Post by veggiewoman on Jun 7, 2007 19:51:12 GMT
PLEASE NOTE , I HAVE ONLY READ SMALL SECTIONS OF THIS , SO IF IT RECOMMENDS EATING MEAT , I APOLOGISE THAT I DID NOT DELETE IT, IF THERE IS A SECTION , LET ME KNOW AND I WILL DELETE IT ;D
lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2097255,00.html
Eat your greens
The government is keen to start telling us how different foods affect our carbon footprint. But it's not just about food miles, reports Julie Ferry
Thursday June 7, 2007
The Guardian
The carbon footprint of our food is under closer scrutiny than ever. Last week the government unveiled a plan to introduce labels on all products, showing the greenhouse gas emissions created by their production, transport and eventual disposal, similar to the calorie count figures already seen on food packaging. The message was that food miles, which consumers are increasingly taking notice of, are not an accurate way of judging the total environmental impact. For example, fruit and vegetables trucked in from Spain could actually have a lower carbon footprint than those grown in UK greenhouses which use up lots of energy for heating.
"When the concept of food miles was originally launched it was about so much more than carbon emissions," says Vicky Hird, senior food campaigner at Friends of the Earth. "It was about fairness in the supply chain and about reconnecting with your food. Now it seems to have been simplified to be just about climate change and it's not always the best way of working out a product's true effect on the environment."
To address this anomaly, the environment minister, Ian Pearson, is going to work with the Carbon Trust and BSI British Standards over the next 18 months to develop a benchmark for carbon measurements for goods and services. "The idea of food miles is starting to resonate with consumers, but what we've found is the distance a product has travelled is important but so are lots of other factors across the chain," says Euan Murray, strategy manager at the Carbon Trust. "During our research we've seen that in some cases the distance travelled can be a poor indicator of a product's carbon footprint, so just because something has come from abroad doesn't necessarily mean it is worse for the environment."
Dr Andrea Collins from the Brass waste and resources research centre at Cardiff University and Dr Ruth Fairchild, a nutritional analyst at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, agree that the food miles concept is too simplistic. They argue that their recent research into the environmental impact of food points towards a better system of "ecological footprint" analysis. This measures a food's impact in "global hectares", the notional land area needed to provide the resources to produce it.
The research concluded that, on average, only around 2% of the environmental impact of food comes from transporting it from farm to shop.
"Our study was to investigate how much impact our food consumption has," says Fairchild. "Most people would be quite surprised that the biggest environmental impact of food is not because of food miles, but because of the processing it goes through."
The research devised three eco-diets. Presented on a sliding scale they only allowed foods with a footprint of less than 0.006 global hectares per kilogramme in the first diet, then 0.004 in the second and finally 0.002. The researchers also looked at the footprint of an organic diet versus a non-organic diet and found that switching to organic brought a 22.9% reduction in the food footprint. However, they said these findings were offset somewhat by the 31.2% increase in cost to the consumer.
Overall, around 20% of the UK's overall greenhouse gas emissions are related to food consumption. Indeed, an email by an official at the Environment Agency recently leaked to the vegetarian and vegan campaign group Viva showed that the government is also examining the various environmental impacts of the nation's diet. "The potential benefits of a vegan diet in terms of climate impact could be very significant," said the email, adding that recommending eating less meat as one of the "key environmental behaviour changes" needed to save the planet was being considered. However, it also said that the change would have to be introduced "gently" because of "the risk of alienating the public".
Foraging for food, or growing your own, are the best solutions. But if you aren't ready to overhaul completely your diet in this way, consider adopting these basic principles ...
Meat
According to a report published last year by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the global livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transport. It warned: "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." The key is that the livestock sector produces a much larger share of greenhouse gases that are more harmful than CO², such as nitrous oxide (296 times more impact than CO²) and methane (23 times more impact).
