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Now It’s Cowgate: UN Admits Flaw on Meat and Climate
UN specialists are to look again at the contribution of meat production to climate change, after claims that an earlier report exaggerated the link.
A 2006 report concluded meat production was responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions – more than transport.
But a new analysis, presented at a major US science meeting, says the transport comparison was flawed.
”’curbing meat production and consumption would be less beneficial for the climate than has been claimed, said Frank Mitloehner from the University of California at Davis (UCD).
“Smarter animal farming, not less farming, will equal less heat,” he told delegates to the American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting in San Francisco.
“Producing less meat and milk will only mean more hunger in poor countries.”
Leading figures in the climate change establishment, such as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chairman Rajendra Pachauri and Lord (Nicholas) Stern, have also quoted the 18% figure as a reason why people should consider eating less meat.
The 2006 report – Livestock’s Long Shadow, published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – reached the figure by totting up all greenhouse-gas emissions associated with meat production from farm to table, including fertiliser production, land clearance, methane emissions from the animals’ digestion, and vehicle use on farms.
But Dr Mitloehner pointed out that the authors had not calculated transport emissions in the same way, instead just using the IPCC’s figure, which only included fossil fuel burning.
“This lopsided ‘analysis’ is a classical apples-and-oranges analogy that truly confused the issue,” he said.
One of the authors of Livestock’s Long Shadow, FAO livestock policy officer Pierre Gerber, told BBC News he accepted Dr Mitloehner’s criticism.
“I must say honestly that he has a point – we factored in everything for meat emissions, and we didn’t do the same thing with transport, we just used the figure from the IPCC,” he said.
“But on the rest of the report, I don’t think it was really challenged.”
FAO is now working on a much more comprehensive analysis of emissions from food production, he said.
Read more – BBC News Website: UN body to look at meat and climate link
Related CRN post – ACS: Eating Less Meat and Dairy Products Won’t Have Major Impact on Global Warming
September 16th, 2010 at 6:07 am
[...] Now It’s Cowgate: UN Admits Flaw on Meat and Climate [...]