Maybe livestock aren't so bad after all...

I recently read an interesting counter point to conventional wisdom regarding the impact of livestock on green house gases. The Food Climate Research Network works to research & promote ways of achieving absolute reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the whole UK food chain. The angle that interested me was to think about what happens if you don't eat livestock rather than focusing on the terrible emissions of the average moose (as Jeremy Clarkson does so amusingly).

• If you don't eat livestock, you will eat something else and there is a sporting chance it is either flown or shipped into the UK, or grown in a heated glass house.
  
• In many cases livestock can be reared on land that otherwise would yield no food (think sheep on mountains).
  
• Some livestock can be fed by-products of other food preparation or agriculture.
  
• Finally, livestock often generate useful by-products (e.g. leather and wool) which crops do not.

So rearing livestock isn't such a heinous activity. I discussed in an early blog entry the way that Fairtrade isn't a universal good because of the carbon footprint its products can generate. The livestock vs. crops argument is similarly a grey issue.