Source:  Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE.COM, 6/2/10

The United Nations' Environment Programme (UNEP) is renewing the call for consumers to eat less meat as part of efforts to stem global warming.

UNEP's International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management is due to release a report Wednesday, "Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production: Priority Products and Materials," in conjunction with the European Commission, a UNEP partner, in Brussels.

The report notes that "Current patterns of production and consumption of both fossil fuels and food are draining freshwater supplies; triggering losses of economically important ecosystems such as forests; intensifying disease and death rates and raising levels of pollution to unsustainable levels," according to materials posted on UNEP's Web site.

"Perhaps controversially, [the report] … calls for a significant shift in diets away from animal-based proteins toward more vegetable-based foods in order to dramatically reduce pressures on the environment," UNEP says in a news release.

The 149-page report provides science-based priorities for world environmental efforts — ranking products, materials and economic and lifestyle activities according to their environmental and resource impacts, UNEP says. The report indicates that animals are fed more than half of all world crops, and that food production overall accounts for 19 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, 70 percent of global freshwater consumption and 38 percent of total land use.

Therefore says the report, "a substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."

In 2006, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization published a report, "Livestock's Long Shadow," which said that animal agriculture alone accounted for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. That statistic was called into question by University of California, Davis Prof. Frank M. Mitloehner, who said that the calculations used for the report were flawed. 

The FAO subsequently said that it would revisit the calculations used in its 2006 report. 

The new report is the latest in a series from the 27 experts that constitute the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management.

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