We are urgently developing research requirements with other European laboratories to make sure we understand and the disease (Schmallenberg) better.Livestock farmers on climate change front line
THE English Beef and Lamb Executive has launched an ambitious climate change strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock sector.
Eblex presented its document, ‘Change in the Air: The English Beef and Sheep Production Roadmap’, to industry leaders and Government representatives in Westminster today (Monday, November 30).
The roadmap is in direct response to Defra’s target to reduce farm emissions by 11 per cent from current levels by 2020 and puts livestock farmers on the front line to make a change.
It also hits back at campaigners who have called on consumers to reduce their consumption of meat to cut emissions.
John Cross, Eblex chairman, said livestock production was essential to the well-being of the British countryside and said farmers were part of the solution in the fight against climate change, not part of the problem.
“Around 60 per cent of our agricultural land is grassland. Humans can’t eat grass so we have a situation where ruminants look after the grassland and produce something nutritious for humans to eat.”
He said the roadmap was the ‘first phase’ to help beef and sheep producers reduce the negative impact of their business through more efficient breeding, feeding and management techniques.
“This document aims to share knowledge and research on changes producers can make to bring tangible reductions in emissions from their production systems.
“I believe it will bring significant benefits, not just for the environment, but also to our economic performance and the future health of the industry,” he said.
England’s 75,000 livestock farmers supply more than 1.1 million tonnes of meat to the human food chain every year, with a farmgate value of £3 billion.
However, this production accounts for nearly half of the UK’s total methane and nitrous oxide emissions.
Jim Fitzpatrick, Food and Farming Minister, praised Eblex for tackling the issues head-on.
“I welcome your recognition of the importance of the challenges that climate change poses to the livestock industry,” he said.
“I want to reiterate the importance that I place on us having a profitable and dynamic domestic livestock industry. This pledge to reduce emissions is a significant step,” he added.
Readers' comments (6)
Anonymous | 30 November 2009 6:00 pm
Why we need true facts!
Ten facts about global warming
THEY don’t want you to know
Britain is one degree Celsius cooler now than it was at the time of the Domesday book.
Greenland got its name from the verdant pastures that attracted the Norse settlers under Eric the Red in 986. They carried on their normal way of life (based on cattle, grain, hay and herring) for 300 years until the Little Ice Age, when they were driven off by the encroaching ice and the Inuit took over. The ice and the Inuit are still there.
Carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas. In the atmosphere there is over a hundred times the concentration of water vapour, which is the dominant greenhouse gas.
Without the Greenhouse Effect there would be no life on Earth.
Temperature measurements by satellite, radio sonde balloons and well maintained rural surface stations in the West show no significant warming.
The evidence of significant warming comes from surface stations that are probably affected by a variety of factors that contaminate the data.
Computer models of the climate are worthless, as they are based on many assumptions about interactions between climate factors that are still unknown to science. They are generally unstable and chaotic, giving a wide variety of answers depending on the input assumptions.
The Kyoto agreement would have a devastating effect on the world economy but, since carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas, an undetectable effect on the climate.
The IPCC (the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has been the main engine for promoting the global warming scare. It has become notorious for its corrupt practices of doctoring its reports and executive summaries, after they have been approved by the participating scientists, to conform to its political objectives
The really big lie about man-made global warming is that almost all scientists accept it. More than 4,000 scientists from 106 countries, including 72 Nobel prize winners, signed the Heidelberg Appeal (1992), calling for a rational scientific approach to environmental problems. Many senior scientists have also supported The Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming (1992), The Leipzig Declaration (1997) and finally the Oregon Petition (1998) which received the signatures of over 19,000 scientists.
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Anonymous | 1 December 2009 8:57 am
'Computer models of the climate are worthless, as they are based on many assumptions...'
And yet you're analysis, based on conjecture and poor science is not worthless??
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Mick MOOR | 3 December 2009 9:03 am
Computer models ARE worthless. Who else can remember the Club of Rome publishing "Limits to Growth" way back in the late sixties? It is interesting to compare their predictions, usig the most advansed computers of the day, to what has actually happened! Of course our recent 'babeque summer' was predicted by the same met office computer that prdicts global warming.
The real problem is a lackof scientific rigour. In brief, Scientific method states that one postulates a hypothesis, caries out work to test this and prove it correct, then publishes the results in a form that can be tested by others. Insulting the critcs by comparing them to believers in the flat earth,is hardly testing. Adjusting the results and then keeping the data secret is also unscientific, so these so-called scientists are just that; so-called.
The majority view is not necessarily the correct view.
Carbon dioxide is the gas used by plants to build up sugars and complex starches. Studies on limiting factors for plant growth show that more carbon dioxide produces more growth, hence its use in dutch greenhouses.
I wonder at what stage climate change believers would have tried to stop evolution, or has it just reached a stage of perfection? Who is arrogant enough to claim to understand and interfere with God's work?
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Anonymous | 4 December 2009 12:15 pm
Ah yes, but by suggesting its God's work being interferred with is linking your scientific findings to a theory not grounded in science and one never proven (and admittedly never proven wrong).
And, climate change as we have seen it so far is man made, so how can reducing that impact that be interferring with God's work? Surely it is instead adressing our own impact on the natural world.
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Caroline | 4 December 2009 5:41 pm
It seems to me that farm animals have become scapegoats; it is we humans who are responsible for the climate mess and it should be we who reduce our various emissions. Farm animals are just existing as they always have...
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sebastian miro | 9 December 2009 7:47 pm
i am sure many people that writes like meat and dairy; but many have not visited a factory farm, have not seen a farm animal drinking water and producing vast amount of manure, have not visited a beautiful town that you remember had a nice forest and is now, unfortunately a monotonous pasture field, so let s put facts per year:
a forest : can absorb 200 tons of CO2
a pasture: can absorb 20 tons of CO2
a pasture with an animal in it: absorb only a fraction of the 20 tons and... that is when methane is produce, carbon cost in food and transportation is added in, refrigeration, etc etc etc etc, are produce.
want facts about health cost?
want facts about pollution cost?
that is your homework, sorry, i like proactive people
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