"At the very least, people need to think about cutting down their meat and dairy consumption to help the environment," says Justin Kerswell, campaigns manager at the vegetarian campaign charity Viva. "The meat-based diet most people eat is completely unsustainable, but we are starting to see people make the shift. The amount of vegans in the UK has increased 10-fold in the past 10 years and is now around one million."
However, the Cardiff research showed that adopting a vegetarian diet would result in only a small reduction (5.9%) in your food and drink footprint, which confirms that dairy products have a high impact too. So what do you do if you don't want to give up meat?
"The least greenhouse gas-intensive meat is actually a battery chicken," says Tara Garnett from the Food Climate Research Network. "If you keep an animal in a very small space, don't let it expend any energy on exercising, feed it up really quickly and kill it within 40 days, it is going to be energy efficient. However, from an animal welfare point of view it is certainly not something I would endorse."
A 2005 study led by WWF Cymru appears to back this up, putting poultry at the top of the carbon-friendly meat list, followed by pork. Beef and veal were deemed the most energy intensive meats: the Cardiff research rates beef and veal as the most carbon intensive food of all with a footprint of 0.016 global hectares per kilogramme. Lamb falls somewhere in the middle as sheep produce lots of methane, making their greenhouse gas emission score relatively high. However, sheep also make use of land that can't be used for growing crops and if you are concerned about animal welfare, lamb and mutton seem good compromise options.
Vegetables
"Eating seasonal field-grown vegetables is a good way to reduce climate change emissions. The more robust the vegetable, the better," says Garnett. So, UK-produced potatoes, root vegetables such as carrots, parsnips and turnips, and brassicas, including broccoli, calabrese and sprouts, should all be making frequent appearances in your shopping trolley. These vegetables use relatively little energy to grow, can easily be produced here (we are 94% self-sufficient in potatoes and 96% in carrots, although we still import these vegetables) and if they are imported, it is usually by road from Europe.
However, it is our switch to a more Mediterranean diet that could be a significant threat to the environment. Between 1994 and 2004 our consumption of lettuce, tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and cucumbers grew by 22%. This is worrying because these vegetables grown here are produced in energy-intensive greenhouses. A 2005 Defra study found that three times more CO² was emitted by the energy used to grow tomatoes in the UK than similar tomatoes imported from Spain by road. Also, because they are less hardy than root vegetables they tend to produce a lot more wastage.
Fruit
Our continued penchant for non-indigenous fruits has a significant impact on the environment. Even fruit that can be grown in this country usually isn't - between 1994 and 2004 UK fruit production declined by 24% while imports grew by 38%.
So what to do? It is generally considered that UK-grown fruit, such as apples and pears, is likely to have low emissions. This is due to low wastage levels used in its production and because it is likely to be transported by road. However, Clive Marriott, commercial manager for Fairtrade fruit importer Agrofair and an expert in the environmental impact of fruit transportation, says that greenhouse gas emissions for tropical fruit is relatively low. "All tropical fruits are shipped in refrigerated conditions, which obviously has an impact on the environment. In fact 15-20% of the fuel used to transport them is consumed by refrigeration.
These large vessels, though, can transport a lot of fruit, which makes them very efficient and the energy consumption of refrigeration depends on the fruit. Bananas can have low emissions as they are transported at 14ºC, whereas an apple from New Zealand needs to be kept at 0.5ºC."
A good rule of thumb to work out the potential carbon emissions of a fruit is to look at its perishability. If it will easily spoil, then it is more likely to need to be transported by air and cold-storage conditions and be prone to needless wastage. To help consumers, some supermarkets such as Marks & Spencer are now putting air-freight labels on goods carried by aeroplane.
Meat and three veg: the low-carbon dish
Ethical Living selected some low-carbon ingredients - pork, potatoes, carrots and spring greens, fresh garlic, and garden herbs - and challenged chef Barny Haughton to prepare an appetising dish.
