‘The anti-livestock people are a pest’: how UN food body played down role of farming in climate change
The night before publication, Henning Steinfeld was halfway across the world dealing with panicked politicians and an outbreak of avian flu. His report, and how it would be received, was frankly the last thing on his mind.
With a small group of officials, Steinfield, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s livestock policy branch, had been working for months on a report analysing the link between the six major species of livestock and climate change, which they all knew could be explosive. “I was very frustrated by the fact that the livestock-environment issue hadn’t resonated even though people accepted in private that it was a big issue – for climate change, and also water and biodiversity,” he said. “But no one was interested in getting into it because I think they were afraid of what it could mean.”
Another FAO official, “Michel Criollo” (not his real name), remembered: “No one wanted to go to the next step of saying agriculture is a problem for the planet and we need to mitigate it – including by potentially reducing production levels or changing things in less profitable ways.”
It was 2006. The issue of climate change was climbing the international agenda, although the bitter rows and collapsing dialogue of the Copenhagen summit were still three years in the future.
But although the link between climate change and fossil fuels was accepted and widely discussed, somehow the farming sector had managed to dodge the spotlight. Scientists were aware that the methane produced by grazing cattle – around two-thirds of livestock emissions come from cows – was a significant chunk of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases that were heating the planet’s atmosphere. Still, there had been no attempt to quantify how large a chunk it might be; the scientific community was largely focused elsewhere, while politicians were finding it hard enough to cope with the political realities of reducing fossil fuel consumption.
The FAO was not the obvious candidate to jump into the breach.
Founded in 1945 with the remit of ending hunger and improving nutrition by increasing agricultural – and livestock – production, it was a country-based organisation, which felt that part of its mission was to represent the industry rather than scrutinise it.
The small group of researchers who worked with Steinfeld had been discussing this issue for several years and felt the time was right to dig into it. But they knew that they would face resistance from the organisation and from beyond. “Everyone knows that meat and other livestock products are closely connected to culture and ways of living,” Steinfeld said, “to traditions, beliefs, religion and identity issues that define people, and here we have something that challenges that.”
But none of them were quite prepared for the storm that broke over their heads when Livestock’s Long Shadow (LLS) finally came out, cracking through the taboos. Now, for the first time, some of them have spoken to the Guardian about a period and a working culture in which, they say, they were censored, sabotaged, undermined and victimised. It is so unusual for officials working in a UN agency to allow a peek behind the scenes that almost all of them would only speak on condition of anonymity, still, to some extent, marked by the battles they fought while working at the FAO.
Livestock’s Long Shadow was the first elementary lifecycle analysis for livestock and, crucially, the first tally of the meat and dairy sector’s ecological cost. The report estimated that livestock were responsible for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions – including nine percent of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, mostly due to deforestation for (pasture and) feed crops, 37% of anthropogenic methane emissions, largely from cow burps, 65% of anthropogenic nitrous oxides, overwhelmingly from manure and 64% of anthropogenic ammonia emissions.
It was a bombshell. Environmental scientists and campaign groups were rapturous, and a wave of popular documentaries such as Meat the Truth and Cowspiracy followed. But the report had sent shockwaves through the meat industry and the tremors travelled quickly.
Steinfeld remembered hearing complaints that “the FAO has fallen into the hands of vegan activists” and personal threats such as “the anti-livestock people are a pest that needs to be eradicated”.
Pressure came from all sides. The big meat-producing countries – Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, Australia and the US – all complained to the FAO’s higher echelons, according to Steinfeld, while protests also flooded in from “the private sector, the large-scale meat, feed and dairy producers”.
Another FAO official “Angus Green” remembered the shock that the FAO