How we raise cattle can combat climate change, but does anyone care?
AT THE supermarket meat counter, you have to choose your sirloin on hunch and price. No butcher is on hand to tell you the provenance of the cow, and the label doesn’t say where in Australia the animal lived, or how it was raised. I pick up a polystyrene tray and peer at the plastic. The label says $28 a kilo; someone in the supermarket hierarchy has decided that’s all I need to know. Deciding what to eat for dinner might seem like a trivial preoccupation in these difficult times but, as it turns out, livestock production is one of the biggest contributors to climate change (according to the UN, livestock is responsible for 18 per cent of the world’s greenhouse emissions, a higher share than transport). The case against meat is explained at length in the Food and Agriculture Organisation report Livestock’s Long Shadow. Cattle possibly pose the single greatest threat to biodiversity as forests continue to be cleared to accommodate them; 70 per cent of clearing in the Amazon alone is for
