Healthy diets & climate change: Where’s the beef?

1. Healthy diets & climate change:Where’s the beef? EU-HEM Winter School 2019 Mario Mazzocchi (University of Bologna)

2. In the News (today)… Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi)

3. In the News (2015)… Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi)

4. In the news… (1996) Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi) MAD COW CAN KILL YOU ; Govt to admit it today Maguire, Kevin . Daily Mirror ; London [London]20 Mar 1996: Beef linked to brain disease New strain of CJD kills younger victims Ministers try to calm fears over children `Mad cow' risk to humans is admitted for first time Caroline Davies, George Jones, Roger Highfield and David Brown.TheDailyTelegraph; London (UK) [London (UK)]21 Mar 1996 BeefwarningsparkspanicManymillions in potentialdanger PAUL BROWN, REBECCA SMITHERS SARAH BOSELEY. The Guardian (pre-1997 Fulltext); Manchester (UK) [Manchester (UK)]21 Mar 1996

5. Ecologicalfootprints Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi) «The quantity of nature it takes» (biologically productive space required to produce the resources consumed and to absorb the waste generated, considering the prevailing technology and resources management practices)

6. Carbon footprints Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi) «Greenhouse gas emissions» (GHGs) emissions across the life cycle of a process or product

7. Water footprints Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi) «Virtual water», or the volume of freshwater used to produce a commodity

8. Number of cows Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi)

9. World beef production and prices Global meat production accounts for about 15% of GHGEs (FAO, 2013) Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi)

10. Players in the beef market Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi)

11. Food and ClimateChange Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi) • Food-related emissions of CO2: • agricultural machinery • transporting crops and animals • nitrous oxide from the use of fertilisers (synthetic and manure) • methane from livestock & flooded paddy fields for rice. • Global expansion of farmland at a rate of about 10M hectares per year during the last decade (especially tropical rainforest, which reduces the capacity of land to absorb and store carbon) • Agri-food accounts for approximately 30% of all greenhouse-gas emissions (half of it is from meat) • Predictions are thatfooddemandwillincrease by 60% in 2050 because of population and incomegrowth • Productivity gainswillnot be enough to meet the growingdemand: more land for farmingisneeded

12. History of beefconsumption (FAO) Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi)

13. Food & climatechange Source: Bajželj et al. (2013) Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi)

14. Food disappearances & meat (1961-2013) Source: FAOSTAT Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi)

15. Beefconsumptionpredictions Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi)

16. The Paris Agreement: what to do? Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi) • 195 countriesagreed to keep the global temperature below +2 Celsius degrees(hopefully 1.5) relative to pre-industrial levels (2015 COP 21) • 196 countries in the 2018 UN meeting (butnot the US) • Controlling and influencingdemandwill be a keyaction • How? • Reduce food waste (33% of food is lost along the food chain) • Cut down consumption of meat and dairy (especiallyif from intensive production methods) – Meatrepresentsnearlyhalf of the emissions from agri-food, and more than the entiretransportsector. How? • Informpeople • Changeprices • Limit supply • Promote innovative eco-friendlypractices in meat production • Promotedietarychanges (e.g. more F&V)

17. Informingpeople: Carbon labelling Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi) Gadema & Oglethorpe (2011, Food Policy) «The data, from 428 UK supermarket shoppers, reveals that whilst consumer demand is relatively strong for carbon labels with a stated preference rate of 72%, confusion in interpreting and understanding labels is correspondingly high at a total of 89%» Hartikainen et al. (2014, Journal of Cleaner Production) Consumers have misunderstanding of the meaning of product carbon footprint. Finnish consumers do not link food strongly to environmental sustainability. Environmental friendliness in relation to many other attributes has low importance. There is a clear need to educate consumers on environmental impacts of food. Carbon labels currently have rather low appeal to Finnish consumers.

