This policy briefing from the Changing Markets Foundation argues that it will be very difficult for the European Union to meet its 2030 methane reduction targets without bringing in extra measures in the meat and dairy industries. 36% of the EU’s methane reductions could come from the agricultural sector, it estimates.

This paper examines how uncertainties and assumptions behind assessments of global livestock methane emissions play out as research is translated into policy. The authors argue that the simplification of emissions data (during the aggregation of life cycle analyses into global sectoral estimates) results in a misleading and narrow picture of ruminant livestock.

This paper examines the impacts of methane on climate, ecosystems and air pollution. It argues that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change limits its regulation of methane to the climate impacts of methane on a 100-year timeframe, ignoring both near-term climate impacts and wider impacts.

The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) has published a recording of a webinar held on 28 January 2022, titled “Building a vision for achieving net-zero food systems by 2050”. It discusses non-CO2 emissions trends in the food sector and their implications for achieving climate targets.

Carbon Brief has published a summary of the key outcomes from 2021’s COP26 climate conference held in Glasgow. The Glasgow Climate Pact agreed by the summit “resolves to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”. TABLE readers may be particularly interested in the summary’s coverage of the Koronivia joint work on agriculture, deforestation pledges, and the global methane pledge.

This report from Dutch NGO the Changing Markets Foundation argues that a lack of attention to reducing methane emissions puts the world at greater risk of reaching climate tipping points. It analyses the climate commitments of the 18 countries with the biggest meat and dairy industries, as well as the largest meat and dairy companies worldwide, and finds that neither governments nor corporations are taking sufficient action on cutting methane emissions.

Carbon credits generated through feed supplementation to reduce methane emissions from cattle farming have been approved under the CORSIA scheme, which is an international agreement on offsetting increases in carbon dioxide emissions from aviation. The feed supplement, created by Swiss company Mootral, is based on compounds from garlic and citrus and has been found to reduce methane emissions by an average of 30% in a trial on a commercial dairy farm. 

This report from the United Nations Environment Programme assesses the implications of cutting global methane emissions, including those from agriculture, fossil fuels and waste. It finds that reducing human-caused methane emissions by 45% this decade would avoid nearly 0.3°C of warming by the 2040s as well as have significant co-benefits in reducing premature deaths, asthma-related hospital visits and crop losses (related to ozone exposure, as methane promotes ground-level ozone formation) and work hours lost to extreme heat (related to climate change).

This book reviews the environmental impacts of livestock production, covering life cycle assessment, livestock’s contributions to greenhouse gas emissions including methane, the impacts of pig and sheep production, and strategies for improving the environmental performance of intensive poultry production.