I do not think I can take any more interventions, because I suspect the winding-up speeches will begin soon, and I have been generous in giving way.
Raj Patel wrote in “Stuffed and Starved”:
“The amount of grains fed to US livestock would be enough to feed 840 million people on a plant-based diet. The number of food-insecure people in the world in 2006 was, incidentally, 854 million”.
I also cited figures about the water footprint. It takes 100 times as much water to produce 1 kg of beef as it does to grow 1 kg of vegetables. It takes 2.2 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce a single calorie of plant protein. It takes almost 21 square metres of land to produce 1 kg of beef, if we factor in animal feed, compared with 0.3 square metres to produce 1 kg of vegetables; I could go on. That was a 2006 report, but more recently Professor Mark Sutton, the lead author of a UN environment programme study published in February, entitled “Our Nutrient World”, called for people to become what he called demitarians, and eat half as much meat as they do now. He said:
“Unless action is taken increases in pollution and the per capita consumption of energy and animal products will exacerbate nutrient losses, pollution levels and land degradation, further threatening the quality of our water, air and soils, affecting climate and biodiversity”.
In 2009, a report was produced called “How Low Can We Go?”. It was co-authored by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Food Climate Research Network set up by Dr Tara Garnett, who is now at the university of Oxford. It gave scenarios in which cuts in food system emissions would mean we could reduce the total UK carbon footprint by 20%—that is, make a 70% cut in the UK food carbon footprint, which is currently about 30% of the UK total. It concluded:
“A reduction in consumption of livestock products could play a significant role in any deep and long-term abatement strategy”
to cut greenhouse gas emissions
“from the UK’s food chain.”
Another relevant paper was called “Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: food and agriculture” and was published in The Lancet in December 2009. It was a collaboration between the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University, Canberra, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Food Climate Research Network and the London International Development Centre. I am sure that hon. Members do not need me to tell them that work published in The Lancet is peer-reviewed. I would say that that is a considerably more rigorous process than the all-party group inquiry that we have heard about. The paper concluded:
“Agricultural food production and agriculturally-related change in land use substantially contribute to greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide. Four-fifths of agricultural emissions arise from the livestock sector. Although livestock products are a source of some essential nutrients, they provide large amounts of saturated fat, which is a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease. We considered potential strategies for the agricultural sector to meet the target recommended by the UK Committee on Climate Change to reduce UK emissions from the concentrations recorded in 1990 by 80% by 2050, which would require a 50% reduction by 2030. With use of the UK as a case study, we identified that a combination of agricultural technological improvements and a 30% reduction in livestock production would be needed to meet this target”.
The final report I want to mention is “Setting the Table”, commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and published by the Sustainable Development Commission in December 2009. It found that eliminating waste, cutting fatty and sugary foods and reducing meat and dairy consumption would make the biggest contribution towards improving health and reducing the environmental impacts of the food system. The SDC’s research found evidence that consuming only fish from sustainable stocks, eating more seasonal food, cutting out bottled water, shopping on foot, and some other things not directly related to the meat industry would contribute towards a more sustainable diet. However, it concluded that the most significant health and environmental benefits were from reducing meat and dairy, cutting food and drink of low nutritional value and reducing food waste.
I appreciate the intention of hon. Members who are present today to defend the UK beef and sheep industry; but I do not think it is helpful, in doing that, to ignore much of the other evidence. We cannot look at the issues in isolation. We should begin by acknowledging that there is a problem, and address that. I am slightly concerned that EBLEX, the organisation for the British beef and sheep industry, supports the all-party group, and is thanked in the report. I also note that Weber Shandwick provides the secretariat for the group, and has been thanked for its help in compiling the report. I do not know quite what clients it has that have led to its interest in the issue, but I think vested interests are clearly at work. I was going to say they are trying to pull the wool over our eyes—I have managed to make an entire speech without sheep or cow-related puns until now; I am not sure that the Minister or my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) will manage that. He already has a twinkle in his eye. I think that there is, to an extent, an attempt to pull the wool over our eyes, and I urge Ministers to consider the issue in the round, rather than looking only at the narrow points made in the report.
3.29 pm