Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

The report on global land use and agriculture from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change comes amid accelerating deforestation in the Amazon.

via Quirin Schiermeier

Cattle farming, shown here in northern Brazil, is emission-intensive and often accompanies large-scale deforestation.Credit: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty

Efforts to curb greenhouse gas-emissions and the impacts of global warming will fall significantly short without drastic changes in global land use, agriculture and human diets, leading researchers warn in a high-level report commissioned by the United Nations.

The special report on climate and land by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describes plant-based diets as a major opportunity for mitigating and adapting to climate change ― and includes a policy recommendation to reduce meat consumption. Global warming will happen faster than we think

On 8 August, the IPCC released a summary of the report, which is designed to inform upcoming climate negotiations amidst the worsening global climate crisis. More than 100 experts compiled the report in recent months, around half of whom hail from developing countries.

“We don’t want to tell people what to eat,” says Hans-Otto Pörtner, an ecologist who co-chairs the IPCC’s working group on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. “But it would indeed be beneficial, for both climate and human health, if people in many rich countries consumed less meat, and if politics would create appropriate incentives to that effect.”

Researchers also note the relevance of the report to tropical rainforests, where concerns are mounting about accelerating rates of deforestation. The Amazon rainforests is a huge carbon sink that acts to cool global temperature, but rates of deforestation are rising, in part due to the policies and actions of the government of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Unstopped, deforestation could turn much of the remaining Amazon forests into a degraded type of desert, possibly releasing over 50 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere in 30 to 50 years, says Carlos Nobre, a climate scientist at the University of São Paolo in Brazil. “That’s very worrying,” he says.

“Unfortunately, some countries don’t seem to understand the dire need of stopping deforestation in the tropics,” says Pörtner. “We cannot force any government to interfere. But we hope that our report will sufficiently influence public opinion to that effect.”

Paris goals

While fossil fuel burning for energy generation and transport garners the most attention, activities relating to land management, including agriculture and forestry, produce almost a quarter of heat-trapping gases. The race to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels ― the goal of the international Paris climate agreement reached in 2015 ― might be a lost battle unless land is used in a more sustainable and climate-friendly way, the latest IPCC report says. How much can forests fight climate change?

The report highlights the need to preserve and restore forests, which soak up carbon from the air, and peat lands, which release carbon if dug up. Cattle raised on pastures of cleared woodland are particularly emission-intensive, it says. This practice often comes with large-scale deforestation such as in Brazil or Colombia. Cows also produce large amount of methane, a potent greenhouse-gas, as they digest their food.

The report states with high confidence that balanced diets featuring plant-based, and sustainably-produced animal-sourced, food “present major opportunities for adaptation and mitigation while generating significant co-benefits in terms of human health”.

By 2050, dietary changes could free millions of square kilometres of land, and reduce global CO2 emissions by up to eight billion tonnes per year, relative to business as usual, the scientists estimate.

“It’s really exciting that the IPCC is getting such a strong message across,” says Ruth Richardson, the Toronto, Canada-based executive director at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, a strategic coalitions of philanthropic foundations. “We need a radical transformation, not incremental shifts, towards a global land use and food system that serves our climate needs.”

Careful management

The report cautions that land must remain productive to feed a rising world population. Warming enhances plant growth in some regions, but in others ― including northern Eurasia, parts of North America, Central Asia and tropical Africa ― increasing water stress seems to reduce the rate of photosynthesis. So the use of biofuel crops and the creation of new forests― seen as measures with the potential to mitigate global warming ― must be carefully managed to avoid the risk of food shortage and biodiversity loss, the report says. Droughts, heatwaves and floods: How to tell when climate change is to blame

Farmers and communities around the world must also reckon with more intense rainfall, floods and droughts resulting from climate change, warns the IPCC. Land degradation and expanding deserts threaten to affect food security, increase poverty and drive migration, the report says.

About a quarter of the Earth’s land area appears to suffer soil degradation already ― and climate change is expected to make thing worse, particularly in low-lying coastal areas, river deltas, drylands and permafrost areas. Sea level rise is adding to coastal erosion in some regions, the report says.

Industrialised farming practices are responsible for much of the observed soil erosion and pollution, says Andre Laperrière, the Oxford, UK-based executive director of Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition, an initiative to make relevant scientific information accessible worldwide.

The report might provide a much-needed, authoritative call to action, he says. “The biggest hurdle we face is to try and teach about half a billion farmers globally to re-work their agricultural model to be carbon sensitive.“

Nobre also hopes that the IPCC’s voice will give greater prominence to land use issues in upcoming climate talks. “I think that the policy implications of the report will be positive in terms of pushing all tropical countries to aim at reducing deforestation rates,” he says.

Regular assessments

Since 1990, the IPCC has regularly assessed the scientific literature, producing comprehensive reports every six years, and special reports on specific aspects of climate change ― such as today’s― at irregular intervals. Soviet Union’s collapse led to massive drop in carbon emissions

A special report released last year concluded that global greenhouse-gas emissions which hit an all-time high of more than 37 billion tonnes in 2018 must sharply decline in the very near future to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees ― and that this will require drastic action without further delay. The IPCC’s next special report, about the ocean and ice sheets in in a changing climate, is due next month.

