UKH

Have a look at this Horizon - such a positive scientific message nicely packaged - if you ignore Greg Wallace

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qzyd/horizon-2021-feast-to-save-t...

Try and guess the carbon footprint of the dishes served to the celebs. Some intriguing messages:

- Eat mussels.
- Soy is good (if you don't feed it to animals).
- You can make protein out of hot air.
- The amount of methane that the bacteria in a cow's gut produce is correlated with the cow's genome. How weird is that.
- The Aussies use container-sized wine box bags to ship their wine to the UK. Now THAT is a wine box.

I thought it was a really interesting show. Key message for me was to stop giving my kids milk to drink, and move them onto Australian red wine.

I read somewhere that soy is good as long as rainforest wasn't felled to get the land to grow it on. Don't know if there's a way of checking this when you buy a soy product 

Thanks.

So some breeds of cows fart more than others?

I don't understand the chemistry of that.

The methane is made by the bugs in their tummy - aka archea. Apparently most comes out through their mouth. It's a current research topic as many countries have set targets for reduction. One of the big contenders found so far is to add 2% seaweed to their feed plus some molasses to make it taste nice.

https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/can-seaweed-cut-methane-emissions-dairy-farms/

Much more info here:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190806-how-vaccines-could-fix-our-prob...

Thanks for that.

I didn't realise that most methane is emitted from the front end. It would be interesting to know what is produced instead.

The issues surrounding sustainable food sources isn't entirely centred around CO2.  Only a couple of very brief mentions regarding animal welfare. (chicken)

The programme failed to address the impact of farmed salmon on the environment.

It didn't seem to address the amount of CO2 created during the fermentation of various alcoholic drinks.
The choices of low carbon footprint food are pretty limited (though getting better) for those of us that need to avoid soy. There were no other options presented  or mentioned in the programme. One of the participants did say "Tofu, is that the only choice?"

Overall, 7/10  good, but could have been better.

Those are fair points, with the proviso that there was a clear focus on keeping it entertaining (Wallace) plus some dumbing down of the science (Fry). Fundamentally it was all about CO2E and I guess they had to make some decisions about what to leave out, and chose to leave out saving the planet except via reduction of greenhouse gases :/

I eat very little meat and mostly trout and mackerel and local veg, but a good amount of dairy, and occasionally jumbo prawns OMG and salmon. And asparagus. So I get one or two gold stars and a good handful of black marks!

Hopefully there'll be some follow-up programs, but Horizon has quite a wide brief so I'm not holding my breath.

In reply to geode:

That is an interesting area! We are apparently almost self-sufficient in terms of the number of animals, but our industry is not as savvy as they are down under. But for the b pandemic we should be having big discussions of how our food production needs to change now we're not (I assume) tied to the CAP.

I thought soy was causing mass deforestation?  

That's an interesting suggestion can you point out how our industry is not as "savvy"?

The reality is that NZ has a tariff free quota and they regularly fill it. The problem from our end is that the quota was set for whole frozen carcases and these days they fill it with chilled prime cuts mainly legs. The problem from the NZ farmers end of the deal is that they can get shafted as the plants pay more prices as they seek to fill the quota at the prices that our supermarkets are willing to pay.

Unfortunately you seem to be right. Not sure how much soy is used as animal feed though.

https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/soy

..and I guess that if we ate less beef then we could grow soy on that land instead.

You almost certainly know more about this than me!

I read that our industry wasn't set up to fully exploit demand from the supermarkets, that there were seasonal advantages for New Zealand, for example their peak season coinciding with Easter, also the issues you mention in your post. In the context of global trade, I'm sure a good competitive balance has been struck, but what about if the UK changes the quota system, and pressure is applied to reduce the carbon footprint? I guess grass-fed frozen lamb imported by sea might not be so bad, but everyone likes a bit of local.

Indeed, and the soy is used to feed Argentinian beef cattle, so in that case it's a triple whammy. If we eat it ourselves however, preferably without deforesting the Amazon, it's a lot better.

While I fully support the reduction of the food carbon footprint by reducing consumption of meat (particularly red meat) and making choices that promote local production, I think there needs to be a more holistic approach to the reduction of the human production of greenhouse gases.

Agriculture accounts for around 11% of emissions, meanwhile energy production (including travel) accounts for 72%. (Source: https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/)

I understand that every effort to make reductions, however small, helps. And the combined effect of many people making small changes results in an overall larger impact.

However I think that the reduction in travel, for example, due to the pandemic restrictions has had a bigger impact on reducing emissions. Temporary drop of 17% daily (Source:  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0797-x).

If anything the pandemic has highlighted that we could change other habits that would have a larger impact on emissions. This should include a more sustainable agricultural model.

Well in my opinion, and we all know about opinions. Please feel free to highlight weaknesses in my arguments.