A report issued by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recommends levying fees for livestock as a way to reduce this sector’s emission of greenhouse gases, currently estimated at 7,000 billion tons of CO2 equivalent annually.

Moreover, livestock raising is known to impact not only human health but also causes enormous damage to ecosystems, biodiversity, land, forests and water quality.

“The State of Food and Agriculture” report thus calls for market-based policies such as taxes and subsidy reductions that would cause producers to minimize environmental damage by being required to absorb its costs.

FAO Director-general Jacques Diouf stated that the rapid growth of the livestock sector has unfortunately thus far had little oversight, with current estimates forecasting that without a change in course, the number of livestock cattle alone will increase 70% to 2.6 billion by mid-century.

Director-general Diouf and United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, we laud your recommendations for such planet-protecting policies. May governments across the globe be motivated to implement measures as these for the benefit of all the Earth’s inhabitants. During an August 2009 videoconference in Thailand, Supreme Master Ching Hai spoke of this very subject, calling on world leaders to forego livestock raising as a way to save the planet.


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/38154ea0-1cb2-11df-8d8e-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
http://www.agrimoney.com/news/un-green-crusade-plans-tax-on-livestock-wind--1368.html