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Challenging times for livestock
The NFU is challenging the increasingly fashionable view that livestock farming is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and warning that using climate change as an argument to discourage people from eating milk and meat could be environmentally counter-productive.
The NFU's counter attack has been prompted by proposals being discussed by Camden Council in London to "choice edit" menus in its staff canteens by removing meat and dairy products, and by guidelines issued by the food and farming pressure group Sustain, which encourage other authorities to do likewise.
Writing in the current issue of the NFU's journal, the British Farmer and Grower, the NFU's Director of Communications Anthony Gibson says the climate change case against livestock farming has been based on exaggerated and out of date information.
Far from being responsible for "18 per cent" of GHG emissions, as was claimed in a 2006 UN report, called "Livestock's Long Shadow", farmed livestock in the UK account for only eight per cent of gross emissions, and even that figure takes no account of the greenhouse gasses that would be emitted in the course of replacing the contribution that livestock make to diets and fertility.
If cereal production increased, for example, it would lead to huge volumes of CO2 being emitted as grasslands were ploughed up; while the fertility provided by livestock manures would need to be replaced by millions of tonnes of artificial fertiliser, involving the emissions of vast quantities of nitrous oxide.
"Taking all of that into account, the net contribution of livestock to climate change is insignificant", argues Mr Gibson.
"Weighed in the balance on the other side are all of the undoubted environmental benefits for which we have grazing livestock especially to thank: the grazed upland habitats, our uniquely hedged landscape, the lowland biodiversity and the manure without which organic farming would become impossible."
Against that background, Mr Gibson has written to Sustain to challenge their guidelines.
He said: "The NFU does not feel that ill-conceived choice-editing policies produced on the back of flawed evidence deliver meaningful reductions. We of course recognise the need to reduce the overall environmental impact of livestock production (in line with other responsible industries) but feel that these reductions can be achieved through technological advances in areas such as feeding, breeding and anaerobic digestion.
"Nowhere in the document does it recognise the livestock industry is improving its carbon footprint. Methane emissions show a continual decrease. Livestock farms help complete the carbon cycle. Cows graze on grass and other green forages, important sinks for carbon across large parts of the British countryside. Livestock farmers are vital in habitat creation in large parts of the country. And this whole issue has to be seen in a much wider international context - climate change is, after all, a global problem that will not be addressed by ill-conceived ideas implemented in England alone."
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