There is no elephant in the room. Methane counts for 0.3% of greenhouse gas effect while water vapour counts for 95%. If you want to do something useful, campaign for the draining of the oceans.

"However, research shows that vegetarians tend to be healthier than meat eaters and have a reduced risk of chronic diseases such as obesity, coronary heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes and some types of cancer."

What research?

CSIRO say we need meat in our diet .. are they wrong?

(Personally I'm not sure I could finish an elephant, I'd need help from some mates. Evidently they taste great, if you had to eat one that is for say, scientific research reasons, or similar./sarc)

Sorry, this just appears to be a convenient way to tell other people what to do using AGW as a reason .. so much finger wagging is justified by the AGW belief, is it any wonder some people are skeptical?

There is no metric here, just .. stop doing this and it will help, it might, it might not .. who knows?

As the EQ says, the GHG contributed by feed animals is negligible, but of course that person is just getting in the way of good a good opportunity to sneer at other people and tell them what to do!

I must admit, I find the claims extraordinary. I have serious doubts as to its veracity.

Methane whilst having a strong green house effect, also oxidises over time, and so is only temporary.

Unfortunately the use of measures of savings in terms of plane trips, household appliance usage and the like might make forgoing meat feel virtuous but it does not give much of an insight into its proportionate contribution to reducing emissions. And unless one can be confident that a complete life cycle assessment has been made, even the savings as they are represented here would have to be viewed sceptically. However, there is a much bigger problem. Our material prosperity is a direct function of the nation's energy consumption, as a glance at energy/GDP statistics will soon show. We can reduce energy consumption significantly only by becoming significantly poorer. That's a proposition that the electorate is unlikely to accept. If we really want to reduce carbon emissions, of far more and immediate value would be a rapid switch to lower-carbon energy sources such as natural gas and nuclear power.

[Deleted for abuse.]

I must admit that I spent a few minutes scanning this article for irony. My anti-anti-pop stand is fairly hard core and I'm probably easy prey to a send up - but no - this article is serious.

OK. First of all Monica, if you touch one bristle on my little porcine friends, I'll have you on toast. Leave the pigs and sheep alone. That's my breakfast you're talking about!

Damn, not only do the anti-pops want to get rid of me, my friends, neighbours and their kids for 20 generations, they now want to 'off' our little piggy friends. I'm putting my trotter down. Enuff is enuff!

Interestingly, most beef, lamb etc produced in Australia, is not
done by industrial farming, but by natural grazing.

Now lets say everyone stopped eating meat, what would be the effect?
Those grasses would grow like steam with no grazing, creating huge
fuel loads. Next they dry out, lightning invariably strikes
eventually.

Would Animals Australia rush out to extinguish the huge mega grass
fires that would blacken the countryside, burning everything in
their path?

Methinks the author needs to rethink the ramifications of her
claims. The law of unintended consequences, applies here.

Climate change appears to be a convenient vehicle for many pressure groups to use to advocate for their agenda. There are issues with land clearing, and a lot of it in the Amazon basin is driven by grazing. There are also health issues with excess consumption of meat; obesity and cancers show links.

To conclude we must stop eating meat sets a dangerous precedent in policy terms; or at least a rather cynical manipulation by some pressure groups. If that process of logic is applied elsewhere then by simile because motor vehicles cause injury and death and cause pollution we should stop using motor vehicles; come back Pol Pot all is forgiven!

Australia’s sheep population has declined from 170,000,000+ in early 70s to 70,000,000 now. Cattle populations have shown marginal increases. So what has changed?

Electricity consumption and vehicle traffic are the areas of change.

Analyses have been undertaken that show for agriculture to contribute to reducing greenhouse gases then farmers must stop all agricultural output and totally convert properties into tree lots.

“You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” Matthew 23:24

Meat bashing is as fanciful as Druids dancing around Stonehenge at solstice.

Instead, a bit of finger-pointing at pig/cattle/poultry feedlots would make some sense on a number of fronts.
The author could give equal time, in a more rational consideration, to the vast swathes of landscape totally denuded of original vegetation, and animals, to make way for waving seas of grain. These huge landscapes of monoculture have much greater negative impact than cattle pastures with retained tree shelter.

Picking winners on one element such as meat consumption, should that have any success, will do no more than buy “peace in our time” as the real elephant gains size and strength to utterly trample our grandchildren.
That elephant is the human imprint - of numbers and their fundamental needs. And how that bastard brat of an elephant does grow.

