Office for Environmental Programs - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 1 of 1
-
ItemMeat and dairy: contributions to climate change( 2011)This literature review draws on peer-reviewed and other publications to explore how the rearing of livestock and the consumption of meat and dairy products contributes to global warming, and the ways we might mitigate these emissions. It describes how the impact of livestock on climate change has emerged as a controversial new angle on a long-running critique of the environmental, and other, impacts associated with domestic livestock and our consumption of meat and dairy. The essay also discusses how emissions arising from farming and eating domestic livestock can be quantified from both `farm (or `production') and `fork' (or `consumption') perspectives, and shows how the selection of accounting methods has a significant influence on the level of impact ascribed to livestock overall as well as the relative contributions by different animals and farming systems. A range of solutions to mitigate these emissions is put forward in the literature. These include technological initiatives to achieve greater production and greater efficiency, in an effort to meet projected increases in demand for animal-based foods. However, the mitigation potential of these appear to be limited, particularly in light of the animal welfare, social and environmental trade-offs that may be required to implement these. Alternative solutions focus on reducing that demand through changes in consumption patterns - from eating less meat and eating less beef, to converging on equitable consumption levels around the world, and finally to stopping the consumption of meat and dairy altogether. A small number of UK authors propose an approach that defines supply by the amount of livestock that could be produced on marginal lands or by-products we cannot eat.