Calls for a no meat and dairy day to raise awareness of livestock emissions have been slammed by the National Farmers Federation and Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke, as "simplistic".
Queensland Democrats Senator, Andrew Bartlett, believes Australians could make a bigger difference to climate change by going without meat or dairy products for a day.
Senator Andrew Bartlett says last weekend's Earth Hour, where the nation was encouraged to turn the lights out for an hour to raise awareness of global warming, is an important initiative, going without meat for a day would make a bigger difference.
"Overall greenhouse emissions from livestock are greater than that from all forms of transport put together, yet the significant impact we can make from the simple action of changing our diets is still rarely talked about," Senator Bartlett said.
"There is no easier, cheaper and more immediate thing we can do to significantly reduce our personal contribution to greenhouse emissions than to cut the amount of meat and dairy products that we consume."
Senator Bartlett says "we can't keep kidding ourselves" that major climate change can be prevented while we maintain our existing lifestyles."
Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke, said he has outlined on many occasions that any push to reduce emissions needs to happen without reducing production.
Mr Burke, who said he actually prefers his vegetables with meat and expects most Australians would too, said the Government's research and development focus was committed to finding ways of reducing emissions in livestock industries.
He said Senator Bartlett's calls were "more than simplistic" and would not be a path Australian would go down.
National Farmers Federation chief executive officer, Ben Fargher, said he would encourage Senator Bartlett to look at trends over time which showed emissions in agriculture had been stable, if not decreasing, while emissions in transport and energy had been increasing.
"A farm is a biological system, and one good thing about Senator Bartlett's comments is that it does expose the way agricultural emissions are currently accounted for, which is not a good life cycle assessment," Mr Fargher said.
"We get accounted for emissions, but not accounted for our sequestration abilities.
"Comparing a biological small business farm that sequesters and emits carbon to transport or a power station is unfair and not accurate and misrepresents the situation completely.
"It's why we've been working domestically and internationally on a set of rules that get those contributions more accurately reflected."
Mr Fargher said NFF rejected Senator Bartlett's claims that a reduction in meat or dairy intake would have no economic impact.
"He's talking about a trend of cutting back consumption and that would have a huge economic impact," Mr Fargher said.
"These are very large export sectors generating a lot of wealth for the community. If we're serious about addressing climate change, we should be producing agriculture in countries like Australia which are efficient in an emissions sense rather that trying to restrict consumption arbitrarily based on flawed data."
SOURCE: Rural Press National News Service, Parliament House Bureau, Canberra.
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