More than 100 world leaders agreed at this year’s United Nations climate summit to make their agriculture and food systems a key part of their plans to fight climate change, aiming for improvements in a sector responsible for around a third of global warming emissions.
With livestock responsible for more than half of these emissions, meat and dairy are at the center of many agricultural conversations at COP28 in Dubai. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has supplemented these conversations with an updated report that includes ways to reduce livestock emissions.
“You can’t achieve climate targets without doing something about the system, and in this case about livestock farming,” said Francesco Tubiello, a senior statistician at the FAO who worked on the report. It briefly discusses eating less meat, but especially ways in which the meat industry can improve productivity and efficiency.
Change won’t be easy. Like fossil fuel producers, the meat industry came out forcefully to protect its interests during the talks, including branding their practices as “sustainable food,” a report said. A potential competitor, alternative meat, has gone through a difficult period after initial enthusiasm and investment.
And then there are the consumers themselves, who have shown little interest in changing their eating habits, even as meat’s contribution to emissions has received more attention.
“The reality is that Americans are eating as much meat now as they were 50 years ago,” says Maureen Ogle, historian and author of In Meat We Trust, a history of the meat industry in America.
Ogle said that in recent years, U.S. producers have vigorously opposed anything that threatened their market — from a proposal to include “Meatless Mondays” in national dietary guidelines to research reports highlighting the health risks of eating too much red meat.
The Guardian and DeSmog reported last month that the meat industry has planned a major presence at COP28, to spread the message that meat is good for the environment. The news media cited documents from the Global Meat Alliance, an industry-funded group, that they said contained reports that grazing livestock can help maintain healthy soils and that meat can help in food-insecure countries.
The alliance told The Guardian that its work “includes visibility at intergovernmental events that are often dominated by an anti-meat narrative.” In an emailed statement to AP, the group said it welcomes the focus on food and agriculture on global agendas such as COP28.
“We welcome clear rules and standards for reducing agricultural emissions at these times, and the industry is ready to support these efforts while maintaining a place in the value chain,” the statement said.
Many governments around the world have long promoted meat, changing cultural eating habits around meat, says Wilson Warren, professor of history at Western Michigan University. That has turned meat into an industry driven by multi-national corporations worth billions of dollars. In the United States, farmers pay subsidies to create overproduction so meat can be sold more cheaply to urban populations, Ogle said.
In both America and the European Union, livestock farming receives much more public financial support and lobbying attention than meat alternatives, according to a study by Stanford University this summer. That’s a problem because better consumer options are needed, said one of the co-authors, Simona Vallone, a researcher now at Sustainable San Mateo County.
“We are in this delicate moment where we have to make decisions at the government level and also at the global level,” Vallone said. If rapidly reducing emissions is the goal, she added, “we don’t have much time to change our system.”
Food systems were the focus of some protesters. Lei Chu, a vegan activist, said it is important for people to think about the importance of what they eat for the world.
“If this action is killing our earth, we must change it,” she said.
Jason Weller, Global Chief Sustainability Officer at Brazil-based JBS, one of the world’s largest meat producers, said: “The short-sighted focus on reducing meat consumption does not reflect reality or the science.” Citing the FAO report, he said productivity improvements will have the biggest impact on reducing emissions.
When asked whether people in countries like the US should reduce their meat consumption to stay within agreed-upon warming limits, US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack pivoted to discuss nutritional security, product labeling and consumer education, which he said would help consumers help “create market”. decisions that will accelerate and drive change.”
Experts say it is more realistic for people in richer countries to eat slightly less red meat than for everyone to stop eating meat altogether. “It’s quite dramatic, the intensity of emissions in the U.S. from beef versus non-ruminant, pork and poultry,” said Tom Hertel, professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University.
At a side event at COP28, Lawrence Haddad, of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, agreed. He said: “People in the Global North cannot lecture people in the Global South about eating less meat.”
Meanwhile, organizations like the FAO and private companies say making the existing system even more efficient could be part of the solution. The FAO report includes sections on improving animals through selective breeding and tailoring animal nutrition to reduce their methane emissions. Ruminants like cows emit methane because of the way their digestive systems work, but changing their diet can help somewhat.
The agricultural declaration that world leaders signed at the start of COP28 is a loose promise, not a binding agreement. Leaders “must advocate for change within the formal climate negotiations,” said Ruth Davis, a former adviser to the UK government’s COP26 team on food and nature.
Policymakers should focus on improving enforcement of potentially misleading sustainability claims, as well as better incentivizing farmers to implement truly green practices, said Scott Faber, senior vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group.
He said, “Wouldn’t it be better if major meat producers work with groups like EWG to ensure that those scarce USDA conservation dollars actually go toward the practices that are changing the way we feed animals, how we handle their waste, how we manage their movements, how do we fertilize their feed?”
But as much as companies and governments play a role, Purdue’s Hertel agreed with Ogle that consumers are at the heart of the system.
“For a lot of people, it probably comes down to cost,” Hertel said of choosing traditional meat at the grocery store. If meat alternatives were a lot cheaper and tasted about the same, “I think you’d see more movement in that direction,” he said.
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Associated Press journalist Joshua Bickel contributed to this report from Dubai.
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Read more about AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment
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Follow Melina Walling on X: @MelinaWalling.
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