230: We Eat Balanced | Promoting dairy and red meat’s reputation

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230: We Eat Balanced | Promoting dairy and red meat’s reputation

Written by AHDB

Our world feels out of balance. The decisions we make about food are often loaded with implications, for our health or the environment.

On 4 January 2021, we'll be launching a £1.5 million TV led marketing campaign, to protect meat and dairy’s reputation in a healthy balanced diet aired across terrestrial and digital channels. With numerous fad diets swimming around social media, we’re finally taking a stance to represent an authentic, positive and healthy image of pork, dairy, beef and lamb.

John Bates invites Christine Watts, Liam Byrne and Susie Stannard to discuss how they aim to change consumers hearts and minds by providing them with the facts and reassuring our audience that the foods they enjoy – red meat and dairy – can play a role in a healthy and sustainable balanced diet.

For further information, please visit ahdb.org.uk/we-eat-balanced.

Continue reading more on the ADHB Website...
 

delilah

Member
In fact, all red meat and dairy only contributes around 5% of all UK greenhouse gas emissions.*

That's it then is it ? Your central message in promoting the industry to the British public.
Pathetic, embarrassing, dereliction of duty. Oh, and wrong.
 

delilah

Member
In fact, all red meat and dairy only contributes around 5% of all UK greenhouse gas emissions.*

You say 'around', but that's quite a precise figure. Why not 'around 2%', or 'around 10%' ?

Two questions then:
1) Can you show us the maths ? Not the detail, just the broad calculations you used to get to that figure.

2) What are the figures for the other sectors you represent ? You must have calculated them; you couldn't get to that figure of 5% for red meat and dairy without coming up with a formula and applying it to everything else you represent. Can you provide them for, for example:
Top fruit.
Soft fruit.
Veg
Cereals (inc maize)
Sugar beet
pigs
Poultry.
whatever I have missed off.

By your calculations, what are their contributions to total UK GHG emissions ? You can't just stop at red meat and dairy being 5%. In for a penny and all that. Lets blame ourselves for as high a figure as we can get to.
 

Sandpit Farm

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Derbyshire
Where did the 5% figure come from? I have been looking and cant see where it is mentioned. Agriculture is actually 10% as I understand it to the 5% figure may be related to what ruminants contribute. Perhaps one of the challenges here is that as the other sectors become greener - the proportion due to agriculture could theoretically go up... hence the milk buyers putting some pressure on reducing this (from a dairy perspective anyway).
 

Ted M

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Shropshire
Where did the 5% figure come from? I have been looking and cant see where it is mentioned. Agriculture is actually 10% as I understand it to the 5% figure may be related to what ruminants contribute. Perhaps one of the challenges here is that as the other sectors become greener - the proportion due to agriculture could theoretically go up... hence the milk buyers putting some pressure on reducing this (from a dairy perspective anyway).
On the plus side, the other 5% must be "plant based" 🙈
 

delilah

Member
Where did the 5% figure come from?

AHDB have made it up. They think that it is in some way a good idea to hold their hand - ie your hand - up for 5% of the pollution in the UK. Muppets.


Agriculture is actually 10% as I understand it

68 million people.
Living in polluting houses. Driving polluting cars, catching polluting trains and buses, to jobs in polluting factories and offices. Driving their kids to polluting schools, on the way to polluting supermarkets that haul food around the country in polluting lorries. Addicted to buying polluting tat, delivered to them in polluting vans to then be thrown away a week later into polluting incinerators and landfill sites . Flying on polluting holidays.
And 50,000 farmers, driving a few tractors and throwing a bit of fertilizer about, are happy to be held responsible for 10% of all of the pollution produced in the UK ? Even bigger muppets.
 

Sandpit Farm

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Derbyshire
AHDB have made it up. They think that it is in some way a good idea to hold their hand - ie your hand - up for 5% of the pollution in the UK. Muppets.




68 million people.
Living in polluting houses. Driving polluting cars, catching polluting trains and buses, to jobs in polluting factories and offices. Driving their kids to polluting schools, on the way to polluting supermarkets that haul food around the country in polluting lorries. Addicted to buying polluting tat, delivered to them in polluting vans to then be thrown away a week later into polluting incinerators and landfill sites . Flying on polluting holidays.
And 50,000 farmers, driving a few tractors and throwing a bit of fertilizer about, are happy to be held responsible for 10% of all of the pollution produced in the UK ? Even bigger muppets.

Hmm maybe, I have no idea actually what the figure would be... but I did read that it was 10% from Agriculture. Let's remember that that refers to Greenhouse Gases rather than 'pollution' under it's much wider label. I wonder if it is something to do with the type of gases emitted by farming containing more methane which is 25x the carbon equivalent of carbon dioxide but taking 30 yrs to breakdown. As GHGs are measured in carbon equivalents - that is probably why figures from farming look like 5- or 10% or whatever it is. Nitrous Oxides are 298x the carbon equivalent of CO2 - which does make it seem a bit odd.

It may be worth checking with them. I can't actually find on the website where you say it says 5% (but I can never find anything :rolleyes: ). I guess just because it seems unnecessarily high for farming doesn't mean it isn't true... I'd certainly hope it was true for an evidence based organisation.
 

delilah

Member
Hmm maybe, I have no idea actually what the figure would be... but I did read that it was 10% from Agriculture.

The figure for Agriculture is -10%. Because if we got rid of UK agriculture, two things would happen:
1) Net transport emissions would increase sufficiently to add 5% to total emissions, through importing all of our food.
2) Falling UK carbon sequestration levels, due to loss of grassland, would add 5% to total UK emissions.

It may be worth checking with them. I can't actually find on the website where you say it says 5%

They are saying it in their advertising campaign. I have asked them for the maths but no reply.

ahdb.jpg
 
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@delilah I was reading the other carbon thread and you pointed to here, which I had missed before.

I hate not knowing where figures come from, so you got me trawling through spreadsheets again!
(Did the AHDB ever come back to you?). I had a look at the BEIS govt statistics report and they pointed at an office nat. statistics spreadsheet.
See screenshots below. I *think* they might have added up all the agricultural livestock emissions highlighted 27.4Mt CO2e and then took off permanent grassland -5Mt. That makes 22Mt out of total UK emissions of 451Mt = 5%.
This is based on emisssions attributed from the sector that emits them directly (so a very different methodology from Poore and Nemecek who bundle up much more in their assessments, e.g. pre farm impact of producing, packaging and delivering fertiliser right up to the costs of glass manufacture for packaging products).
 

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SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 65 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.1%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 6 3.2%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,287
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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