Vegans use bogus arguments about climate change, says ex-minister leading fight against global warming

Vegans are using bogus arguments about climate change to support their animal rights agenda, the UK’s top adviser on tackling global warming has said.

Lord Deben, chairman of the Climate Change Committee, said pro-vegan activists were wrong to argue that eating meat was not environmentally friendly and were “muddying” the debate by calling for plant-based diets.

“They do it because they have other views about animals, but they have to accept that it is not about climate change,” said Lord Deben, who as John Gummer was the environment minister from 1993 to 1997.

“What I do not want to see is people muddy the climate change issue for some other agenda. Vegans have got to fight their case on their own grounds.”

Farmed animals are crucial in tackling climate change, Lord Deben said, because grass-grazed livestock improve the ability of soil to store carbon.

He called for the UK to embrace a more mixed and regenerative approach to farming, in which livestock are kept outside all year round alongside a crop rotation.

“It is just not true that we should have a world in which there are no farm animals,” he said. “They are essential for the mixed farming system, which is the way to return the vitality of the soil.”

Eat less, but better meat

Lord Deben’s comments come as the Government faces criticism for not doing enough to tackle emissions from agriculture, which accounts for around 10 per cent of the UK’s territorial greenhouse gas emissions - the majority from methane produced by livestock.

The Climate Change Committee has called for people to eat 20 per cent less meat by 2030. It said encouraging people to cut down should have been part of the Government’s recent landmark green strategy.

But Lord Deben said eating “less, but better” meat should not be a path to full veganism.

“Human beings are omnivores and we have bodies made to have meat as well as plants,” he said. “If everybody were a vegan, then we wouldn’t have the healthy soil that we need.”

He also warned that “extreme” arguments from vegans or other green activists could turn people away from the fight against climate change.

“I’m a great believer that extremism puts everybody off,” he said.

Veganism has been increasingly popular in recent years, as environmental awareness grows and plant-based meat alternatives have become increasingly accessible.

Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate change activist, has attributed her veganism both to a desire to save the planet and to consider the “thoughts and feelings” of animals that are killed for meat.

Globally, meat is responsible for around twice the carbon footprint of plant-based foods, according to a recent study by scientists at the University of Illinois.

Protecting British farmers

Government ministers are divided on the topic of meat eating. Alok Sharma, the Cop26 President, said he was persuaded to go vegetarian by his daughter, while Kwasi Kwarteng, the energy minister, has said he is considering veganism. But environment secretary George Eustice has said he won’t change his diet and has backed the message of eating “less, but better” meat.

Mr Eustice has recently backed the UK moving towards a regenerative agriculture system, but has called for carbon taxes on domestic produce and imports, in order to protect British farmers from being undercut.

British beef has around half of the carbon footprint of global production, but faces competition from cheap imports as farmers lose access to the EU’s direct subsidy regime.

But Lord Deben said the Government was not doing enough with its post-Brexit subsidies to help farmers rear livestock in an environmentally friendly way, and was leaving them at the mercy of imports from new trade deals.

“It is absolutely unacceptable to have trading agreements that allow people to export into this country without tariffs and undercut people in this country producing goods that meet higher environmental standards,” he said.