U.N. Livestock-Originated Carbon Emissions Claim Challenged

A U.C. Davis scientist has challenged a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report that asserted that 18 percent of the world’s carbon emissions came from raising livestock.

Dr. Frank Mitloehner, Associate Professor in the Department of Animal Science, noted that the report, which compares the emissions of livestock to those of transportation, failed to calculate emissions the same way for the two sectors being compared.

The FAO statistics said livestock accounted for 18 percent of worldwide carbon emissions while transportation only accounted for 15 percent. However, the livestock number took into account every carbon cost associated with meat production, from clearing land to producing feed down to packaging the meat and transporting it to the supermarket shelf. The transportation-related figure only counted emissions related to the burning of fossil fuel—and did not factor in emissions related to vehicles’ manufacture or the production cycle of petroleum.

The FAO report called for the reduction of meat consumption and the introduction of more sustainable livestock management practices. The FAO says it is working on a follow-up study that would analyze livestock emissions by farming system and by region and provide greater detail about emissions over that lifecycle.

Dr. Mitloehner’s work, which is partially funded by the dairy and beef industries, has prompted controversy—particularly as some flawed data and less than reliable research methods are coming to light elsewhere in the climate change debate.

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