Pulse Brain · Growing Health Evidence Index
Peer-reviewed

Food impacts on species extinction risks can vary by three orders of magnitude

Thomas Ball; Michael Dales; Alison Eyres; Jonathan Green; Anil Madhavapeddy; David Williams; Andrew Balmford

Nature Food · 2025

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Summary

Agriculturally driven habitat degradation and destruction is the biggest threat to global biodiversity. Yet the impact of different foods and where they are produced on species extinction risks, and the mitigation potential of different interventions, remain poorly quantified. Here we link the LIFE biodiversity metric-a high-resolution global layer describing the marginal impact of land use on extinctions of ~30,000 vertebrate species-with food consumption and production data and provenance modelling. Using an opportunity cost framing, we estimate that the impact of producing 1 kg of different food commodities on species extinction risks varies widely both across and within foods, in many cases by more than an order of magnitude. Despite marked differences in per capita impacts across coun

Source type
Peer-reviewed study
DOI
10.1038/s43016-025-01224-w
Catalogue ID
NRmo3d4gae-0d0
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