Sticks and stones...

What’s the worst that could happen? A comment made on social media, in a campaign or strategy document is simply that, surely? The issue we face each day is that even with the best of intentions misconception is perpetuated.

‘Red meat causes cancer.’

‘Animal agriculture is the single biggest contributor to global emissions.’

Both statements are routinely touted as fact not only by the more vocal proponents of a plant based diet but also those in positions of policy and within the food supply chain.

So back to the question, what’s the worse that can happen? If a retailer chose to do a bit of green washing to drive higher sales or a policy maker taxed red meat as it was an ‘easy’ solution to climate change, surely the good outweighs the bad.

There have been several projects over the years that demonstrate how ingrained livestock is to our society not just on an industrial level but at a very real, very personal level. Vegan or not I can guarantee you will interact with a product or process that has been enabled thanks to animal agriculture. Pig 05049 by the very talented Christien Meindertsma showed the incredible array of uses for animal by-products from ceramic brakes on trains to wax crayons, heart valves for children to hair care products and cosmetics.

The point of this?

You never really miss something until it is gone and if we keep wrongfully kicking animal agriculture there is a really strong possibility we will miss the solutions it presents to our current global climate crisis. Mottet and Steinfeld (2018), the authors of the FAO’s oft misquoted report, made it clear that animal agriculture when compared like for like is not the biggest polluter (Agriculture 5.3% of direct emissions compared with transports 14% of direct emissions) and in fact is much smaller than transport and power generation. We also know that in animal agriculture’s pursuit of reducing its carbon foot print we gain the ability to capture the by-products to decarbonise transport. Green hydrogen from ammonia is plentiful and readily extractable for agricultural slurries. Methane from solid manures is increasingly being extracted for electricity generation and now with advances in engines, for use in vehicular transport and industrial vehicles.

Remove animal agriculture and we lose these commodities that make a genuine difference to our everyday lives. We lose the opportunity to use animal agriculture as a solution.

The same is true regarding red meat and its health credentials. How many farmers and industry bodies have been told on social media that they are producers of carcinogens? The Lancet report again oft misquoted uses studies that deliberately injected carcinogens into rats before feeding them meat to cause abnormal cell growth. These studies found even in control groups rats injected with carcinogens develop abnormal cells. They also discovered the presence of calcium reduces that effect yet this is not reported. The human studies used biomarkers that were later found to be corrected as part of normal cell biology and yet we still see well respected bodies citing as fact that red meat has links to cancer.  Again what is the risk? People consider their diet more or perhaps we see an attempt to introduce the ever healthy concept of variety.

In truth, the worst that we could see is a shift away from meat consumption which we know from research offers challenges of health and is likely to increase the impact of climate change. Van Zanten et al (2019) showed that there is such a thing as optimum meat and a full vegan diet globally actually increases the impact of climate change. Put simply not only do we use valuable wastes from animal agriculture but we feed them our wastes to produce protein. Pigs, cattle and sheep all to a greater or lesser degree consume co-products. The food waste from yoghurt, oil, brewing, processing and confectionary industries. From potato peel to chocolate animals take waste destined for landfill and turn it into meat. They also make use of grassland that produces no other viable products. Stop animal agriculture and the wastes have to go somewhere, currently landfill and we still need the protein so it means more land use change and imported proteins. We know animal agriculture supplied with coproducts and locally grown forage (the norm for the UK) have incredibly small carbon footprints.

So What? What’s the take home message?

Simple, before you create a corporate strategy, social media post or policy document that demonises elements of the supply chain

1.      Ask if you are actually basing that on facts as fully presented

2.      Look at the holistic picture. Our objective is net zero, sometimes emissions in one area provide you with a net gain somewhere else

3.      Don’t take animal agriculture for granted, once it’s gone the world will be a poorer place

And all of this before we debate the life cycle assessment of short lived greenhouse gases (SLGHG) the inaccurate recording under GWP100. The lack of full LCAs for sectors beyond food and the bigger question, how do you meet the needs of all the industries reliant on animal by products without utilising fossil fuels, plastics or scarce resources?