Eat less meat to slow global warming

Cutting down the consumption of meat and diary product could slow down the pace of climate change, a new study by a team of international health experts has said.

The scientists have warned in their study in the medical journal The Lancet, that the world's growing appetite for meat is increasing greenhouse gas emissions, as vast areas of rainforest are being bulldozed for grazing land.

Bovine and sheep emissions are also contributing to more release of methane into the Earth's atmosphere, they said.

The study called for people in wealthy countries to more than halve their daily meat intake -- particularly red meat -- over the next 40 years to stop emission levels from rising further.

This would help achieve the long-term goal of cutting average meat consumption worldwide to 90 grams a day by 2050, they said.

They said agriculture contributed nearly a quarter of the world's greenhouse pollution, overwhelmingly from livestock production.

"Livestock production, including transport of livestock and feed, account for nearly 80 per cent of agricultural emissions, mainly in the form of methane, a potent heat-trapping gas," the study said.

The researchers said, that while people living in developed countries such as Australia, ate roughly their own weight in meat every year, consuming more than 80 kilograms each, or about 224 grams a day, the daily average consumption in developing countries was 47 grams.

"For the world's higher-income populations, greenhouse-gas emissions from meat eating warrants the same scrutiny as do those from driving and flying," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Prof Tony McMichael from the Australian National University, Canberra, as saying.

Prof McMichael, nevertheless, clarified that the study did not advocate that people stop eating meat entirely, but was only recommending reducing red meat consumption and switching to chicken and fish.