Local meat is better than imported vegetables
Transport is a small share of food's emissions, a few per cent for most products. What is produced matters far more than how far it travelled.
Food shipped across oceans and continents burns fuel every mile of the way, while meat raised on a farm down the road reaches the plate with almost none, and supports a short, visible supply chain you can actually check. A vegan diet built on avocados from Mexico, lentils from Canada and beans from Kenya can carry a heavier footprint than a diet of local, seasonal meat and dairy. For anyone trying to eat with the planet in mind, cutting food miles and buying close to home is the more responsible choice than simply cutting out animals.
Life-cycle analyses consistently find that transport accounts for a small fraction of the emissions associated with most foods, with production dominating. The exception is the small category of goods air-freighted because they are highly perishable, which is worth avoiding and is a minority of imports.
The consequence is counter-intuitive but robust: beef produced on the next farm generally carries a substantially larger footprint than vegetables or pulses shipped from another continent, because sea freight is efficient and ruminant emissions are not. Buying locally has real merits (supporting nearby producers, seasonality, freshness) but emissions are a weak argument for it relative to what is being bought.
Introducing a point that is not relevant to the question under discussion, drawing attention away from it rather than answering it.
How it applies here: Food miles are a small component of food emissions. Focusing the comparison on them diverts attention from production, which is where almost all of the difference lies.
Treating two things as comparable when the differences that matter to the argument are large.
How it applies here: Sets a small transport saving against a large production difference as though the two were comparable quantities that might cancel out.