Livestock and the Environment - Where is the Voice of Farming?

Livestock and the environment are in the spotlight again, and the frustrating thing for anyone involved in food or farming is the one sided nature of the debate. All the media coverage boils down to one message – “meat and dairy environmentally bad so eat less”. We hear little about the food value of the products, the role that livestock plays in keeping Britain’s countryside beautiful, or the steps that agriculture is taking to reduce its environmental impact. The headlines are worrying because a cut back in consumption will eventually affect the price paid to farmers for their products, and it is difficult to understand why the industry seems voiceless and invisible.

Capturing most headlines is the proposal by the NHS to cut back on the amount of meat it serves to patients. This, they say, will help reduce their carbon footprint, and will be beneficial to the long term health of patients. Whilst those with sick loved ones might worry about whether recovery will be as quick without the benefit of a balanced diet, and the cynic might wonder whether the driving force is to reduce NHS costs, nonetheless the fact is that the NHS serves up millions of meals and such a move will impact meat sales.

Less headline grabbing is the report “Food Futures” by think tank Chatham House.
Read the detail and you see a real anti meat and dairy bias. Meat and dairy are blamed for health issues. Global agriculture is said to be responsible for 14% of non carbon greenhouse gas emissions, and that a third of this is due to livestock. And they quote an EU report which says that meat and dairy are the main source of green house gas emissions in the food and drink sector. They trot out the old statistic that a kilo of grain fed beef requires 15 cubic metres of water versus cereals which require between 0.3 and 4 cubic metres, forgetting to mention that most livestock in the UK is pasture fed. Most alarming of all, the Chatham House solution is for government to dictate what we can and cannot eat, saying “The food system will need to reflect society’s choices as much as individual preferences”.

Then last week at the Meat and Livestock Commission’s Outlook conference a speaker from the Food Climate Research Network said that eating meat had to become more environmentally viable either by the industry reducing emissions or people eating less meat. She said that a meat tax might help and that there were moves to add the cost of emissions to the price of a food in order to encourage consumers to rethink what they are buying.

Fortunately a more balanced view of things emerged at the same conference in the shape of Mike Coupe, trading director of Sainsbury who said that cutting carbon emissions by limiting food choice is a “form of communism”, and that a tax would be unlikely to change people’s meat consumption unless it was huge.

The key point is that the issue of agriculture and climate change is not going to go away.

Few will dispute the need to take climate change seriously. But the debate is totally one-sided. Consumers not getting a balanced message about the value of meat and dairy products and the livestock which supply them.

So what should be done?

In a nutshell, simple fact backed messages must be communicated regularly and by independent, respected sources as well as the industry itself. A one off burst of activity just will not work.

There are three messages to convey

1. Meat and dairy are high protein foods, containing vitamins and minerals essential to good health. As the Food Standards Agency says "Meat is a good source of protein and vitamins and minerals, such as iron, selenium, zinc, and B vitamins. It is one of the main sources of vitamin B12, which is only found in foods from animals, such as meat and milk.”

The FSA also says “ Milk and dairy products such as cheese, yoghurt and fromage frais are great sources of protein and vitamins A and B 12 . They're also an important source of calcium, which helps to keep our bones strong. The calcium in dairy foods are easy for the body to absorb”.

2. Without cattle and sheep grazing the hills and moors our countryside would become overgrown in just a few years

3. Livestock farming has a plan to reduce greenhouse gases. (Assuming it does have a plan of course. A trawl through websites from the NFU, Dairyco, the NBA and the NSA does not turn up an easy to read summary of how the industry is tackling climate change. Contrast this with the National Cattlemens' Beef Association of America page on beef cattle and the environment.)

Funding for the information campaign can be found from any number of places. For a start I’d suggest ditching the Red Tractor and redirecting the levy funds, on the grounds that the Tractor means no more to the average consumer than a Union Jack.

Then, what about forensically examining the evidence that Meaty and Lamby are persuading people to buy more meat. Would the funds be better spent supporting a targeted campaign.

The big question is why the industry is not doing more about an issue which has been on the table for years, and which is growing in importance.

Climate Change and the Farming Industry - At Least They're Saying Something

At last! A glimmer of response from the farming industry to accusations that livestock farming is destroying the environment and the glib message that the answer is to eat less meat and dairy products. Following an article by George Monbiot in the Guardian, both the Soil Association and the NFU got their pens out, and started putting some balance into the debate. (Guardian 17th April)


The Soil Association made the point that grass fed livestock are a good thing because grass traps carbon, so if you plough up grass to plant crops of whatever kind then that benefit is lost. Unfortunately their argument then got a bit complicated when they said that bacteria in the soil of unfertilised grassland breaks down methane without explaining in easy words how, and why this is good.

The NFU wrote that if less meat and dairy is eaten then farmers will turn the land to crops, or just let it go wild with bad environmental effects. Unfortunately they did not explain what these bad effects would be. They also spoiled the clarity, and possibly challenged consumer sympathy, by saying that the problem has arisen in the first place because agriculture has been underfunded for 30 years.

A couple of independent contributors, one in the Telegraph from an organic farmer, have made additional points, namely that most UK beef, and all UK lamb, is grass fed; and that the manure produced by livestock is a natural fertiliser so there is no need to buy in processed product.

The messages from the farming industry are still far too numerous and complicated to influence consumers compared with the crystal simplicity of "livestock bad, so eat less". We know from the free range chicken experience (see blog of April 15th) that to alter opinion the message has to be clear, simple and delivered from a trustworthy source. Nevertheless, within the tentative responses so far lie the beginnings of a sensible debate. The points about grass feeding, and the detrimental impact on our landscape should there be no livestock are powerful, but they need to be honed and simplified. If, as the NFU suggests, investment is an answer then details of investment in what, and why will it work ethically and environmentally must be communicated.


The need for a considered and united agri view is urgent. All sorts of figures and claims are being bandied about, witness the debate on Jeremy Vine's Radio 2 show today following Sir Paul McCartney's interview with PETA (People for the Ethical treatment of Animals) where he advocated vegetarianism as the answer to climate change.


And once farming leaders know what they want to say about climate change, could they please tell the rest of us, so that we who care deeply about a healthy, environmentally friendly and ethical farming industry can respond well when challenged.