Livestock, climate change and a mediocre media

News agencies, newspapers and especially the blogs of Big Agriculture and the livestock industry are rubbing their hand with glee. A new analysis claims that meat may not have as great a climate impact as has recently been reported.

The paper, Clearing the Air:  Livestock’s Contribution to Climate Change, suggests that figures in the UN 2006 report Livestock’s Long Shadow – which says that livestock is responsible for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions – are unfairly compared to emissions from transport.

The basis of lead-author Frank Mitloehner’s beef is that while the livestock figures are based on a comprehensive life-cycle analysis which even includes emissions from land clearance, the figures from transport are less comprehensive. If they were, he argues, transport’s contribution would be greatly increased. This may well be true. And maybe one day we will live in a world where our understanding of transport’s contribution to climate change will be based on embedded emissions instead of smoke and mirrors. It’s certainly long overdue.

Likewise, most food campaigners accept that Livestock’s Long Shadow is a flawed report. Its recommendation of more intensive livestock farming, for example, is incomprehensible.

What is less easy to accept is the argument that, since beef production on US soil does not directly involve the clearing of vital rainforests, US producers should be encouraged to continue on a business as usual trajectory and even increase the production of meat and dairy through more intensive farming practices.

For an ‘air quality expert’ Mitloehner – who has borne the brunt of the PR burden for this paper – shows remarkably little awareness of the fact that greenhouse gases do not respect international borders. They don’t get turned away firmly but politely by US immigration. Climate change is an international problem. To paraphrase that old chaos chestnut: if a cow farts in Argentina, it could well cause a tornado in Texas.

The livestock industry aims to double its output globally by 2050 and farm animals, like every other living thing, need to eat. According to David Pimentel:  “More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans”.

Where will the food for increased numbers of future livestock come from? How many rainforests does it take to preserve every American’s right to a Big Mac? This is why the land use question is important.

A little bit of extra context may also be helpful here. Clearing the Air was originally published in October 2009 and attracted little interest until December 2009 when two events panicked US and European beef producers – the European Parliament event Less Meat = Less Heat, which featured speakers such as Sir Paul McCartney, founder of the UK’s Meat Free Monday campaign, Dr Rajendra Pachauri  Chair of the IPCC and Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, making compelling arguments for meat reduction (NOTE: meat reduction, not  total abstinence from meat in our diets, as is so often misreported) and the climate summit at Copenhagen.

The original press release for the 2009 paper noted that the study was “…supported by a $26,000 research grant from the Beef Checkoff Program, which funds research and other activities, including promotion and consumer education, through fees on beef producers in the U.S. It also noted that “Since 2002, Mitloehner has received $5 million in research funding, with 5 percent of the total from agricultural commodities groups, such as beef producers.” Facts that, for some reason, were left off the 2010 press release.

UC Davis may need to invest in a calculator. If you read the funding disclosure document it shows that Big Ag funding accounted for closer to 11 percent of Mitloehner’s funding over the period 2003-09.

The funding of any scientific report or study is germane and should be made plain not only to for the benefit of the scientific community but for an interested public. To find the 2009 press release required journalists to ask questions and do some digging – in the UK only the Guardian newspaper has, so far, tackled the story with any serious intent – which is why most news agencies, newspapers and livestock industry blogs haven’t managed to make the connection. Instead they simply reprinted the press release without asking even basic questions about the authors or the analysis, and used it as a springboard from which to make ridiculous leaps of logic about meat having little or no impact on climate.

You’d expect that kind of sloppy self-serving behaviour from the beef barons and the livestock lobbyists – but shame on the news media for doing such a mediocre job.

 

Read more by Pat Thomas here . Visit Pat’s webite, Howl at the Moon, here.

Pat’s previous AlterNet post can be found here.