Livestock's Long Shadow

Livestock's Long Shadow
Author	Henning Steinfeld, Pierre Gerber, Tom Wassenaar, Vincent Castel, Mauricio Rosales, Cees de Haan.
Language	English
Genre	Agriculture Environment
Publisher	Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publication date	2006
Media type	book website
Pages	390 pp
ISBN	92-5-105571-8
OCLC	77563364
LC Class	SF140.E25 S744 2006

Livestock's Long Shadow - Environmental Issues and Options is a United Nations report, released by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on 29 November 2006,^[1] that "aims to assess the full impact of the livestock sector on environmental problems, along with potential technical and policy approaches to mitigation".^[1]

The assessment was based on the most recent and complete data available, taking into account direct impacts, along with the impacts of feed crop agriculture required for livestock production. The report states that the livestock sector is one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. The findings of this report suggest that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.

Based on this report, senior U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization official Dr. Henning Steinfeld stated that the meat industry is “one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems" and that "urgent action is required to remedy the situation."^[2]

Following a Life Cycle Analysis approach, the report evaluates "that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport.".^[3] GHG emissions arise from feed production (e.g. chemical fertilizer production, deforestation for pasture and feed crops, cultivation of feed crops, feed transport and soil organic matter losses in pastures and feed crops), animal production (e.g. enteric fermentation and methane and nitrous oxide emissions from manure) and as a result of the transportation of animal products. Following this approach the report estimates that livestock contributes to about 9% of total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, but 37% of methane and 65% of nitrous oxide emissions. Along the animal food chain, main sources of emissions are:

• Land use and land use change: 2.5 Giga tonnes CO₂ equivalent; including forest and other natural vegetation replaced by pasture and feed crop in the Neotropics (CO₂) and carbon release from soils such as pasture and arable land dedicated to feed production (CO₂)
• Feed Production (except carbon released from soil): 0.4 Giga tonnes CO₂ equivalent, including fossil fuel used in manufacturing chemical fertilizer for feed crops (CO₂) and chemical fertilizer application on feedcrops and leguminous feed crop (N₂O, NH₃)
• Animal production: 1.9 Giga tonnes CO₂ equivalent, including enteric fermentation from ruminants (CH₄) and on-farm fossil fuel use (CO₂)
• Manure Management: 2.2 Giga tonnes CO₂ equivalent, mainly through manure storage, application and deposition (CH₄, N₂O, NH₃)
• Processing and international transport: 0.03 Giga tonnes CO₂ equivalent

Questions about methodology

Meat industry sources object to the methodology used in the UN report, notably that deforestation for livestock was included in the calculations. These sources point out that pasture-grass-feeding, such as is common in New Zealand, may lead to lower emissions attributable to livestock, despite the fact that methane and nitrous oxide from livestock make up half of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions.^[4] A study in the Journal of Animal Science comparing the methane emissions from grazing and feedlot cattle concluded that grass-fed cattle produce about 4 times more methane than grain-fed cattle. "These measurements clearly document higher CH₄ production (about four times) for cattle receiving low-quality, high-fiber diets than for cattle fed high-grain diets." ^[5]

An April 2008 inventory report of emissions in the United States, by the United States Environmental Protection Agency^[6] found "In 2006, emissions sources contained within the Agricultural Chapters were responsible for emissions of … 6 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions." The Agricultural Chapters contained topics such as rice production, enteric fermentation in domestic livestock, livestock manure management, and agricultural soil management, but omitted fuel combustion, agricultural CO₂ fluxes, and other land use changes. These were placed separately into the Energy chapter, Land Use, Land-Use Change chapter, and Forestry Chapter.^[6] This is also true in the US EPA's 2009 Draft U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report.^[7]

References to the report

United States ex-Vice President Al Gore was challenged by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in a letter dated March 7, 2007 to become a vegan, and cited the Livestock's Long Shadow report as evidence that a change to a vegan diet was the single biggest change an individual could make to counter the effects of climate change. In its letter, PETA noted that Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, which outlines the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming, failed to mention either the effects of diet or the meat industry on climate change.^[8] The report was the main scientific source for the documentary Meat The Truth of Marianne Thieme (2007).

See also

• Environmental issues with agriculture
• Stock-free agriculture
• Veganism

References

External links

• Livestock's Long Shadow - Environmental Issues and Options. Food and Agriculture Organisation. 2006. ISBN 92-5-105571-8. 
• Global Warming: Meat The Truth. http://www.GlobeTransformer.org. 
• Animal Ag’s Role in Greenhouse Gas Production, a webcast by the Livestock and Poultry Environmental Learning Center.
• UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet, The Guardian, June 2010