"If you really want to cut down on the carbon footprint of your food eat seasonally, locally, and limit the amount of meat in your diet," says Haughton, founder of eco restaurant Bordeaux Quay in Bristol (bordeaux-quay.co.uk, 0117 943 1200) which sources the vast majority of its staple ingredients from organic suppliers within a 50-mile radius. "Eat it maybe once a week, but choose locally reared, preferably organic, meat."
lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2097255,00.html
Eat your greens
The government is keen to start telling us how different foods affect our carbon footprint. But it's not just about food miles, reports Julie Ferry
Thursday June 7, 2007
The Guardian
The carbon footprint of our food is under closer scrutiny than ever. Last week the government unveiled a plan to introduce labels on all products, showing the greenhouse gas emissions created by their production, transport and eventual disposal, similar to the calorie count figures already seen on food packaging. The message was that food miles, which consumers are increasingly taking notice of, are not an accurate way of judging the total environmental impact. For example, fruit and vegetables trucked in from Spain could actually have a lower carbon footprint than those grown in UK greenhouses which use up lots of energy for heating.
"When the concept of food miles was originally launched it was about so much more than carbon emissions," says Vicky Hird, senior food campaigner at Friends of the Earth. "It was about fairness in the supply chain and about reconnecting with your food. Now it seems to have been simplified to be just about climate change and it's not always the best way of working out a product's true effect on the environment."
To address this anomaly, the environment minister, Ian Pearson, is going to work with the Carbon Trust and BSI British Standards over the next 18 months to develop a benchmark for carbon measurements for goods and services. "The idea of food miles is starting to resonate with consumers, but what we've found is the distance a product has travelled is important but so are lots of other factors across the chain," says Euan Murray, strategy manager at the Carbon Trust. "During our research we've seen that in some cases the distance travelled can be a poor indicator of a product's carbon footprint, so just because something has come from abroad doesn't necessarily mean it is worse for the environment."
Dr Andrea Collins from the Brass waste and resources research centre at Cardiff University and Dr Ruth Fairchild, a nutritional analyst at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, agree that the food miles concept is too simplistic. They argue that their recent research into the environmental impact of food points towards a better system of "ecological footprint" analysis. This measures a food's impact in "global hectares", the notional land area needed to provide the resources to produce it.
The research concluded that, on average, only around 2% of the environmental impact of food comes from transporting it from farm to shop.
"Our study was to investigate how much impact our food consumption has," says Fairchild. "Most people would be quite surprised that the biggest environmental impact of food is not because of food miles, but because of the processing it goes through."
The research devised three eco-diets. Presented on a sliding scale they only allowed foods with a footprint of less than 0.006 global hectares per kilogramme in the first diet, then 0.004 in the second and finally 0.002. The researchers also looked at the footprint of an organic diet versus a non-organic diet and found that switching to organic brought a 22.9% reduction in the food footprint. However, they said these findings were offset somewhat by the 31.2% increase in cost to the consumer.
Overall, around 20% of the UK's overall greenhouse gas emissions are related to food consumption. Indeed, an email by an official at the Environment Agency recently leaked to the vegetarian and vegan campaign group Viva showed that the government is also examining the various environmental impacts of the nation's diet. "The potential benefits of a vegan diet in terms of climate impact could be very significant," said the email, adding that recommending eating less meat as one of the "key environmental behaviour changes" needed to save the planet was being considered. However, it also said that the change would have to be introduced "gently" because of "the risk of alienating the public".
Foraging for food, or growing your own, are the best solutions. But if you aren't ready to overhaul completely your diet in this way, consider adopting these basic principles ...
Meat
According to a report published last year by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the global livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transport. It warned: "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." The key is that the livestock sector produces a much larger share of greenhouse gases that are more harmful than CO², such as nitrous oxide (296 times more impact than CO²) and methane (23 times more impact).
"At the very least, people need to think about cutting down their meat and dairy consumption to help the environment," says Justin Kerswell, campaigns manager at the vegetarian campaign charity Viva. "The meat-based diet most people eat is completely unsustainable, but we are starting to see people make the shift. The amount of vegans in the UK has increased 10-fold in the past 10 years and is now around one million."
