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

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.

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.

A new investigation again shows the damaging impact of cheap factory farmed meat sold in Europe because of it’s total reliance on soy from Latin America as animal feed. Soy plantations not only result in mass deforestation but also horrific human rights abuses as indigenous people are poisoned and forced from their land. From the Ecologist website:-

Cheap meat has become a way of life in much of Europe, but the full price is being paid across Latin America as vast soya plantations and their attendant chemicals lead to poisonings and violence.

Much of the cheap meat and dairy produce sold in supermarkets across Europe is arriving as a result of serious human rights abuses and environmental damage in one of Latin America’s most impoverished countries, according to a new film launched in conjunction with the Ecologist Film Unit.

An investigation in Paraguay has discovered that vast plantations of soy, principally grown for use in intensively-farmed animal feed, are responsible for a catalogue of social and ecological problems, including the forced eviction of rural communities, landlessness, poverty, excessive use of pesticides, deforestation and rising food insecurity.

The investigation is part of Friends of the Earth Europe’s Feeding and Fuelling Europe programme, in collaboration with other groups including Friends of the Earth members in the Netherlands, Paraguay, UK, Uruguay, the Ecologist magazine, Via Campesina and Food and Water Watch.

Friends of the Earth Food Campaigner Kirtana Chandrasekaran explains in the film that we need to stop factory farming for meat and dairy, use home grown feeds and more extensive methods of farming and direct subsidies for factory farming in to “better quality” farming.

The UK is a land-scarce country. As the population keeps growing and communities around the country fight to save the last of our wild areas from new road and housing developments, how will we find the land to be able to grow more food to feed animals? Consumption of meat and dairy has to be tackled but no-one seems to have the guts to say it.

See the 10 minute film and read the full article on the Ecologist website: www.theecologist.org/trial_investigations/336873/killing_fields_the_true_cost_of_europes_cheap_meat.html

The Royal Agricultural Society of England report predictably attempts to evade the inevitable conclusion it cannot accept – We need to drastically cut the animal farming industry.

The Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE) has published a report by Dr David Garwes in which it attempts to downplay the British animal farming industry’s role in producing Greenhouse Gases (GHG). Using the titles “Reducing Emissions from Livestock” and “Stock May Safely Graze (and contain Greenhouse Gas Emissions)”, the report’s launch has been interpreted by the industry as it was intended; as a “robust challenge” to the vast body of scientific evidence and mounting political and public awareness of the critical role that animal farming has in causing climate change.

The report hangs on two arguments; the claimed benefits of the industry in the context of “local food” and land use in Britain and past and possible future decreases in emissions through scientific and technological advances.

The argument that (in the face of climate change) the need for locally produced food means that animal farming in Britain is in one sense “good” is too simplistic. While some land may not be suitable for growing crops it is misleading to ignore two facts which more than cancel any benefits of “local” production; firstly that large amounts of feed are imported into Britain to feed our animals (even those animals that are seen to be grazing for part of the year) and secondly the animals produce the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide.  Studies have shown that eating vegetarian for just one day a week is better than switching to a local diet which includes meat. (more…)

Animal feed is often imported from large mono-crop plantations in places like the Amazon, for which rainforest has been cleared and indigenous communities have been coercively displaced. So not only is there an negative impact due to the transportation of the feeds but also the deforestation itself contributes significantly to climate change (deforestation accounts for 20% of GHG emissions). There is simply not enough land to raise enough animals to fulfil the demand without importing feeds.  The shipping of feed across the world is often forgotten in arguments that see animal farming in Britain as “local” and therefore positive. The fact that producing animal products requires vastly more resources and produces substantially more pollution than plant-based foods also makes this a flawed arguement.

The report claims that the absence of animal farming from some land areas would mean that “those natural resources would be abandoned and the landscape would soon change beyond recognition” are confused, emotive and unclear in relation to the primary issue of GHGs. Land no longer used for animal agriculture would certainly change, but if that resulted in increased vegetation or forestation, which would absorb carbon dioxide, this would be hugely beneficial in our fight to stop climate change (more…).

The other major focus of the report is its argument that emissions have been cut in proportion to the number of animals being farmed, and that through various scientific or technological “developments” these cuts could be continued. These arguments and proposals are full of problems. The claimed cuts are far from adequate as we face catastrophic climate change and its consequences, with possible tipping points in less than a decade. A gaping hole is seen with the total absence of cuts from GHG emissions from cows slaughtered for beef in the period 1988-2007.

Garwes is very much focussed on technological/scientific fixes, like breeding animals which “produce” far more product, such as meat or milk or eggs, as individuals. Even if we totally ignore the awful consequences of this on the welfare of animals, this reliance on manipulating the anatomy of animals to the extremes required to mitigate the environmental impact of this industry clearly does not stand up as a proposal. RASE’s excited claim that “production efficiency has increased steadily over the past 30 years, dramatically reducing the environmental footprint of UK livestock farming” is totally unrealistic. There are limits to how much an animal can be manipulated to “produce” more and already our farmed animals are mutated, unhealthy forms of their former selves.  In terms of GHGs, the cuts need to be massive, and the solution, for so many reasons, can only be to address the root of the problem; the massive size of this industry and the increasing demand for it.

Considering the the UN Food and Agriculture report of 2006, which revealed that the animal farming industry, which is rapidly expanding internationally, produces 18% of global GHGs, the RASE comment that “there have even been calls to stop eating meat and dairy products in order to reduce livestock numbers. This is a gross exaggeration that must be met with a robust challenge and corrected” seems misjudged.

Ultimately, this report comes from the industry itself and it’s no surprise that they attempt to avoid the conclusion that animal farming, as a major contributor to climate change and wider environmental problems, needs to drastically and rapidly decrease. The agenda and interests behind this report, as well as the very limited horizons within which its thinking is formed, are clear. Its confused message is a predictable effort to avert the growing attention to the necessity of cutting back this unnecessary and hugely harmful industry.

Greenpeace activists boarded a cargo ship in New Zealand yesterday in protest against the damaging impacts of the palm industry. New Zealand farmers feed palm kernels to their dairy herds, which contributes to the demand for palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia which is fuelling the destruction of the forests.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said “it’s a waste product, in my opinion it’s not leading to deforestation and on that basis I have no intention of intervening.” Whilst the primary demand for palm is for palm oil, which is used in one in ten supermarket products, the use of palm kernels to feed animals is a major, and growing, factor in the continuing demand for palm planatations.

The protest followed a Greenpeace investigation in to the dairy giant Fonterra.

Last year New Zealand imported a whopping one quarter of the world’s Palm Kernel Expeller production - a figure confirmed by the United States Department of Agriculture. For such a small country it’s shocking to learn that we have such a major role in sourcing this destructively produced animal feed.

Figures also show that in the last decade our imports have grown 2700 per cent from 400 tonnes to over 1.1 million tonnes. The reason? To feed New Zealand’s growing dairy herd.

Read more about Greenpeace’s campaign on their website; www.greenpeace.org/new-zealand/news/fonterra-exposed