Livestock | TableDebates

Podcast episode

Presenting "M4F: Ep2. A complicated relationship with meat"

How values, emotions, and where we live impact our views on meat.

Podcast episode

Presenting "Meat: the four futures"

What we eat and don't eat, isn't only a scientific question - it's an emotional and ethical one.

Charcuterie plate with mustards, cheeses, fruits, relishes, bacon, and breads. Tim Toomey via Unsplash.

Meat, metrics and mindsets: Exploring debates on the role of livestock and alternatives in diets and farming

Should we eat meat, eggs, dairy and other animal-sourced foods? If so, how should we produce them and how much should we eat? If not, what should we eat instead? These are just some of the more contentious debates about the future of food systems.This Explainer summarises some of the key debates about livestock and its alternatives and describes both the arguments and the evidence underpinning different points of view. We look both at foodstuffs (meat, fish, plants and new foods based on cells grown in bioreactors) and farming methods (both intensive and extensive) with regards to discussions about their environmental, health and social impacts. In so doing, we explore the assumptions and values that often lead stakeholders to differing conclusions about what a sustainable food system looks like.https://doi.org/10.56661/2caf9b92

Big Livestock's Big Greenwash

News and resources

Big Livestock's Big Greenwash

NGO Feedback has published a website, Big Livestock's Big Greenwash, outlining the marketing strategies used by large livestock companies, including: reporting emissions and climate targets in ways that appear to show more progress than has happened; focusing on technological options (e.g. feed additives) to increase efficiency without reducing meat and dairy production; downplaying the climate impact of livestock; and building narratives that argue livestock production is good for farmer wellbeing, food security and traditional meat-based diets. Feedback argues that these strategies amount to greenwash.

Hoofprints on the Land

Hoofprints on the Land

This book argues that traditional nomadic herding practices offer lessons for regenerating a healthy planet and producing food sustainably.

Live, Die, Buy, Eat: A Cultural History of Animals and Meat

Live, Die, Buy, Eat: A Cultural History of Animals and Meat

Focusing on Norway, this book outlines how social attitudes to meat and animal farming have changed over the past 150 years. It argues that consumers have become increasingly disconnected from knowledge of how the meat they eat has been produced

Factory Farming: Who benefits? How a ruinous system is kept afloat

Four narratives used to support factory farming

This report by the animal welfare campaign group Compassion in World Farming outlines and makes counterarguments to four narratives that it argues are being used to justify factory farming, i.e. intensive livestock farming based on high levels of edible crops as feed inputs. The four narratives are: that factory farming is necessary to feed a growing global population; that it is efficient; that it is a source of cheap food; and that it is compatible with climate mitigation targets. The report also examines the influence of large animal feed production companies on the food system.

Emissions Impossible: Methane Edition

Emissions Impossible: Methane Edition

The five largest meat companies and ten largest dairy companies have combined methane emissions of over 80% of the European Union’s methane footprint, according to this report by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and the Changing Markets Foundation. The report recommends that governments set legally binding GHG and methane-specific reduction targets for the agriculture sector, with the aim to keep climate warming to less than 1.5°C.

food4climate pavilion

News and resources

Event recording: No More Omissions

A recording of the event “No More Omissions: Real Policy Action on Land Use, Animal Agriculture & GHGs–with a Focus on Methane” is now available. The event was held on 11 November 2022 at the COP27 Food4Climate Pavilion, organised by Brighter Green and the Global Forest Coalition.