The perspective of such growth from the viewpoint of a sixty-year old:
From one billion in grandmother’s grandmother’s time; two billion in her daughter’s; three billion in the mother’s; 4 billion when the sixty-year-old turned 25; 5 billion at age 40, 6 billion at age 50, and 7 billion, near enough, now.
As an eighty-year-old, I am witness to the world’s population more than trebling; to the results of Howard Florey, Frank Fenner, and their array of colleagues’ efforts to minimize premature death by disease; to the success of Margaret Sanger, Frank Cotton, and Carl Djerassi in developing the contraceptive pill - minimizing rate of births and providing balance for the work of those others; to the war against use of the latter by the Vatican and like-minded fundamentalists.

I have been one of the great many who appreciated Frank Fenner’s efforts to bring to the public’s awareness their place in, and utter dependence upon, the environment which they continue to destroy by their sheer numbers and life styles. Those efforts seem to have been totally missed by the author of this article.

Problem is not meat

We just eat too much of it

For everything's health

Oh dear, a few facts.

Even if we don't have meat animals to eat it, & yabby's dried out grass doesn't burn in a huge bush fire, it will definitely rot, releasing all that lovely plant food CO2 it took up to grow, in the first place. The result is identical. The animals merely accelerate the process a little.

The meat livestock herd represents millions of tons of CO2 sink at any one time. More stock, less CO2 available for the atmosphere. Eliminate the stock & you release all that CO2. That should help the grass grow.

No less an authority than the CSIRO recently released a slimming diet which recommended the reduction of carbohydrates, & an increase in protein intake. In view of this, we should be feeding all that carbohydrate stuff to cattle, to help reduce obesity

Note to the other posters.. as you all rightly point out, methane supposed contribution to global warming is small.. in fact, graphs compiled by the US National Office of Atmospheric Administration show that methane concentrations in the atmosphere stopped increasing around the turn of the century. No one really knows why. that part of the global warming story is dead.

As for the article, the author makes this howler among others "some 70% of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing". Sorry, what? 70 per cent of the Amazon basin aint not there any more, and they're running cattle on it? Beg to differ. Although there has been logging in parts of it and slash and burn indigenous agriculture in other parts, the 70 per cent figure is absurd. It may be possible to state that the 70 per cent of the basin has been affected by human activity at one time or another - otherwise the writer has no real idea what the figure means..

In fact this is the origin of that bizaare stat.. this is just from Wikipedia, which is quoting an FAO report, but it makes considerably more sense then the original quote.
"Seventy percent of formerly forested land in the Amazon, and 91% of land deforested since 1970, is used for livestock pasture."

In other words, 70 per cent of the stuff already cleared..

Yes, that's what 'former forests' means, Mark.

I am not sure about this argument. Firstly emissions from livestock are not as high from grass fed as grain-fed. With growing populations many cattle raisers are intensive feeding via grain lots to meet demand.

The major problem as far as CO2 goes is landclearing to make room for livestock but you would have that problem if we were all vegetarian and had to clear land for greater vegetable, pulse, nut and grain production. The faster our populations grow compared to available arable land, the more landclearing is required unless we all resort to Soylent Green which is too anti-human for my liking.

Why are we looking at this problem from the wrong end. The populist and entrenched attitudes are around growth and consumerism no matter the long term effects. Why not push for raising the living standards (education, health, share of economic wealth etal) of the Third World and bring some economicy equity to bear and the issue of greenhouse gas emmissions.

The article seems to have got the facts wrong. Coal burning power stations produce half of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Transport (cars trucks etc) is the next biggest source. Cutting back on eating meat (or re-using a plastic bag) to save the world from climate change is like saving money by putting your 5 cent coins in a jar and burning your $50 notes.
Every little bit helps, but if we are not concentrating on the big stuff then it is all a waste of time.

Posted by Tombee, Thursday, 27 January 2011 8:42:11 AM

I agree 100%

Timely article, Monika, and judging by some of the responses here a much needed perspective.

My reading leads me to have no doubt whatever that the world would be a better place for many reasons if we in developed countries at least reduced our consumption of meat. According to the ACF, having one meat-free meal a week will decrease a person's greenhouse emissions by 300kg and reduce water use by 10,000L over the course of a year.