Governments from across the world will consider the IPCC’s latest findings at a UN climate summit next month in New York. The next round of climate talks of parties to the Paris agreement will then take place in December in Santiago, Chile.

António Guterres, the UN’s climate secretary, said last week that it is “absolutely essential” to implement that landmark agreement ― and “to do so with an enhanced ambition”.

“We need to mainstream climate change risks across all decisions,” he said. “That is why I am telling leaders don’t come to the summit with beautiful speeches.”

Updates & Corrections

• Correction 08 August 2019: An earlier version of the story incorrectly stated that hundreds of experts compiled the latest IPCC report.
• Update 08 August 2019: The fact that around half the experts who compiled the latest IPCC report hail from developing countries has been added to the story.

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EXPOSED! What the Beef Industry Pumps Into Your Dinner!

Revealed: What the Beef Industry Pumps Into Your Dinner

A common industry practice puts consumers at higher risks for eating food contaminated by deadly pathogens — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Photo Credit: © Lisovskaya Natalia/ Shutterstock.com

 If acclaimed authors Upton Sinclair (The Jungle), Jeremy Rifkin (Beyond Beef) and John Robbins (Diet for a New America) haven’t given you enough reasons over the last century to be wary of the meat industry, then a year-long investigation by the Kansas City Star may do the trick.

Mike McGraw kicks off the KC Star’s investigative series by introducing Margaret Lamkin, who has been forced to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of her life, after a medium-rare steak she ordered three years ago at Applebee’s was contaminated with a pathogen. The resulting illness destroyed her colon.

Of course we already know about E. coli and other food-borne pathogens; people have gotten sick from everything from spinach to peanut butter. But the news here is that what sickened Lamkin wasn’t just the meat, but a process the industry uses to tenderize it. McGraw explains:

The Kansas City Star investigated what the industry calls “bladed” or “needled” beef, and found the process exposes Americans to a higher risk of E. coli poisoning than cuts of meat that have not been tenderized.

… Although blading and injecting marinades into meat add value for the beef industry, that also can drive pathogens — including the E. coli O157:H7 that destroyed Lamkin’s colon — deeper into the meat.

By using this process (which according to the story, 90 percent of processors will use, depending on the cut), people are at a greater risk of exposure to life-threatening illness. And consumers have no way of knowing whether their meat has undergone this process.

Ending up with a fecal-contaminated burger is bad, but it’s just the beginning of what the investigation uncovered. Here are the other key findings, as McGraw writes:

•  Large beef plants, based on volume alone, contribute disproportionately to the incidence of meat-borne pathogens.

•  Big Beef and other processors are co-mingling ground beef from many different cattle, some from outside the United States, adding to the difficulty health officials have tracking contaminated products to their source. The industry also has resisted labeling some products, including mechanically tenderized meat, to warn consumers and restaurants to cook it thoroughly.

•  Big Beef is injecting millions of dollars of growth hormones and antibiotics into cattle, partly to fatten them quickly for market. Many experts believe that years of overuse and misuse of such drugs contributes to antibiotic-resistant pathogens in humans, meaning illnesses once treated with a regimen of antibiotics are much harder to control.

•  Big Beef is using its political pull, public relations campaigns and the supportive science it sponsors to influence federal dietary guidelines and recast steaks and burgers as “health foods” people should eat every day. It even persuaded the American Heart Association to certify beef as “heart healthy.”

Read the full investigation, and think about how this scenario fits into the larger picture of what we deem acceptable as a food system. Just last month Consumer Reports shared frightening findings about pork.

And there is a ray of good news. Ocean Robbins wrote today:

People are taking an increasing interest in the way that the animals raised for food are treated. In fact, a poll conducted by Lake Research partners found that 94 percent of Americans agree that animals raised for food on farms deserve to be free from cruelty. Nine U.S. states have now joined the entire European Union in banning gestational crates for pigs, and Australia’s two largest supermarket chains now sell only cage-free eggs in their house brands.

The demand is growing for food that is organic, sustainable, fair trade, GMO-free, humane, and healthy. In cities around the world, we’re seeing more and more farmer’s markets (a nearly three-fold increase in the last decade), and more young people getting back into farming. Grocery stores (even big national chains) are displaying local, natural and organic foods with pride. The movements for healthy food are growing fast, and starting to become a political force.

Investigations like the one done by the Kansas City Star are crucial for public education, as is support for the growing food movement that needs help in turning purchasing power at the market into political power that can affect decisions about food safety and industry practices.

“Big agribusiness would probably like us all to sit alone in the dark, munching on highly processed, genetically engineered, chemical-laden, pesticide-contaminated pseudo-foods,” Robbins writes. “But the tide of history is turning, and regardless of how much they spend attempting to maintain their hold on our food systems, more and more people are saying NO to foods that lead to illness, and YES to foods that help us heal.”

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• This Report May Make You Give Up Rare Steak For The Rest Of Your Life (businessinsider.com)
• Disgusting Meat Datapoint Of The Day (timzimmermann.com)