The Financial Times today reports on a new United Nations report, The State of Food and Agriculture, which recommends a tax on livestock emissions.

The novel suggestion by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation to use taxation comes as campaigners focus on the impact on climate change of emissions of methane from cattle, sheep and pigs.

“Market-based policies, such as taxes and fees for natural resource use, should cause [livestock] producers to internalise the costs of environmental damages,” the FAO said in its annual report, The State of Food and Agriculture .

“The sector is consuming a large share of the world’s resources and is contributing a significant portion of global greenhouse gases emissions,” the report adds.

The proposal, if supported by governments, could hit companies such as JBS of Brazil, the world’s largest meat producer, and large US-based businesses such as Tyson Foods, Cargill or Smithfield. Governments do not necessarily follow the FAO’s recommendations, but its views carry some weight, particularly among European policymakers.

The FAO said that without fresh measures - from taxes and fees to cuts in subsidies or a boost in the efficiency of the sector - “continued growth in livestock production will otherwise exert enormous pressures on ecosystems, biodiversity, land and forest resources and water quality, and will contribute to global warming”.

A tax on meat is something animal rights groups have been calling for for years, could this actually happen now? Could an increase in the price of meat encourage people to eat a plant-based diet or will they just eat cheaper, and more destructive, factory farmed meat?

Read the full article.
Download the UN report.

India’s environment minister Jairam Ramesh has urged the West to stop eating beef. According to the Telegraph he said “The solution to cut emissions is to stop eating beef. It leads to emission of methane which is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide.”

Most people in India are Hindu and believe that cows are sacred. Ramesh said “What India has going for it is the fact that we are not a major beef eating nation.”

This message from India is a reminder that climate change is not just an environmental issue but one of social justice too. The way we live our lives in developed countries directly impacts the lives of others. Eating meat causes climate change; climate change causes extreme weather, rises in sea levels, droughts and food shortages - and those that suffer the most are those least responsible for climate change.

Read the Telegraph article here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/6615422/India-tells-West-to-stop-eating-beef.html

The Worldwatch Institute reports this week that the production and consumption of meat is continuing to rise. Much of the increase is due to increased income in developing countries, as they aspire to live a life closer to ours. Let’s set a good example and show that eating large amounts of meat and dairy is not something to aspire to; it’s destroying our planet and our health.

The world’s appetite for meat continues to grow—in 2008, meat production topped an estimated 280 million tons and production is expected to exceed 285 million tons by the end of 2009. Meat production has doubled since the mid-1970s and over the last 50 years has increased fivefold. Experts project that by 2050 nearly twice as much meat will be produced as today, at more than 465 million tons. More than half of all meat and dairy products are produced in developing nations.

Meat consumption is also growing worldwide. Currently 42 kilograms of meat are consumed per person worldwide. Consumption varies greatly, however, between countries. In the developing world, people eat about 32 kilograms of meat a year—a 17 percent increase over the last 10 years. But consumers in the industrial world eat more than 81 kilograms each in a year.

Rising meat consumption is the result of several factors, including increased population growth, the movement of people to cities, and growing incomes. The income elasticity of demand for meat products is high; in other words, increases in income are positively correlated with meat consumption.

To read the full report visit: http://vitalsigns.worldwatch.org/vs-trend/meat-production-and-consumption-continues-grow

Friends of the Earth and Compassion in World Farming released a new report, Eating the Planet?, this week and celebrated that, according to their research “We can eat meat, ditch factory farming and save the planet”.

FoE have always been a little shy about telling people they need to change the way they live, preferring to ask them to sign a postcard to their MP instead. So I was happy to receive an email from FoE to tell me that they had at last tackled the issue of meat consumption with their latest report and that the “focus is on reducing daily meat and dairy consumption”.

However, the press release tells a different story. It seems the message they are desperate to tell people is that we can eat meat, not that we need to cut down. On their home page right now is the message “eat meat and save the planet - we don’t have to go vegetarian”. They’re actually telling people to eat meat. When Lorn Stern said people should consider going vegetarian for the environment, Friends of the Earth reacted very defensively and told him via the Times that “by leaping to the conclusion that we should all go vegetarian, your reports didn’t address the urgent need for it to clean up its act to be part of our low-carbon future”.

The other problem is that their report looked only at global production and consumption, not at what is feasible on a local level. I asked them if they thought people in the UK could eat meat 3 times per week (with humane, extensive, organic systems) and not have to import any meat, dairy or animal feeds from elsewhere, and they couldn’t answer that question; they said they hoped that would be the case but that they could only answer this question after more research had been conducted.

I don’t understand it, they talk about localisation of food systems and then use a report which analyses global food production to tell people in the UK what they should eat. They commission a report which shows that we need to reduce meat and dairy consumption but they seem to be actively against people going vegetarian. It makes no sense.

