On this day in vegan history · November 29, 2006
The FAO Puts a Number on Livestock and the Climate
A 390-page UN report did what decades of vegan argument hadn't: it made animal agriculture's climate math impossible for governments to wave off.
The facts
- Published
- 29 November 2006, by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
- Headline finding
- Livestock responsible for 18% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions
- Lead author
- Henning Steinfeld, Chief of FAO's Livestock Information and Policy Branch
- Report length
- 390 pages, titled Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options
On 29 November 2006 the UN Food and Agriculture Organization published Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options, a 390-page assessment led by senior author Henning Steinfeld. Its headline claim was that livestock production accounted for 18 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire transport sector generated in CO2 equivalent. The report also tied the sector to large shares of global methane and nitrous oxide output and to land degradation and water pollution. It was a UN agency, not an animal rights group, saying it, and that made it hard to dismiss as ideology. The 18 percent figure was later revised down by FAO itself in 2013, but the report had already reset the terms of the argument.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
-
Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems
Henning Steinfeld, senior FAO official and lead author, quoted on the report's release
Source: UN News -
The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level
From the FAO report, as cited by UN News on its release
Source: UN News
Why it still matters
Livestock's Long Shadow gave the climate case against animal agriculture an official UN number, moving the conversation about veganism from ethics alone into emissions accounting that governments and journalists couldn't ignore.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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