Driven by a continuous rise in household living standards, China's meat consumption keeps growing, increasing the need for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions mitigation. This study employed a process-based life-cycle inventory model to quantify the province-level GHG emissions of meat products in China. Four major livestock products (beef, mutton, chicken, and pork) at four farming scales (cage-free, small, medium, and large-scale farming) were considered. The GHG emissions of the Chinese livestock sector were 429 million tons (MT) CO2e in 2018. Beef had the highest GHG intensity (19.6 kg CO2e/kg), followed by mutton (10.0 kg CO2e/kg), chicken (4.4 kg CO2e/kg), and pork (3.8 kg CO2e/kg). Spatially, northwestern China had a high GHG intensity (5.58 g CO2e/kcal), while the eastern and central regions presented low-intensity values (1.89 and 1.71 g CO2e/kcal, respectively). At the province level, Shandong (38.2 MT CO2e) was the top emitter, while Shanghai (0.5 MT CO2e) had the lowest emissions. This study identified the GHG emission hotspots along the meat product production chain and revealed the spatial pattern of meat-related GHG emissions in China, advancing the low-carbon transition of China's livestock sector. All rights reserved, Elsevier.