18. Carbon labeling (2) Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi) Vanclay et al. (2011, Journal of Consumer Policy) «Thirty-seven products were labelled to indicate embodied carbon emissions, and sales were recorded over a 3-month period. Green (below average), yellow (near average), and black (above average) footprints indicated carbon emissions embodied in groceries. The overall change in purchasing pattern was small, with black-labelled sales decreasing 6% and green-labelled sales increasing 4% after labelling. However, when green-labelled products were also the cheapest, the shift was more substantial, with a 20% switch from black- to green-label sales. These findings illustrate the potential for labelling to stimulate reductions in carbon emissions.» (experimentrun in Australia)

19. Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi)

20. Nudging consumers Godfray et al. (2018, Science) Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi)

21. Changeprices (Guardian, 3 January 2019) (Guardian, 7 January 2019) (Guardian, 10 January 2019) Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi)

22. Changeprices: Pigouviantaxes Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi) • An efficientenvironmental tax on a product should reflect its marginal environmental damage (Pigou, 1920) • Climate tax: each product should be taxed according to its emissions of GHGs and the marginal damage cost of the GHG • Example: efficientbeeftax in Sweden(Gren et al., 2019, Journal of Cleaner Production; Smed and Gren, 2017, Food Policy) • Taxlevel: about $ 5.5 - $ 8 per Kg. (=about 40% of price) • Reductionbetween 16% and 25% of untaxedemissions

23. Open questions on taxation Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi) • Healthtaxes vs. Environmentaltaxes on foods: the uncertainties • Regressivity of taxes & «progressivity of effects» reasoningdoesn’t work (do the poorpay for the rich?) • Substitutionpatterns (e.g. cheapermeatcuts – higheremissions?) • Price transmission – how to guaranteethatproducers / retailerswouldnotabsorbe the tax? • Job losses / impact on the foodchain – can the taxrevenues be usedascompensation (rethinkingagriculture…) • How isconsumptionresponseestimated (out of data support, nonlinearresponse, etc.) • Whatis the administrationburden (seeDanishfattax)

24. Supply measures Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi) • Agriculturalpoliciesthroughout the world havesupported (subsidised) meat production for a long time, althoughsupportlevelshavedecreased over the last decades • Thissupporthasgonethroughtwo ways: • Supporting production (coupled with prices) • Supportingfarms (decoupled, directincomesupport) • Beefisone of the mostsubsidisedproduct • Lot of room for adjustments (alsoconsidering the social / landscaperole of agriculture) • Subsidiescould (will?) be conditional on eco-friendly production practices • However… international trade & competitionstill play a major role

25. The EU beefsector Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi) Half of the total output (52%) is generated by the cattle-keeping farms in Germany, France, United Kingdom and Italy (EU parliament report, 2017)

26. Tax or subsidies? Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi) Financial support originating from the CAP, which is either coupled to milk or bovine meat production or is paid as production independent DPs, amounts to more than half (57%) of the total farm income of all farms of the EU cattle sector In 2012-2014 beefprices in Europe were26% higherthan the average world prices

27. Innovation: the impossibleburger The company says that making it uses 95% less land and 74% less water, and it emits about 87% less greenhouse gas than making a ground beef burger patty from cows – Price $ 10 - $ 16 (2 to 4 times the cost of a standard burger) POSSIBLE IMPOSSIBLE Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi)

28. Promotinghealthyfoods to reduce emissions? Trends in UK foodpurchases (2001-2014) Castiglione & Mazzocchi (2018, Ecological Economics) Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi)

29. UK 5-a-day policy Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi)

30. Conclusions Healthy Diets & Climate Change (Mazzocchi) • Diversity of dietsisbeneficial to health(no measurable risk from eating red meat once or twice a week) – scientific uncertainty remains • Reducingmeatconsumptionisbeneficial to the environment, butthere are manytrade-offs and obstacles • Distribution of production and consumptionacrosscountries and incomegroups • (Social?) relevance of the meatsector • Difficulties in strategies to reduce demand • Innovationsactliketaxes and introduce inequalities? • Policies are conflicting (e.g. agriculturalpolicies) • Food isnottobacco