BBC3 aired the first of 3 programmes titled “Britain’s Really Disgusting Food” last night. The first programme uncovered the grisly truth behind meat products.

As you can imagine, products such as hot dogs, burgers and even chicken kievs were found to contain a lot more than “meat” - some burgers were only 47% meat (the legal minimum) with Mechanically Recovered Meat (MRM) (the “slurry” that comes off the bones when you put it through a machine) and other nastiness such as skin, connective tissue, fat and hearts making up the rest. They also found hot dogs with no actual meat in them at all.

Of course, none of the producers of MRM were prepared to share the process with the programme but the presenter, Alex Riley, found some stomach-turning YouTube footage which shows what comes out of the machine.

Presenter Alex Riley, ended up outside the Food Standards Agency with three animal friends and a banner “eat waste, save animals”, to thank them for their lack of regulations which allowed food manufacturers to feed us such disgusting “food”. After all, if everyone eats MRM “slurry” instead of actual meat, we are indeed actually saving animals and the planet. But for me, I think I will stick to a vegan diet - you can’t get better for animals, the environment or health.

Watch it here, if you dare: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nxcf3

Jeremy Paxman interviewed Al Gore on Newsnight last night, to ask him about Copenhagen but also about the changes he’s made in his own life to reduce his carbon footprint.

Paxman asked “you suggest that tackling this problem will involve huge changes in human behaviour, how have you changed our behaviour?” Gore replied that he had changed his lightbulbs and windows, dug geothermal wells, switched to a hybrid car and covered his roof with solar panels. He said he was “walking the walk, not just talking the talk” and that he had “long since committed to this path and am proud to have done so”.

But on one question, the story is a little different.

Paxman: Have you become a vegetarian?

Gore: No, I have not, although for health reasons, along with climate reasons have reduced the amount of meat in my diet, of course, as we all know it’s much healthier to have more vegetables and fruits instead of meat and actually the growing meat intensity of diets around the world is a legitimate issue where climate is concerned.

Paxman: We should become vegetarians if we’re concerned about the planet, shouldn’t we?

Gore: I don’t plan to, I respect those who do, but it’s a personal choice and will remain so.

So, to tackle climate change we all need to make huge changes to the way we live, but that is just a personal choice? Considering the devastating impacts of climate change already occuring in the world today and the massive implications for future generations, is it not a moral obligation? What is it with meat? Why is it that Gore, like so many others, is prepared to do everything else but not stop eating meat?

It’s all very well for those with plenty of spare cash to invest in new technology such as solar and geothermal energy and hybrid cars, but for all the rest of us, this just isn’t even remotely possible. What can we do? Going vegetarian is one of the most effective and cheapest ways to reduce our carbon footprint, whilst also being healthier - just think of the additional energy savings in the carbon intensive hospitals and pharmaceutical companies if we all ate more fruit, veg and wholegrains instead of meat! Cutting down on meat seems to be doing Gore some good at least, he’s clearly lost weight.

UK residents can watch the Gore interview online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/newsnight

Friends of the Earth, who are running campaign to address the impact of animal agriculture on the planet, named the Food Chain campaign, have responded to Lord Stern’s “go veg” message that hit the press yesterday.

Sir, Lord Stern of Brentford is right to highlight the meat and dairy industry’s vast and often-overlooked contribution to climate change, but by leaping to the conclusion that we should all go vegetarian, your reports didn’t address the urgent need for it to clean up its act to be part of our low-carbon future (“Climate chief: give up meat to save the planet,” Oct 27).

Cutting down on meat will clearly deliver a win-win for the health of people and the planet, but livestock is a vital part of many people’s diets and livelihoods around the world so we can’t simply scrap it.

At the moment the Government pumps millions of pounds of public money into factory farms and subsidises the use of imported animal feed that is grown after forests have been destroyed. Meanwhile, our own farming sector is in crisis with more than 4,000 job losses in the sector each year and farmers struggling to get a fair price from the supermarkets.

It is possible to farm meat and dairy without it trashing the planet — but we need urgent action to make this happen. The Government should be supporting planet-friendly farms and home-grown animal feeds and, ultimately, less but better meat and dairy. In the run-up to crucial UN climate talks this December, rich countries such as the UK must show real leadership — and fixing the food chain is an important part of this.

Clare Oxborrow
Friends of the Earth

Again the emphasis is on “home-grown animal feeds”. Again I ask, in land scarce UK, where will we find the land for this? At least they mention that we should eat less meat and dairy, but they seriously need to get over their fear of tackling the issue of consumption head on.

All over the press today is news that Lord Stern has urged people to stop eating meat to save the planet. Big news, is the message finally getting through?

