Climate chief urges vegetarian diet
Updated
The head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has called for a worldwide move towards vegetarianism to combat climate change. Speaking in London last night, Rajendra Pachauri made a serious call for people to stop eating red meat. Not surprisingly, the idea has been attacked by Australian farmers.
Presenter: Jane Bardon
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Speakers: Mick Keogh, Australian Farm Institute executive director; Dr Richard Eckhart, Victorian Department of Primary Industries
BARDON: The red meat industry is under attack over its carbon emissions, not from a marginal green group, but one of the world's top scientists. The head of the international panel advising the world's governments on how to reduce global emissions says people should stop eating red meat. There's often much hilarity about the contribution cow burps and farts are making to increasing greenhouse gases and climate change. But to farmers it's no laughing matter. Particularly when Rajendra Pachauri who chairs the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is telling consumers to stop eating as much beef and lamb. Mick Keogh from the Australian Farm Institute says the livestock industry "should be worried about those sorts of calls".
KEOGH: I think in part they are driven by a misunderstanding and a mis-interpretation of livestock emissions and the nature of livestock production systems in Australia.
BARDON: Government accounts say Australia's beef industry is one of the highest emissions producing sectors behind aluminium smelting. Scientists say work on reducing livestock emissions is progressing well. But Dr Richard Eckhart from Melbourne University and the Victorian Department of Primary industries says Governments are going to have to be patient.
ECKHART: There are a range of breeding solutions, solutions around feeding animals, managing animal numbers, and there are some long term options that are being researched as well looking at can we manipulate the animal's rumen to produce less methane, some of them will take longer to commercialise, but others will be reducing methane within the next few years.
BARDON: Dr Richard Eckhart says emissions in sheep and cattle could be reduced by 30 per cent within a few years, and by much more in the longer term. But he says Governments must wait for the science to catch up before calling for people to stop eating meat.
ECKHART: It's way too early to be making statements like that because the research on methane is only just starting to get funding to actually address the problem, we haven't yet given the research a fair go to demonstrate what it can achieve. And not all the land that is currently under grazing is suitable for any other form of agriculture. And so you can't have it both ways, you can't have a world which needs more food and then say we need to cut the emissions from food production.
BARDON: While some consumers in rich countries might stop eating as much red meat, demand is growing rapidly in developing countries. Mick Keogh from the Farm Institute says if people reject red meat, the alternative food they'll demand will also produce more emissions.
KEOGH: If you look at the developing world a lot of the demand is for pork and poultry and fish, which can all be produced locally, but when they're produced locally they often rely on imported grain from developed countries like Australia. It's just not as simple as saying, if we don't eat red meat we're going to save the world.
