NZ Beating UK Dairy Farmers On Emissions
NEW ZEALAND - Meat and dairy industries in Britain and New Zealand should be working jointly on issues such as the "carbon footprint" and energy efficiency of their produce, says a leading NZ academic
5 September 2007
1 minute read
| OUR COWS ARE BETTER: An academic says New Zealand's dairy industry uses less than half the energy as Britain's. |
Influential people were telling UK supermarket chains to change the positioning of meat in their aisles to reduce consumption of meat, said Professor Caroline Saunders, director of Lincoln University's agribusiness and economics research unit.
She told Parliament's primary production select committee yesterday that meat and dairy products were at risk of being thought of as "bad" because no matter which country produced them, there was a cost in terms of methane and nitrous oxide emissions.
She was speaking in the wake of a failed effort by NZ meat and wool officials to engage British farm leaders in the food miles and "carbon footprints" debate.
Thomas Binns, chairman of the livestock board of Britain's National Farmers' Union, said in Wellington on Monday that British farmers did not want to open up the food miles debate "prematurely".
Asked for an assurance that the NFU would not use a simplistic approach to food miles to attack NZ exporters, he said that the UK's major farm lobby would wait to see what formula was used to compare greenhouse gas emissions in the sector. "In that debate, we will support the British consumer," he said.
Source: Stuff.co.nz
