Intensive livestock farming is needed to stem runaway global growth in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from increased international meat consumption, a leading United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) specialist has argued.
Dr Henning Steinfeld, an agricultural economist and head of the Livestock Sector Analysis and Policy branch of the FAO, said expecting farmers in developing countries to restrict animal husbandry was unrealistic. That was because 1bn people around the globe relied on livestock - and not just for meat consumption.
He accepted the inefficiencies inherent in meat production and said "agriculture has to be based on crops". However, he stressed that modern methods of livestock production would be required, claiming: "Intensive systems are, on balance, far more climate benign than extensive systems."
"Production of livestock is often a symptom of poverty," said Seinfeld. He was responding to calls for westerners to reduce their meat consumption to help curb global warming made by Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in a lecture organised by Compassion in World Farming (CIWF).
However, Pachauri said meat production represented 18% of human-induced GHG emissions, including 37% of global emissions of methane, which has 23 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. It also represented 65% of emissions of nitrous oxide, with 296 times the potential of carbon dioxide.
Steinfeld's views were rejected by animal welfare groups such as CIWF and environmental lobbies, which believe that without curbing global meat consumption global warming would not be properly addressed. "If we continue to consume meat and dairy at the current rate both animals and the planet will suffer," said Joyce D'Silva, ambassador for CIWF. "Factory farming is unsustainable and inhumane."
Expert on the links between meat consumption, climate change and health, Dr John Powles, said the rich world needed to halve its consumption by 2050 to have any effect.