Having said that, unfortunately I'm a person who needs to eat meat for health reasons. My blood sugar levels fluctuate, causing multiple negative consequences, and the protein and saturated fat provided by meat is instrumental in keeping them on an even keel. This has created somewhat of an ethical dilemma, though I do buy organic and grass fed wherever possible.

Yabby

"Interestingly, most beef, lamb etc produced in Australia, is not
done by industrial farming, but by natural grazing."

Some current stats would be good, Yabby. Shouldn't be difficult for someone close to the source as you are. My feeling is you're presenting a somewhat romanticized picture here, which, if not already a thing of the past, is certainly under threat as struggling farmers are bought out by largescale agricultural interests.

"Now lets say everyone stopped eating meat, what would be the effect?
Those grasses would grow like steam with no grazing, creating huge
fuel loads. Next they dry out, lightning invariably strikes
eventually."

This assumes that the land would be left as pasture which is highly unlikely. It would more likely be planted out to crops or reforested or put to some particular use. Or if it was retained as pasture, it might be stocked with less intensive numbers, which from the point of view of erosion and water pollution could only be an improvement.

Bugsy - delighted to see you are still around.. and you almost have a point. Now that I look at it, the original quote on grazing land in the Amazon is completely meaningless.. the area converted could be 1 pc or 50 pc. Not to worry, though. As I understand it cleared area in that part of the world quickly returns to jungle - a major problem, as I understand it, with slash and burn cultivation.

Note to others - all beef is produced free range - if you think otherwise produce stats. Almost all chicken is produced by factory methods.. dunno about pork and bacon. I imagine you'd quickly get into definitions.

Well yes, it could be 1% or 50% or whatever, unless you actually looked it up of course. But that would be depressing so lets not do that.

As far as I can tell, feedlots are not classed as "free range". For Australia at least 40% of our entire beef supply and 80% of all beef sold in supermarkets are produced by feedlots.

http://www.feedlots.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=67&Itemid=111

So, I think otherwise Mark.

*My feeling is you're presenting a somewhat romanticized picture here, which, if not already a thing of the past, is certainly under threat as struggling farmers are bought out by largescale agricultural interests.*

Your feeling could well be wrong, Bronwyn. You need to get out into
the country more often :)

Cows and sheep do in fact eat grass, often on country that is simply
not suitable for cropping, especially intensive cropping, which
you are suggesting as an alternative.

Now if you really want that land to wash and blow away, try organic
farming. No herbicides means cultivating the soil to death to kill
those pesky weeds.

Some cattle are indeed lotfed to finish them off, especially for
the Japanese market. But that is a very small % of the herd.

Chickens and pigs are produced indoors, on grain, yup.

But of course the author ignores the real elephant in the room.
250'000 people a day, added to the global population each and every
day. Its been happening for most of her lifetime, each and every day.

To now attack herbivores for doing what comes naturally and calling
it the elephant in the room, is a bit of a stretch indeed. The
only ones whom I know, making such claims, are those tied up with
animal liberation etc, as they have a problem with us eating meat.

What influences methane production is it FAT , Rabbit meat has no fat ,is it unreasonable to suggest that the CSIRO should be engaged to find out if rabbit genes can be applied to Cattle , Sheep etc.

If GOD didn't intend us to eat meat why are we equipped with both upper and lower teeth?

Mr Rudd in his first 2 weeks in office burnt 1500 tonns of Av gas on his AGW pilgrimage how many Hereford farts would that equal?

Methane the only perfectly symmetrical molecule , was it's existence a mistake ? Can the world do without it ?

What is the result of catalysing nickel turbine blades with all the gasses contained in the air levels that jet aircraft fly thru plus what influence does the loaded gases as a result have on AGW .

If we stop eating meat as we were intended to do will we have to consume copious quantities of Silver Beet or could chemical supplements fix the iron deficient diet .

The meat industry is a huge industry how will we re-employ that many people , Farmers,retailers,wholesalers,vets,transport people, auctioneers,Bakery, restaurants,big mac, small goods plus everyone that makes food taste good oh I forgot sausages&Barbaque manufactures !
The mind boggles how boring could life become Bob Browns favourite snags AGW modified made from mash potatoes and Methyl Chloride WoW what a hoot CH3CL's !
What about the old standby Spag-Boll the Master Piece that replaced Irish Stew another Crippel-U how do you make Irish Stew no meat.

The most frighting tragedy last : "If you don't eat your meat you won't be able to figure out what sex you are".

