WASHINGTON, May 4, 2016 - According to a new white paper from the American Feed Industry Association, livestock production’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is minimal compared to sectors like transportation and energy.
The paper was written by Frank Mitloehner, a professor and air quality specialist with the University of California at Davis. After “divorcing political fiction from scientific facts,” livestock production accounts for 4.2 percent of U.S. GHG emissions, not figures as high as 51 percent cited by “advocates” for reductions in meat consumption, he said. By contrast, the transportation sector accounts for 27 percent of emissions, second only to the 31 percent released in energy production.
The paper asserts that if every citizen of the United States practiced meatless Mondays, it would cut demand and eventually end up reducing U.S. national GHG emissions by 0.6 percent, but if all incandescent light bulbs were replaced with Energy Star equivalents, emissions would drop by 1.2 percent. “One certainly cannot neglect emissions from the livestock sector, but to compare them to the main emission sources would put us on a wrong path to solutions,” the paper concludes.
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