This cooking publication is moo-ving on from beef.
Epicurious, a food and cooking website owned by Condé Nast, announced on Monday that it is nixing beef from its publication to promote a more sustainable planet.
“Beef won’t appear in new Epicurious recipes, articles, or newsletters. It will not show up on our homepage. It will be absent from our Instagram feed,” the publication said in a Monday post to its website.
The company said the move was not done due to a bitterness over bovines, or people who consume them.
“Instead, our shift is solely about sustainability, about not giving airtime to one of the world’s worst climate offenders. We think of this decision as not anti-beef but rather pro-planet,” Epicurious said in their post.
“It might not feel like much, but cutting out just a single ingredient—beef—can have an outsize impact on making a person’s cooking more environmentally friendly.”
According to Epicurious, livestock causes about 15 percent of earth’s greenhouse gases. Of those pollutants, 61 percent can be linked to beef.
While the announcement of going beefless is new, the policy change is over a year old, as Epicurious said they cut out cow products from their site over a year ago.
In its place, the publication promoted vegetarian options and meat alternatives.
Epicurious said they finally decided to go public with their beef withdrawal because over the past few years Americans have been upping their consumption of the meat option.
“The conversation about sustainable cooking clearly needs to be louder; this policy is our contribution to that conversation,” the company said.
Epicurious acknowledged cows are not the only climate offenders.
“All ruminant animals (like sheep and goats) have significant environmental costs, and there are problems with chicken, seafood, soy, and almost every other ingredient,” the company said in its post.
The company also addressed its expected critics.
“Some of you will wonder if Epicurious has become a site with an agenda.,” they wrote. “Rest assured, the beef recipes that were published in 2019 and before are still on the site; they are not going anywhere.”
“Likewise, Epi’s agenda is the same as it has always been: to inspire home cooks to be better, smarter, and happier in the kitchen.”