More than 100 campaign groups have written a letter to the Food and Agriculture Organization urging it to retract a report that they believe minimizes the impact of reducing meat and dairy consumption on overall food emissions.
In the letter, groups such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Changing Markets Foundation, Compassion in World Farming, and Rainforest Action Network have called for a thorough investigation into the errors and biases present in the FAO’s Pathways Towards Lower Emissions report.
Published alongside the COP28 environmental summit in December, the report, primarily based on research by academics Dr. Paul Behrens and Dr. Matthew Hayek, suggested that transitioning to diets lower in meat and dairy would have limited emission reduction potential.
Behrens and Hayek have disputed this claim, stating that the report misrepresents their research and underestimates the emissions reduction potential of diets with fewer animal products. They have requested the retraction of the report and its revision using different sources and methodologies.
The campaign groups’ letter highlights several errors in the report, such as double counting meat emissions to 2050, mixing baseline years, and including emissions from plant-based foods unrelated to replacing meat and dairy.
Addressed to Dr. Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the FAO, the letter supports Behrens and Hayek’s call for the report’s retraction, correction of methodological errors, and the use of more appropriate and up-to-date studies to assess the emissions reduction potential of dietary shifts.
They emphasized that the inaccuracies in the Pathways report downplay the potential of dietary changes towards lower animal product consumption in reducing emissions. The letter also calls for a comprehensive review of the FAO’s internal review processes to improve methodological rigor in future reports.
Furthermore, the campaign groups recommend postponing the FAO’s 2050 Roadmap until the organization adopts more rigorous, inclusive, and transparent processes.