"Global warming has been widely acknowledged to be responsible for more extreme weather.."

By whom, exactly? Not by anyone who is in a position to know. As they say in Wikipedia: 'Citation needed'.

Humans are omnivores by natural decree and obtain good protein supply through eating meat. Good protein supply is more difficult to obtain through vegetarianism.

Low levels of protein adversely affect physical and mental development in infants and children. Countries which are primarily vegetarian are often so because of lack of available protein.

As developing countries become richer they eat more meat as it is a much more efficient way to obtain energy and protein. This is now happening in China, for example. Physical size, mental development and physical strength are all disadvantaged by limiting protein input.

Vegetarians need to eat more and more frequently than omnivores because the calorific value is much lower in vegetables. Cows are a good example of this constant need to graze.

Large scale vegetarianism requires much more land to be used for vegetable production and much more food would need to be produced to obtain the benefits protein now provides. Large scale vegetarianism is inefficient, overly manpower and energy intensive, scientifically without merit and likely to lead to malnutrition in times when crops are adversely affected by natural disasters.

The belief that eating vegetables would lessen greenhouse gases is doubtful and driven by current Green ideology than scientific or medical knowledge.

Beans is the answer for protine alternative. Baked Beans.

Bugsy - why have you dragged feedlots into it? No beef in Aus has ever been produced by anything that could be considered factory methods.. correct answer is 0 per cent factory as noted before. chicken and pork, however, are different, as noted.

As for the Amazon my guess, from a brief glance at the figures (you or the author could always have looked it up) is something like 10 per cent, but that sounds high. However, for various reasons, it is as high as its ever likely to go..

I wonder what those

Animals are in feedlots

All over the place?

A very large number of our feed lots are "opportunity feed lots". A number of my friends have them.

They are rarely used, but they stay registered as a drought mitigation system.

When it starts to get dry, & the pasture is getting low, rather than flog their properties, they will open up the feed lot, & put a number of their near finished cattle into them. This quickly reduces the grazing pressure, & by finishing the stock on grain, they get a higher price when they sell.

The higher price is not profitable in the Australian market or they would feed lot all their stock. However it helps look after the property, & is much better than drought feeding or agistment of stock, to survive a drought.

The arithmetic is really pretty simple; the conversion rate for cattle is generally taken as about 8 or 9 to one; that is 8 kilos of vegetable matter to produce 1 kilo of meat. Indians have been saying for decades 'why feed all that grain to beef and then eat the beef? Why not just eat the grain?'
The answer of course is pretty straight forward; cattle can digest grass, people can't, but people can digest cattle. In effect, cattle have become our extended -or 'outsourced'- intestines.
However when, as in the USA for instance, we start feeding cattle high protein grains like corn, wheat, rye and barley -which humans are perfectly capable of digesting themselves- you have to concede the Indians have a point.
For every kilo we feed cattle, we could provide 8 kilo's of food for humans. Arguably an ignorable issue at the moment, but as our population continues to rise, these statistics will continue to factor more heavily.
Currently, only rich countries can afford this sort of 8 to 1 luxury and guess what?
The richest countries ain't lookin' that rich anymore.

Does Monika practise what she preaches? If so, she should get her friends to do likewise.

*For Australia at least 40% of our entire beef supply and 80% of all beef sold in supermarkets are produced by feedlots.*

Bugsy, the figures from the feedlotters are a little misleading,
if you don't understand them.

Yes, alot of cattle are finished in feedlots, but note the word
finished.

Off the top of my head, we have around 25 million cattle in Aus,
around 1 million, depending on a number of variables, are in feedlots
at any one time. So most are happily living free range.

For a steer to enter a feedlot, it needs a mother, it needs to grow
up to a reasonable size etc. All done free range.

Finishing off cattle on grain, is really about consumer choice and
taste. People generally mostly want tender meat that is not dark
cutting. Feedlotting boosts muscle glycogen levels, which means
lighter coloured meat, more tender. Also feedlotting improves
marbling. Its in that marbled fat, where the flavour is.

Much of the grain used for feedlotting, is not suitable for human
consumption. For instance, right now there are millions of tonnes
of rain damaged wheat, which is unsuitable for bread or biscuits
or noodles, but makes for great stockfeed. Its cheaper, so the
lotfeeders love it and the farmers have a market for that otherwise
unwanted grain, so its a win-win situation.

