Do livestock emit more GHG than transportation? No.

Henning Steinfeld, the author of the FAO‘s Livestock‘s Long Shadow publication, which first made the claim that livestock emits more GHG than transportation, wrote the following paper to set the records straight!

Over the weekend we were witnesses to something extraordinary. A company that felt compelled to lie and mislead people whilst they are in pursuit of a sale, this company which I might add, is part of an investment portfolio which contains companies developing cluster bombs and another that is responsible for clearing vast swathes of rainforest.

What makes it truly abhorrent is that they chose a path of emotional blackmail and shaming to try and get us all to think about our food choices.

There’s an old saying about there being no such thing as bad publicity but in this instance it truly has come back to bite them.

During this advert for an oat based milk (I refuse to mention the brand) they made spurious claims about the carbon footprint of their product in comparison to real dairy milk. They used outdated, debunked data from the usual source-Oxford and even now are defending the choice of the source. It’s bad enough when you see Quorn quote the Guardian paper as their sources of data but this time the company in question took it further. Questions have been raised in relation to who on earth sanctions these adverts and who does the fact checks prior to release into the public domain. 

Henning released a report stating that livestock were the largest emitters and had a large carbon footprint and then realised the error and set about correcting it and giving the right information. Even the United Nations admitted flaws in the data they had presented and yet we were still exposed to such bad evidence of lower carbon costs associated with plant milks. Hopefully this report I’ve presented will shed some light on the issue.

Frank Mitloehner has kindly shared a wealth of knowledge and information with me in attempt to try and curb the misleading claims by these companies.