Environment Impact

Dairy farming has had its ‘untouchable’ status savaged by the United Nations. The Food & Agriculture Organisation has turned a spotlight on just how much the white stuff contributes to global warming through its emissions of greenhouse gasses (GHG).

It produces around four per cent of the global total with an extraordinary output of 2.4 kilograms of GHG for every one kilogram of milk and dairy products. The figures used are for 2007 and these show that global dairy farming was responsible for 1,969 million tonnes of CO2 or its equivalent in other gases such as methane and nitrous oxide.

The report (Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Dairy Sector) even identifies what each section of the industry contributes to this rapidly-growing crisis that could cause untold damage across the globe. Milk itself is responsible for 1,328 million tonnes, the poor, knackered dairy cows slaughtered for meat account for 151million whilst the calves raised for meat produce 490 million.

Our own farming industry, with Government backing, produces entirely false figures for GHG from farmed animals, claiming that the total for all UK animals – dairy, beef, pigs, sheep and poultry – is a mere 3.1 per cent of the global total (the UN figure is 18 per cent). It does it by only including ‘farm gate’ figures – emissions which happen on the farm but exclude those that happen off the farm. The UN FAO is much less deceitful and includes all those factors which contribute emissions to the total figure.

In the case of dairy cows it covers the manufacture and transport of fertilisers, pesticides and feed, milk processing and packaging and the transport of milk and dairy products to retailers.

The UN also doesn’t let the dairy sector off the hook on all the other environmental catastrophes associated with animal farming and detailed in its 2006 ground-breaking report, Livestock’s Long Shadow, specifically saying that these should be taken into account when considering the impact of dairy farming. By this it is referring to the science which shows that livestock, including dairy cattle, are at the heart of almost all the environmental problems confronting us – loss of forests and the extinction of plant and animals species, the relentless spread of deserts across the world, the overuse of fresh water, soil erosion and air, water and land pollution, not least nitrogen pollution.

It didn’t come within the UN’s remit but animal farmers should also shoulder the major responsibility for having given us anti-biotic resistant strains of e.coli, salmonella, campylobacter and the frightening and deadly hospital super bugs.

In its response to the UN report, the UK dairy industry ignores all these devastating problems, concentrates only on GHG emissions and highlights the fact that their intensive production methods are slightly less damaging than nomadic farming.