It seems to me that the figures quoted by the lotfeeders, have
a bit of spin in there, to promote their industry. For of course
they don't produce cows or calves in feedlot. They buy them in
when nearly full grown and add a few kg, finishing them off, ready
for fussy consumers.

The market is quite specific. You have long fed and short fed etc.
The Japanese prefer long fed and pay extra. On the other end you
have hamburger beef, which is mostly what we export. The Americans
buy it, as ours is lean compared to theirs, because its mostly
free range.

Yes Yabby I understand all this, believe me, I do. But feedlot fed animals are not 100% 'free range'. Nor are they produced by factory methods, under cover their whole lives. Citing a '0 percent factory' is NOT the same as 'all free range', as Mark seems to believe.

But the fact remians that lotfed beef is fed what? Grain. In fact, the inputs on lotfed beef are far higher than inputs on 'free range' grassfed beef. This is just a fact, I am not arguing against it. I am merely arguing against the incorrect use of figures.

And as for that, I wonder where Mark gets his 'brief glance at the figures' and cites a 10% figure (in his opinion high!)? Out of the 'rear filing cabinet'? When many other estimates are actually far higher than that. This sort of argument from someone who demands stats to back up arguments is just bizarre.

BTW Mark, yes I could have cited stats (it is an assumption of yours that I didn't look them up), but where would be the fun in that?

*For Australia at least 40% of our entire beef supply and 80% of all beef sold in supermarkets are produced by feedlots.*

Bugsy, this was your claim. It was what I was disputing, for it
is clearly not the case. Just because an animal spent a few days
in a feedlot, does not mean that it was produced by the feedlot.

Only part of a feedlot ration is grain. Hay, silage, all are part
of a ruminant diet. In fact ruminants on pure grain would develop
all sorts of problems. Grain is used as part of the diet, to boost
energy and protein.

But cows and sheep need to chew the cud, so they need lots of
roughage.

Yabby, it's not 'my' claim, it's from the Australian Lot Feeder Association.

http://www.feedlots.com.au

Make of that what you will.

FAO estimates we need to double food production by 2050 to feed the world. How will this be done? The achievements of the green revolution will pale into insignificance compared to the job that is needed.

The elephant in the room is not methane production either from grass fed or grain fed (that debate is less than helpful); it is, as has been stated, population growth.

Agriculture has to perform and perform as it has never done before. The problems of resource degradation must be addressed. The notion of recreating pristine environments is folly if food production falters given those growth projections – the whole lot will be lost if serious hunger occurs.

The SKI generation (Spend Kid’s Inheritance) epitomises the heart of the problem – we live for ourselves maximising personal benefit not caring about others. Until those values change we remain a wicket on to a hiding in life.

It seems that the “warmertariat” has all the answers. So no coal, no nuclear, no dams, no meat, ride a bicycle, drive an electric car, use wind energy, use solar, pay for all this with a carbon tax and don’t have any babies.

Interestingly the “warmertariat” has never actually been pathfinders in showing us how this can be done, they just want the rest of us to pay for and fulfill their fantasies for them.

When are we going to see the “warmertariat” submit a development application to establish the Warmerville Commune? There are lots of places in Australia ideally located a long way from the rest of us, where this new utopian commune could be established.

Better still, there would be no need for us to listen to the constant grinding proselytizing of warmertariat alarmism, which is necessary to extract our money; instead they would be using their own money, time and effort.

I imagine there would be a constant flow of visitors to Warmerville including Eco-tourists, industrialists, financiers, pastoralists and politicians, all following the developing “Good Life Commune” with keen interest.

The “Solutions” proposed by the Warmertariat are not new in either method or content. As we have seen so many times in our history, there are many with solutions but very few with the questions.

“It seems to me that the widespread acceptance of the global warming dogma has become one of the main, most costly and most undemocratic public policy mistakes in generations. The previous one was communism.”

Czech Republic President, Václav Klaus.

Like many animal activists, this author states a number of things as fact, when they are anything but.

For instance, on the subject of alleged antibiotic resistance, the author should be aware that antibiotics are not routinely used in meat production in Australia.

When antibiotics *are* used to treat infections in animals, in the dairy industry at least there are strict protocols for how long cows have to be "off the vat", while antibiotics are in their system. Any farmer tempted to try and cheat the system quickly loses out, as dairy wholesalers test every batch of milk, and contaminated milk is dumped and not paid for.

I would also be curious to know if the author advocates organic production?