of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Gasses released through both natural and man-made processes, the prime culprit of those gasses being carbon dioxide (CO₂), hang in the upper layers of the atmosphere, preventing heat from escaping. A carbon footprint is a reference to a product, company, or person’s emission of these GHGs. Carbon footprints can have direct sources (e.g. cars release GHGs through their exhausts), indirect sources (e.g. GHGs were released when the parts of my car were transported to the main factory), or, as is most often the case, a mixture of the two.

The Carbon Footprint of Your Chicken Carbonara 

One of the benefits of chicken when compared to other meat options, such as pork, beef, or lamb, is that chicken produces very little direct GHGs. Whereas pork and ruminants release high levels of methan (another GHG), chickens themselves release negligible emissions. This means that the majority of GHGs from chicken come from indirect sources like transportation, processing plants, and egg incubation.

The Numbers

Now for a stat that will mean virtually nothing to you: chicken production emits 5.77 tons of CO₂ equivalents per 1,000 broilers marketed (i.e. carbon dioxide plus the other GHGs when adjusted for their environmental impact). More comprehensibly, this means that chicken has the lowest carbon footprint of any meat. While agriculture on the whole produces 14% of the world’s GHGs, chicken only accounts for 0.6% of these, and thus only 0.1% of the global total.

Making smart choices when feeding yourself and your family is an easy way to reduce your personal carbon footprint. Who would have thought that D&D Poultry could make green wholesale chicken so delicious?