Times: Climate chief Lord Stern: give up meat to save the planet
Guardian: Vegetarian diet is better for the planet says Lord Stern
Daily Mail: Save the planet, go veggie, says climate chief Lord Stern
Telegraph: Lord Stern: ‘People should give up eating meat to halt climate change’

While some organisations are trying with all their might to avoid talking about consumption, it is refreshing to see yet another voice bringing this issue in to the main stream media. He follows the likes of government advisor on climate change, Jonathan Porritt and chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri. WWF have also recently released a report which aims detailing how we might reduce the world’s meat consumption. Earlier this week WorldWatch Institute released a report estimating that animal agriculture is responsible for 51% of all the world’s greenhouse gas emmisions. Evidence and debate is mounting, it’s time for us all to think seriously about the impacts of our choice in foods; and make the right decisions.

Turns out the much quoted Livestock’s Long Shadow vastly underestimated the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the world’s production of meat and dairy. Forget 18%, a new study suggests it is actually over half of the world’s GHG emissions.

The Worldwatch Institute, an indepedent research body based in Washington, have just released the study Livestock and Climate Change in their November/ December edition of World Watch, which finds that animal agriculture accounts for at least 32.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions.

So what went wrong with the Food and Agriculture’s report, Livestock’s Long Shadow? The report explains that some GHG emissions were “obvious but underestimated, some are simply overlooked, and some are emissions sources that are already counted but have been assigned to the wrong sectors”.

This new report challenges the FAO’s Livestock’s Long Shadow on several issues. Firstly, FAO completely excludes the carbon dioxide produced by animals breathing.

FAO only counts the emissions from changes in land use but not the vast amounts of potential carbon absorption by trees which has been lost by converting forests etc to grazing and growing animal feeds. If the land was not used for animal agriculture, it would regenerate and “could potentially mitigate as much as half (or even more) of all anthropogenic GHGs”. FAO does not take this in to account; considering 26 percent of land worldwide is used for grazing livestock and 33 percent of arable land for growing feed, clearly there is huge potential for carbon absorption if this land as converted back to forest and other natural habitats.

The FAO used an outdated figure for methane’s Global Warming Potential (which compares it’s potential for global warming to that of carbon dioxide), which means that it is grossly underestimated.

Livestock’s Long Shadow also ignores the fact that meat and dairy is accountable for more emission than plant based foods due to more; fluorocarbons, which are used to cool animal products; production, distribution and packaging (including of products such as leather, feathers, skin); cooking; disposal of liquid waste and disease, such as zoonotic diseases (such as swine flu) and other diseases cause by animal products, such as heart disease and cancer, which require carbon intensive medical treatment.

They conclude “By replacing livestock products with analogs [ie meat and dairy alternatives], consumers can take a single powerful action collectively to mitigate most GHGs worldwide”.

I have to say, I did suspect for a minute that there might be an animal group behind this report, perhaps there’s a hidden agenda? But no, the report was written by Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang. Goodland worked at the World Bank for 23 years and was a lead environmental adviser (he’s since spoken out about how the World Bank is “damaging the planet and punishing the poor“), he also received an award from IUCN for outstanding contributions to environmental conservation. Anhang is a research officer and environmental specialist at the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation.

You can read the report on the World Watch Institute website here.

The Cancer Project in America has sued McDonald’s, Burger King and Friendly Ice Cream Corp over the sale of chicken containing PhIP, a chemical which forms during the grilling process, that can cause cancer. The companies were accused of concealing the fact that the grilled chicken contained PhIP to avoid financial losses.

From Bloomberg:-

The residents who filed the Connecticut suit, Rebecca Delio, of Stamford, and Mary-Ann Ellison, of Meriden, want the court to force the companies to include warnings in their restaurants, menus and advertisements that the food is known to contain chemicals that cause cancer.

Delio ate grilled chicken from one of the three companies’ restaurants once a week, and Ellison four times a month at a McDonald’s in Wallingford, according to the complaint. Both stopped buying the grilled chicken about a year ago when they learned of the cancer risk, they said in the complaint.

Delio, 66, was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago, she said in a phone interview. She can’t blame her diagnosis on eating grilled chicken, she said. “It’s a possibility,” she said, adding that cancer runs in her family.

“I happen to like grilled chicken,” Delio said. “I checked it out on the Internet, and I learned that this is true, that grilled stuff is really no good for you.”

Ellison’s boyfriend was diagnosed with colon cancer, Kinburn said. He has other medical issues and the couple turned to grilled-chicken salads for what they thought would be healthful meals, the lawyer said.

A spokesperson for the Cancer Project said “We’re not looking to have them stop selling the product. The product is a legal though dangerous product that should be sold with a warning, like a chainsaw.” Burger King has apparently agreed to put warning on the product in its California outlets.

In a separate case last month, KFC was also accused of knowingly selling chicken that contained PhIP.

Read the Bllomberg report here.