However, the Cardiff research showed that adopting a vegetarian diet would result in only a small reduction (5.9%) in your food and drink footprint, which confirms that dairy products have a high impact too. So what do you do if you don't want to give up meat?
"The least greenhouse gas-intensive meat is actually a battery chicken," says Tara Garnett from the Food Climate Research Network. "If you keep an animal in a very small space, don't let it expend any energy on exercising, feed it up really quickly and kill it within 40 days, it is going to be energy efficient. However, from an animal welfare point of view it is certainly not something I would endorse."
A 2005 study led by WWF Cymru appears to back this up, putting poultry at the top of the carbon-friendly meat list, followed by pork. Beef and veal were deemed the most energy intensive meats: the Cardiff research rates beef and veal as the most carbon intensive food of all with a footprint of 0.016 global hectares per kilogramme. Lamb falls somewhere in the middle as sheep produce lots of methane, making their greenhouse gas emission score relatively high. However, sheep also make use of land that can't be used for growing crops and if you are concerned about animal welfare, lamb and mutton seem good compromise options.
Vegetables
"Eating seasonal field-grown vegetables is a good way to reduce climate change emissions. The more robust the vegetable, the better," says Garnett. So, UK-produced potatoes, root vegetables such as carrots, parsnips and turnips, and brassicas, including broccoli, calabrese and sprouts, should all be making frequent appearances in your shopping trolley. These vegetables use relatively little energy to grow, can easily be produced here (we are 94% self-sufficient in potatoes and 96% in carrots, although we still import these vegetables) and if they are imported, it is usually by road from Europe.
However, it is our switch to a more Mediterranean diet that could be a significant threat to the environment. Between 1994 and 2004 our consumption of lettuce, tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and cucumbers grew by 22%. This is worrying because these vegetables grown here are produced in energy-intensive greenhouses. A 2005 Defra study found that three times more CO² was emitted by the energy used to grow tomatoes in the UK than similar tomatoes imported from Spain by road. Also, because they are less hardy than root vegetables they tend to produce a lot more wastage.
Fruit
Our continued penchant for non-indigenous fruits has a significant impact on the environment. Even fruit that can be grown in this country usually isn't - between 1994 and 2004 UK fruit production declined by 24% while imports grew by 38%.
So what to do? It is generally considered that UK-grown fruit, such as apples and pears, is likely to have low emissions. This is due to low wastage levels used in its production and because it is likely to be transported by road. However, Clive Marriott, commercial manager for Fairtrade fruit importer Agrofair and an expert in the environmental impact of fruit transportation, says that greenhouse gas emissions for tropical fruit is relatively low. "All tropical fruits are shipped in refrigerated conditions, which obviously has an impact on the environment. In fact 15-20% of the fuel used to transport them is consumed by refrigeration.
These large vessels, though, can transport a lot of fruit, which makes them very efficient and the energy consumption of refrigeration depends on the fruit. Bananas can have low emissions as they are transported at 14ºC, whereas an apple from New Zealand needs to be kept at 0.5ºC."
A good rule of thumb to work out the potential carbon emissions of a fruit is to look at its perishability. If it will easily spoil, then it is more likely to need to be transported by air and cold-storage conditions and be prone to needless wastage. To help consumers, some supermarkets such as Marks & Spencer are now putting air-freight labels on goods carried by aeroplane.
Meat and three veg: the low-carbon dish
Ethical Living selected some low-carbon ingredients - pork, potatoes, carrots and spring greens, fresh garlic, and garden herbs - and challenged chef Barny Haughton to prepare an appetising dish.
"If you really want to cut down on the carbon footprint of your food eat seasonally, locally, and limit the amount of meat in your diet," says Haughton, founder of eco restaurant Bordeaux Quay in Bristol (bordeaux-quay.co.uk, 0117 943 1200) which sources the vast majority of its staple ingredients from organic suppliers within a 50-mile radius. "Eat it maybe once a week, but choose locally reared, preferably organic, meat."