Methane: There's good news and bad news

"A Swedish study in 2003 suggested that organic beef, raised on grass rather than concentrated feed, emits 40 per cent less greenhouse gases and consumes 85 per cent less energy," reports New Scientist in its latest issue. (We're chasing the reference. Any clues?) This is important because the 'science' we've seen so far says the opposite.

Scientists have a natural green bent, it appears. Under the headldine, "Meat is murder on the environment", the magazine that a "kilogram of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home."

It goes on... "This is among the conclusions of a study by Akifumi Ogino of the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Tsukuba, Japan, and colleagues, which has assessed the effects of beef production on global warming, water acidification and eutrophication, and energy consumption." They counted the full lifecycle of the emissions caused by transporting special feed to those animals lot fed. It also included calf production. Combining this information with data from studies on the impact fattening systems, they calculated the total environmental load of a portion of beef.

Producing a kilogram of beef involves emissions equivalent to 36.4 kilograms of carbon dioxide. "It also releases fertilising compounds equivalent to 340 grams of sulphur dioxide and 59 grams of phosphate, and consumes 169 megajoules of energy," says the report. (Animal Science Journal, DOI: 10.1111/j.1740-0929.2007.00457.x). "In other words, a kilogram of beef is responsible for the equivalent of the amount of CO2 emitted by the average European car every 250 kilometres, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days."

Most emissions invove methane released from the animals' digestive systems. More than 75% of the energy is used to produce and transport the animals' feed.

Suggestions include better waste management. Shortening the time before next calving by one month can reduce the total load by nearly 6%.

"Everybody is trying to come up with different ways to reduce carbon footprints," says the UK's Vegetarian Society;"But one of the easiest things you can do is to stop eating meat."

New Scientist, Issue 261318, July 2007

COALITION COMMENT:

Methane from Australian animals is equivalent to emissions from the entire Transport Industry, according to the AGO. We will be searching for answers to the following questions:

1. The PM's Task Force recommended that agriculture remain out of the trading scheme because of the difficulty of measuring emissions on farms. Is the claim about the magnitude of the farm sector's methane emissions based on modelled estimations?

2. What base data was used to run the model? Where did it come from?

3. Is it true that the team working on the N2O emissions (which had also been modelled for an estimation of the industry's contribution to greenhouse gases when it applies fertilisers) found the base data upon which the model operated was way out because it came from the Northern Hemisphere?

4. Is it possible the Methane figures will be similarly out of kilter if they come frokm ourside Australia?

5. Would it be useful to have practicing growers sanity check scientific methodologies that aim to reproduce real farm conditions to avoid skewing outsomes by inappropriate approaches or interpretations?

6. Is the use of such high emission figures (unverified) aimed to convince landholders to comply with the "Best Practice/Benchmarking" approach while being shut out of the carbon market?