Improvements in livestock production have reduced greenhouse gas emissions but the media continues to report outdated or erroneous numbers
BANFF, Alta. — Driving a Prius and eating one hamburger a week has the same carbon footprint as driving a Hummer?
Frank Mitloehner scoffs at an advertisement that makes this claim, which is likely based on a comment once made by author Michael Pollen that he has since retracted.
But Mitloehner, an air quality specialist and professor of animal science at the University of California, said public perception of livestock as big greenhouse gas emitters persists, even though facts say otherwise. Livestock producers can’t afford to ignore that.
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“I don’t really have to go into depth here with respect to whether or not the topic of livestock and climate change is a big one for the industry. It clearly is,” he told those at the Banff Pork Seminar Jan. 11.
“I know many of the people in this room here are critical of this discussion and say, ‘we don’t really believe in climate change and we definitely don’t believe that livestock has anything to do with it.’
“I think that this is a point that you really have to revisit because if this issue is so pressing to your consumers … and you said, ‘we don’t believe in it, leave us alone with it,’ then you have a problem. Then you have a major problem.”
Figures accepted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency show livestock production is re-sponsible for 4.2 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
Energy production and use are responsible for 30 percent and transportation generates 27 percent.
However, mainstream media persists in repeating that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gases, an erroneous number that once appeared in a 2006 Food and Agriculture report, Mitloehner said. The FAO itself has agreed the figure was wrong and that livestock’s contribution is much lower.
Among livestock, beef and dairy cattle are the main emitters of greenhouse gas, said Mitloehner, but in North America, improvements in reproductive efficiency, veterinary care, genetics and energy dense feeds have lowered the environmental impact relative to what these cattle produce.
Ninety million cattle now produce the same amount of beef that in 1970 required 140 million cattle. As well, there are 16 million fewer dairy cows in the U.S. than there were in 1950, but they produce 60 percent more milk.
Mitloehner said the carbon footprint of a glass of milk in North America is two-thirds smaller today than it was 70 years ago.
“Production intensity and emission intensity are inversely related. That is one of the most important key messages, something that the public is totally unaware of,” he said.
“This is a relationship that is totally unknown to the people buying your products. They think the opposite is true. They think high producing animals are bad for environment.”
Similarly, pork producers have reduced their number of animals but increased meat production.
“You’re definitely not getting the credit for it” in the eyes of consumers, said Mitloehner.
He speculated about why the Humane Society of the United States, well known for its campaign against animal agriculture and its effect on climate change, doesn’t turn its focus on horses.
He said there are more horses than dairy cows in the U.S. today. Horses produce manure and methane, as do dairy cows, but they do not contribute to human nutrition.
Agricultural production will have to intensify to feed a growing world population, said Mitloehner, which has implications for the environment.
As an example, it takes 20 cows in India to produce as much milk as one North American cow, meaning every Indian cow has a much higher carbon footprint.
As for pigs, he said China has 50 million sows that produce about one billion piglets annually. Of those piglets, 40 percent die before weaning, and that means 400 million pigs never make it to market.
Future food supplies will depend on improving production in less developed countries, said Mitloehner.
“We have to intensify throughout the world in ways that we have done this in North America. We must. We have no choice.”
