It is all a bit self-serving.
Literally nothing is a "major" cause of climate change. There's so many things contributing to climate change that any one contributor can be made to look small.
The fact that the cattle industry in one country alone contributes to more than 1% of all greenhouse gas emissions is pretty insane in the context of the entire world.
> and if the rancher uses any anti-methane feed additives
If this effort reduces methane emissions in any meaningful way then it's useful.
How does beef fare compared to something like turkey?
> Ruminant cattle for beef and dairy rank high in greenhouse-gas emissions; monogastric, or pigs and poultry-related foods, are low.
I think it's all about the methane, for which cattle are notorious.
2) Raising cattle has drastically higher emissions of greenhouse gasses than other animals. For instance, looking at the chart here: https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane beef is 5x to 10x the emissions of chicken.
By my estimate, the online commentary about beef's contributions to the climate crisis feels pretty correctly proportional to their level of emissions.
This seems to imply that cutting 2.4% of total greenhouse emissions wouldn’t have an impact on climate change. Motivated reasoning.