Cows Make Things Warm and Cosy

Katherine Mangu-Ward | October 10, 2007

It was only a matter of time: The ethical vegetarian/global warming alliance has turned on third world cows:

Selectively using mining data from a report from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), they argued that livestock fart. Their methane and carbon dioxide contributes to 15% of global warming. Livestock apparently cause more damage than driving.

Carlos Seré, the Uruguayan who heads the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, is peeved at the suggestion that all cows are equally harmful. He pipes up in defense of the bovine residents of developing nations:

“Research tells us it would make little difference to global warming if we somehow removed all the livestock in, say, sub- Saharan Africa,’’ Seré responds to the campaign. “The impact on livelihoods there, however, would be catastrophic.”

“Before setting ourselves the task of ridding the world of animal flesh, we might try ridding it instead of unspeakable poverty, hunger and disease,’’ Seré points out.

More methane here and here.

A song about militant cows here: