Press Release - Beef cattle farming in UK makes positive contribution to national greenhouse gas reduction plans

Beef cattle farming in UK makes positive contribution to national greenhouse gas reduction plans.

The National Beef Association has advised the many scientists and government advisors, who mistakenly cling to the popular misconception that beef cattle in the UK produce so much methane they, endanger the planet, to urgently update their thinking.

It is worried that unless these fundamental misunderstandings are corrected the UK’s important beef cattle industry, which produces products worth at least £5 billion a year at retail level, could be threatened by misinformed carbon control policies which ignore the fundamentally beneficial contribution grazing cattle make to the UK drive to minimise current, and future, greenhouse gas GHG) emissions.

“Objective investigation by independent specialists acknowledges that the UK’s beef production is concentrated on almost five million hectares of grassland which would be impossible to convert to any other form of food production without releasing potentially harmful levels of carbon which is currently captured in soil and locked in by its grass cover,” explained NBA director, Kim Haywood.

“This means that if the turf was removed by a misinformed government drive to produce less food from beef cattle, and more from arable crops cultivated on exposed soil, many times more carbon would be released each year than is currently attributed to the UK’s three million cattle.”

“It is crucial that understanding of the very simple concept that removing the grass cover from soil creates more carbon release problems than it solves is accepted by those government scientific advisors who still think raising food production from non-livestock sources will result in demonstrably lower GHG emissions.”

The NBA is worried that a discredited report, ZeroCarbonBritain, issued just over a year ago by the Centre of Alternative Technology’s (CAT) - and which called for an 80 per cent reduction in the UK’s livestock numbers before 2030 is still influencing the thinking of a large number of the UK’s scientists.

“We too wish to help the UK meet its carbon reduction targets but point out that this cannot be done by substituting food produced by arable cropping for livestock farming products,” said Ms Haywood.

“Around 72 per cent of the UK land mass grows vegetation that can only be eaten by sheep or cattle and cannot be consumed by humans. Grazing this land by livestock not only locks in carbon it also converts grass into a valuable, high protein, meat that has an important place in everyone’s balanced diet. It must be acknowledged that human beings do not eat grass or trees.”

“The beef industry has already discovered that shortening the period between birth and slaughter weight dramatically reduces the GHG emission count for each kilo of beef produced.

“Research in Northern Ireland has shown that the carbon footprint of a 16 month old beef animal is 43 per cent less than a 25 month old of similar weight because the shorter production period means 52 per cent less methane is released.”

“The NBA is actively persuading beef farmers to bring more cattle to slaughter weight in a much shorter time because this is not just GHG efficient it makes good economic sense in reduce cost per kilo of output terms as well.”

For more information contact:

Kim Haywood, NBA director.  Tel. 0131 336 1754/07967 698936