Sir, Ben Macintyre paints cows as eco-villains (“The green cow: it’s not emission impossible,” June 11), saying that the world’s cattle emit more greenhouse gas globally than planes, trains and automobiles. Yet recent independent studies from the Netherlands show that the UK’s two million dairy cows produce only 1.2 per cent of UK emissions — that’s the same as our rubbish dumps.
Cow numbers in the UK are actually falling, as are their emissions. But they have been a feature of our landscape for many centuries, and if the land they grazed were cropped instead (to produce alternative foods to dairy), the soil would give up generations of carbon and nitrogen that has been locked away by the grass.
It is also wrong to say that farmers and food manufacturers are not working to reduce emissions. Dairy farms now produce at least 13 per cent less methane than they did 15 years ago. And dairy processors have been cutting emissions as part of the Government’s Climate Change Agreement for years. The industry has even set up its own road map to chart the route to lower emissions by 2020.
In little over ten years 50 per cent of plastic milk bottles will come from recycled plastic, water use will have been slashed on farms and dairies, and energy use will also have fallen dramatically. Renewable energy plants that use farm and factory waste are springing up around the UK, and major dairies are sending almost no waste to landfill.
So, before you tar all cows with the same brush, remember that the whole dairy industry in the UK is working on its carbon hoofprint. And don’t forget that dairy foods are a lot tastier and healthier than the bumper of a 4x4.
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Fergus Mcreynolds
Environment Manager, Dairy UK
Sir, Ben Macintyre is right to point out the urgent need to tackle the meat and dairy industry’s environmental hoofprint, but he is wrong to lay the blame on cows alone. The charge he brings to bear on them — that they release more greenhouse gases than all transport — actually refers to the entire global meat and dairy industry.
Unsavoury bovine habits are responsible for less than a third of the livestock industry’s hoofprint — feed production, transport and fertiliser use also have a dramatic impact. Factory farming on a global scale is at the heart of the problem. To make them grow quickly and produce high yields, animals in factory farms in the UK are being pumped full of imported soy crops — creating demand for massive plantations in South America that are wiping out forests and rural communities. Forced into a corner by supermarkets and badly targeted government subsidies, farmers have had no option but to intensify their farms.
Technofixes such as genetic modification and hormone treatments will lock us further into a destructive cycle of ever-more intensive production — and the paradox of increasing starvation on one hand and rising obesity on the other. We urgently need fair prices for farmers and government subsidies that reward people and planet-friendly farming. We are calling on the Government to look at the meat and dairy industry as a whole and take action to reduce its impact on the climate, people and the health of the planet.
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Kirtana Chandrasekaran
Food Campaigner, Friends of the Earth, London N1
Sir, Ben Macintyre is unduly dainty; the OED says that eructations are voided through the mouth. He means farts.
Tom Jago
London SW6